2023-02-23 Product Council Meeting Notes
Date
Attendees
Alexis Manheim, Aaron Trehub, Brooks Travis, Carol Sterenberg, Caitlin Stewart, Charlotte Whitt, Cornelia Awenius, Ann DP, Gang Zhou, Hkaplanian, Ian Walls, Jesse Koennecke, Karen Newbery, Khalilah Gambrell, Kirstin Kemner-Heek, Kristin Martin, Martina Schildt, Martina Tumulla, Maura Byrne, Owen Stephens, Paul Kloppenborg, Peter Murray, Sharon Wiles-Young, twliu, Tod Olson
Meeting recording
https://recordings.openlibraryfoundation.org/folio/product-council/2023-02-23T09:30/
Discussion items
| Time | Item | Who | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 min | Announcements | The Yunhan/FOLIO China Conference will be held at Shanghai Library East from March 1-3, 2023. The announcement was posted to Slack #folio-announce and #folio-general. https://slack-files.com/T1EPYQDAQ-F04RGPBMSF2-eb0b0fc1d4. Over 300 people registered for the 3-day conference within two days. The conference has a focus on artificial intelligence and intelligent library services. An Intelligent Library Standard and three white papers will be formally released during the conference. Keynote speeches, presentations, exhibits and trainings are also scheduled. Chicago is tentatively hosting WOLFcon (pending the signature on the contracts). | |
| 30 min | PO recruiting and support roles | Khalilah Gambrell | There are about 10 product owners that work at least 20 hours a week on FOLIO; 4 product owners are responsible for a workflow/app but it is hard to determine availability. No product owners for key circulation workflows (e.g. fee/fines) and for Courses app. See the slide deck for a list of PO responsibilities. There was a PO recruitment session at WOLFcon 2022 as well as the Interested in the Product Owner (PO) role? Low-commitment ways to gain experience page. Aaron Neslin (Five Colleges) is a success story as a knowledgeable SME in Acquisitions supporting Dennis' PO work. Defining clear expectations is key (including whether it is a short-term or long-term commitment). The biggest challenge is staff capacity—doing day-jobs in addition to the FOLIO product owner work (unless it is made part of their job description). Getting involved early in the design/development pays off dividends when what is created meets your institution's needs. Can FOLIO work be seen as beneficial toward librarian promotion and tenure commitments? Are 10 hours per week more possible than 20 hours a week? Can co-facilitation in a PO role work? Is there an analogy with volunteers in an animal adoption service? (Volunteers doing some of the work with the coordination of paid/recognized leader?) When sites ask about how they can influence the FOLIO system, there are few ways to have more influence than to serve as a product owner and shape how the system is created. |
| 30 min | Reports from Community Council, Technical Council, Product Owners, and Release Planning | Community Council Report from meeting Feb., 13, 2023 (next meeting on Feb 27,2023)
Addon: Technical Editor funding initiative was finally a success. Marcia can continue for 4 month to work with the group and Paul Kloppenborg Technical Council
Release Planning
Product Owners
| |
| 10 min | Support SIG – need to address languishing bugs | Sharon Wiles-Young | No P1s in the release now. How should the Support SIG move bugs forward when there is no longer a development team? What should the procedure be? There are some bugs for the now-disbanded Prokopovich team. Khalilah is thinking about a proposal. |
| 10 min | Approach to new institutions interested in contributing development resources | An institution has reached out with developers interested in forming a team. The latest video on how to do this is from 2017; is there anything more recent? In the past, this was discussed in Capacity Planning to pair needs with the skills of the team, and also try to take into account what the organization is interested in supporting. Individuals are paired with someone who helps set up their development environment. Capacity Planning hasn't been a group for several years; some of these tasks are now done by "Release Planning", but that group only meets when it needs to determine the scope and timing of a release. Now it might make sense to have this be the lead product owner help with this process. The draft TC charter now specifically talks about this point: “Welcome and help onboard FOLIO community members and organizations that are trying to contribute functionality to FOLIO apps or modules so that the FOLIO project’s technical standards can be upheld pragmatically.” | |
| 5 min | Topics for upcoming meetings | all |
Chat Log
00:04:51 Ian Walls: also on break here in MA
00:05:00 Owen Stephens: We have “half term” in the UK this week - which is a 1 week break from school half way between the Xmas and Easter holidays
00:05:18 Owen Stephens: But we have Easter rather than Spring Break which is usually slightly later I think
00:05:57 Owen Stephens: We have a half-term and the mid point of every school term/semester.
