Product Council Review (arwhyte)
- Former user (Deleted)
State of community product management functions
A. What do you think of the product development lifecycle (have you looked at it)?
Logical at the abstract levels but requires far greater Community participation to be effective. The emphasis on the "Foundation Role" as described in the "Development Model" is misplaced and overstates the ability of the Foundation staff to oversee, orchestrate, coordinate or otherwise effect change (despite the two sentence disclaimer at the end of the section). The emphasis needs to shift to the Community and a set of Community-based teams driving the process.
B. What are the critical functions that the community needs in the context of managing the product?
For me the product has always been the community and not the software. But talking narrowly of the code the critical functions include ensuring that the code is usable, reliable, extensible, maintainable, scalable, secure, well documented, easy to install and not least, relevant. In the case of 2.x, the PC's focus on tool inclusion/exclusion barely comes to grips with whether or not 2.x as a "product" meets the needs of its broad community of users.
C. For which of those critical functions, if any, do you think a product council is needed?
Everything I've described above, if the Product Council takes seriously its moniker. Otherwise, I'd restyle the council as the "project council" and have it focus solely on ensuring that project teams meet the requirements specified by the development model.
D. How does the product council relate to other groups working on these critical functions?
From my perspective there has been little interaction to date between the PC and other work groups such as QA, release management, the maintenance team, the kernel team and the Security WG. Attempts to solicit guidance from the PC on a number of questions relating to the product during the (still ongoing) release phase of Sakai 2.7.0 have generally been turned aside by the Sakai Product Manager as issues outside the purview of the PC. This response, never challenged by PC members, is at odds with the "coaching and guidance" role the PC was expected to play in the day-to-day activities required to produce the next production-worthy release of Sakai as is outlined in the Sakai Development Process. As a result, beyond the initial gate-keeping function provided rather belatedly between Nov/Dec 2009, the PC has not operated as a force for good as regards Sakai 2.x and, as far as shaping the product in its finer details, is largely (and regrettably) irrelevant.
I am also of the view that Product Council should play no oversight role with respect to QA, release management, the maintenance team, the kernel team, the i18n or accessibility teams and the Nakamura/Sakai 3 teams. The PC as currently constituted is neither sufficiently engaged in the production process nor sufficiently agile to respond quickly and authoritatively to the day-to-day challenges of Sakai software development.
E. Which of those functions are missing from current activity or processes?
1. Documentation as a specific community deliverable.
2. Development of a more refined distribution mechanism for Sakai (e.g., app store).
3. Pro-active approach to Sakai security
4. Staffing and training: ensuring that projects are staffed appropriately and are supported by more than a single institution
5. Early discussion of what we want to accomplish with the next Sakai release (the 2.8 discussion should be occurring now)
6. Willingness to review not simply new projects but existing projects in the core build regarding their adherence to the development process
The mission and charter of the Product Council
A. When you heard about the product council, what did you hope the product council might achieve?
Encourage the professionalization of the Sakai development process; provide a coherent set of production goals that community teams could work to actualize; provide timely guidance on issues relating to the "product."
B. How close to your hopes did the product council charter come (have you read it)?
Not close at all. The collection of pages in Confluence that frame the PC as a key element in the Sakai production process are uninspiring and poorly organized. If we need an FAQ alongside two pages of content something is wrong.
C. What would you change about the charter?
At a minimum it needs to inspire. I want to read a charter that makes me (and others) want to stay up late kicking ass for Sakai.
What impression, if any, do you think the product council has on people looking at Sakai from outside the community?
Unknown.
Membership
A. Have we got the membership right?
On paper, yes. The PC is replete with talent. The challenge for the PC is that talented people are busy people and I sense that all too often the PC has not been firing on all pistons, resulting in a council considered slow and generally unproductive.
B. What constitutes the right mix of people on the Council?
If the PC serves as the gatekeeper of the development process, then it's short of technical and operational expertise. If the PC is interested in helping transform user wants and desires into working code then I'd like to see more users (e.g., faculty, students) involved. But individual PC members have told me that visioning is not in their remit---a real shame in my view as we could use leadership in this area.
C. How should members be selected?
If the existing charter remains substantially unchanged, then PC members should be elected. That said, who constitutes the electorate remains an open question in my mind. However, if the PC continues to operate like a "project" council tasked with gatekeeping the development process then I'd have the Executive Director simply stock it with people well versed in the shop floor and operational aspects of software development.
Given the evolution of 2.x and 3.x a case can be made for separate structures overseeing the evolution of each code base. I'm thinking lightweight technical/operational structures here along with the PC evolving in the direction of a visioning body, a group of people tasked not with assessing the technical merits of whether or not Profile2 is suitable for 2.7.0 but with helping frame (and answer) the larger questions of where we want to take this Community and the software it produces, a Community presence or orchestrator of fine ideas that if handled right becomes more important to the life to the Community than the Sakai Foundation or Sakai Board.
D. Should Board members be on the Council?
No. We should look to others in the community to fill the slots in the PC as part of our effort to encourage broad participation.
E. What expectations should there be on council members?
Every member a leader, every member a doer.
What the Product Council has done
A. What do you think the product council has focused its attention and energy on?
Self-definition, 2.7 new capabilities review, general Sakai 3 discussions.
B. What do you see as the successes of the product council so far?
I appreciated the PC's work in helping define the 2.7 feature set. The exercise performed by Max, Noah, Eli et al bears repeating, and not just on new capabilities. See: http://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/MGT/2.7+Exercise.
C. What are the disappointments?
PC deliberations over the 2.7 new feature set could have and should have commenced in July 2009 following the Boston Conference. Technical reviews did not commence until the fall and were not completed until Dec 2009. This delay has had a negative impact on the 2.7 release timeline. PC communications are infrequent. Working partnerships between the PC and groups such as the maintenance team, release management and QA have yet to be established.
Indeed, the new 2.7.0 capabilities were all discussed in Boston (and ranked for risk); the sterling technical review work performed by Max, Noah, Eli et al could have been organized and executed in a light-weight manner and within existing structures.
D. What has been the net pay-off of the product council thus far.
The PC has been existence since May 2009. Its output to date has been rather modest given the acknowledged talent of its members.
E. Is the Sakai 2 product better off? Sakai 3?
For 2.x, the technical self-assessments/reviews performed the PC and participating project leads represent a net benefit; for Sakai 3 benefits, if any, have yet to be realized.