PC Comments - David Goodrum

1. State of community product management functions

• What do you think of the product development lifecycle (have you looked at it)?

Overall, the description of the lifecycle is pretty good. One of the problems for any member in the community regarding Sakai development is knowing what all is going on – without having to monitor and/or mine all of confluence. A colleague of mine put it this way: Sometimes being in the Sakai community is like being in a big house with lots of rooms under varying levels of construction, but where there aren't any lights on.

Explicit lifecycle declarations by projects helps to begin to turn the lights on for folks.

Perhaps the Product Development phase may need a couple of flavors, because a dynamic system will have relatively mature parts still gaining new capabilities. Justathought.

• What are the critical functions that the community needs in the context of managing the product?

In addition to this notion of turning the lights on – and encouraging projects to communicate to wider audiences – the product needs a clear vision, clear standards, common tools, reachable goals and timelines, broad community support and tangible participation/contribution, straightforward setup, evidence of scale and load testing, concise marketing, and outreach conducted by many community members as well as by Foundation staff.

• For which of those critical functions, if any, do you think a product council is needed?

A product council with community backing could contribute to many if not all of these.

• How does the product council relate to other groups working on these critical functions?

Having sensed that many perceive the PC to be in a state of disconnect with other groups, perhaps representatives from those group should make up some of the PC membership.

In my own case it has been a happy accident, so to speak, that I've been on the PC and have also been an active participant and champion of the learning capabilities envisioning being done within the broader teaching and learning community. I've acted as a channel of very brief updates to the PC and returned both encouragement and advice back to the T&L group. Also, the encouragement of the product manager was at a couple of key points instrumental in motivating the T&L group to forge on. And now the T&L group has a slot on the PC agenda to formally report progress and ask for response and guidance.

• Which of those functions are missing from current activity or processes?

All to a degree, perhaps. The PC perhaps mirrors the community as a whole in its tentativeness in exploring over-arching coordination and oversight. Quite naturally, Sakai is finding it's way in a somewhat organic fashion. And organizing itself in order to reinvent itself with Sakai 3 is no less a challenge than the original formation of the Sakai effort many years ago.

2. The mission and charter of the Product Council

• When you heard about the product council, what did you hope the product council might achieve?

I think it's summed up here: "The Sakai Product Council will act on behalf of the entire Sakai community to ensure the exceptional quality and cohesiveness of Sakai product releases in their support of varied teaching, research and collaboration needs. It does this formally by determining those projects which will go into a release, and informally by advising projects as they progress from R&D to production-ready maturity"

• How close to your hopes did the product council charter come (have you read it)?

It has definitely started down the path and had incremental success in (a) ensuring quality and cohesiveness, (b) determining which projects go into a release, and (c) informally advising projects. Perhaps its tentativeness is correlated with the uneven support in the community for its actual existence.

• What would you change about the charter?

The charter may be fine as is... those three areas I've just mentioned are important; membership and confidence still need maturing.

Regarding the issue of the chair, I think in practical terms the product manager has been acting as chair. That's worked quite well this first year. Even with a separate chair, the product manager will always need to play a critical role within the PC. Though having members of the PC actually vote on the chair position (or take a formal vote on anything) would be a new development

• What impression, if any, do you think the product council has on people looking at Sakai from outside the community?

As someone who's gone out and recently talked with a few schools about their interest in Sakai, I've gotten a positive reception to hearing the PC has been formed. Some have wondered why there wasn't one before.

3. Membership

• Have we got the membership right? What constitutes the right mix of people on the Council? How should members be selected?

As I've suggested above, representatives from other working groups and community areas should be an additional part of the membership of the PC. Also, this could be a could place for the Sakai fellows as well. So there may be some members that have multi-year terms; some that rotate among the members of the various teams (one per team); and others (perhaps the fellows) that sit for a single year.

• Should Board members be on the Council?

Not a real problem in and of itself; though as others have suggested, an person's bandwidth can fill up fast; so how much can they contribute to these two as well as other project and community commitments? Also, if the overlap between the two was high, that would be a weakness not a strength. Having more people from a wide range of institutions and affiliates and roles may help lead to an increased sense of ownership and influence among community members.

• What expectations should there be on council members?

Regular attendance; tangible contribution; active two-way linkage to a team or community area.

4. What the Product Council has done

• What do you think the product has focused its attention and energy on?

Getting its footing (e.g., establishing it's identity and interaction style; dealing with community ambivalence; not over-stepping or expanding its charter); establishing requirements for incubation; the 2.7 release; imagining the implications of moving Sakai 3 from R&D to production.

• What do you see as the successes of the product council so far? What are the disappointments?

Successes: the initial steps in (a) ensuring quality and cohesiveness, (b) determining which projects go into a release, and (c) informally advising projects. Disappointments: not further progress on all three fronts. Again, I think its tentativeness is related to much ambivalence in the community about the PC's formation and existence.

Personally, I feel a PC is an important step in the maturing of Sakai's self-governance. It will need broader and outspoken support for it from the community for it to evolve. I think the changes in membership I've suggested could assist its natural evolution.

• What has been the net pay-off of the product council thus far. Is the Sakai 2 product better off? Sakai 3?

Incrementally, it has improved Sakai 2 and has helped set the stage for moving Sakai 3 from R&D to production.
It appears to have affected positively the perception of at least some institutions considering Sakai.