00:06:42 Brooks Travis: But they go to school into June. They get out at the end of May here (barring significant snow days)
00:07:46 Tod Olson: That sounds very exciting!
00:08:28 Charlotte Whitt: 🎉 sounds lovely to go to uChicago for WOLFcon
00:08:36 Kirstin Kemner-Heek: So great News!!!
00:29:25 Brooks Travis: Biggest is just having that kind of capacity in your staffing levels, I would guess
00:30:26 Paul Kloppenborg | BSZ: Reacted to "Biggest is just havi..." with 👍
00:30:34 Ian Walls: there is also the need for the person to be passionate, or at the very least interested, in doing the role... having it just assigned isn't going to get the best results for the Project
00:30:45 Brooks Travis: Are there institutions where this kind of work could fit into research and service time for faculty (and be beneficial to the faculty for T&P)?
00:32:40 Brooks Travis: And it’s not just discovery layer integrations, but could also be used for other system integrations (eg. exposing patron information in a student portal)
00:32:50 Tod Olson: Reacted to "And it’s not just di..." with ✔️
00:33:01 Ian Walls: how do we complete the story of "how my 20 hrs a week made FOLIO better"? A lot of folks need feedback that their work is making a noticeable impact
00:40:30 Tod Olson: You start running into the stuff Fred Brooks wrote about in "The Mythical Man-Month".
00:40:33 Ian Walls: you can't just throw "people hours" at the Project.... it's not like servers/compute power
00:40:49 Ian Walls: thank you, Tod, just that!
00:44:30 Brooks Travis: It think there’s some significant opportunity to “throw people at the Project” as long as they’re motivated/interested/engaged before we run into MMM issues, though.
00:45:28 Brooks Travis: Which is how we’ve mostly done it to this point
00:46:06 Brooks Travis: (It’s how Erin and I got roped into things 😆)
00:46:30 Sharon Wiles-Young: Thank you for your work Cornelia!
00:47:13 Khalilah Gambrell (EBSCO): Agree with Cornelia. Thank you for your help!
00:47:16 Kristin Martin: Unfortunately, I have to leave for another meeting - I'll check on the recording!
00:51:14 Peter Murray: Discuss.folio.org is in read-only mode. I'm still working to turn it into a static website so we don't lose the knowledge of what is there.
00:54:33 Brooks Travis: We brought this on ourselves… 😆
01:02:05 Charlotte Whitt: Marc and I are still working for Prokopovych for Orchid
01:02:26 Sharon Wiles-Young: Thanks so much Charlotte
01:05:36 Owen Stephens: Capacity planning no longer exists though?
01:05:50 Owen Stephens: I thought that this had been refocussed on release planning
01:08:05 Khalilah Gambrell (EBSCO): Good point. We should document this process.
01:08:42 Brooks Travis: It’s “Release planning” now, I think
01:11:34 Owen Stephens: TC draft charter https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/display/TC/2023+Draft and specifically the point “Welcome and help onboard FOLIO community members and organizations that are trying to contribute functionality to FOLIO apps or modules so that the FOLIO project’s technical standards can be upheld pragmatically.”
01:15:34 Brooks Travis: I think they already are 🙂
01:15:51 Khalilah Gambrell (EBSCO): Meeting is next Tuesday.
01:16:01 Peter Murray: Reacted to "Meeting is next Tues..." with 👏
01:19:52 Ian Walls: "under the sea"?
01:20:29 Charlotte Whitt: I’d like to see more sessions relevant for developers
01:20:35 Jesse Koennecke (he/him): "Next to Lake Michigan"
01:20:37 Owen Stephens: I guess you aren’t ready for this library system yet, but your kids are going to love it
01:21:10 Ian Walls: add 🎸
01:21:12 Charlotte Whitt: Reacted to "I guess you aren’t r..." with 🎸
01:21:19 Carol Sterenberg: Thank you!