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  • From: "Jeremy Blosser (emrys)" <jblosser-smgl AT firinn.org>
  • To: sm-discuss AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [SM-Discuss] project organization
  • Date: Tue, 14 Feb 2006 10:14:48 -0600

On Feb 14, Pieter Lenaerts [pieter.lenaerts AT telenet.be] wrote:
> Op di, 14-02-2006 te 09:10 +0100, schreef Andrew "ruskie" Levstik:
> > Jeremy Blosser (emrys) wrote :
> >
> > > A possible arrangement based on the above would be something where we
> > > keep
> > > the TLs, but not the teams... make the TLs component leads or something
> > > instead, or the "council of elders" idea but with a PL still over them.
> > > Basically, have the majority of developers that work on spells continue
> > > to
> > > do that, then have a tier of more "free agent" types who are working on
> > > the
> > > hairier stuff, then from that group have specific leads identified so we
> > > continue to have ownership and oversight of the major areas instead of
> > > anarchy, then a PL over them. This arrangement would be very similar to
> > > what we have now except it would allow various team members to move more
> > > freely between projects as they're needed or want to, and would put a
> > > bit
> > > more responsibilty on the leads to make sure their areas were
> > > progressing
> > > toward their goals. I'm mostly making this up as I type it, but it
> > > seems
> > > like it might describe the kind of thing that happens naturally now.
> > > Acknowledging it and actively supporting it might find us spending less
> > > time spinning wheels and more time getting things done.
> > >
>
> I honestly think we're going somewhere, but not the right place with this
> thread and the voting process thread. there's no real problem with either
> of them imho, only a feeling that something may be improved. in the case
> of the voting process it's an improvement we feel someone "might" want,

The need for auditability/accountability isn't theoretically, several
(including myself) have said we _definitely_ want this. I'm not
comfortable with a process where people send votes to a black box that
spits out a total count and no verifiable information.

> and in this case I think it's rather a problem with the coordination of
> our roadmap then a problem of number of teams...

There's definitely a problem that our goals are toward a 1.0 release, but
it takes us many months to coordinate significant progress each time.
Whether this means the goals are off or the coordination is off is a big
part of the question. I think people are talking about organization
because we're noticing we have more teams than very active people, and when
Team A can't do their part til Team B is done, and Team B is absent, it
makes people wonder if we shouldn't just have Team A+Team B able to get it
done whether Team B has time or not. I think that's the crux of it.

> who cares if someone is in web/tome/grimoire team? I happen to do work
> in grimoire, wiki and website. so what if I am or am not listed in team
> A or B? that doesn't influence any of the work. it happens to be the
> practise that whenever someone asks for write access somewhere and has a
> good reason for that, it's fixed in 10 minutes, so team labels have only
> little significance.

Yeah, this is kind of what I was talking about in the message you replied
to. The teams themselves have little bearing on what work people actually
do, but they have a fair amount of bearing on the organization of goals and
planning and what people are *asked* to do. I have seen several active
devs told they should really work on A instead of B, because A is what
their team goals need right now... they'll agree, even though B is what
they really want to work on, and often times the result is they can't get
the interest to focus on A and end up not doing much of anything. That's
not really useful to anyone. We either would need to put more pressure on
people to do what they said they'd do (which most of us think is bad) or
figure out how to benefit more from people working on what they want to
work on at any given time.

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