Google Doc for drafting a report
What do we mean when we say "looking at the impact on the Product Council from the re-architecting proposal or vision that was presented by Vince at WOLFCon 2023."
...
Vince makes the problem statement: "Folio is stuck in a mode of monolithic releases which are ever increasing in size"
Problems from the PC perspective (draft suggestions only):
- Hard for PC to fulfil it's responsibilities in regards the 'product' where we lack a definition of what the "product" is
- Includes the time necessary for App / Module evaluation issue as well as the issue that this has not proved particularly effective so far
- e.g. Translation app "approved" but not part of product - functionality was desirable but implementation was not accepted by
- OA app approved but failed TC evaluation
- Lists app not approved by PC but already going through TC evaluation
- Includes the time necessary for App / Module evaluation issue as well as the issue that this has not proved particularly effective so far
- Overhead of a "Flower release" - on the product and the wider community (testing)
- Ever growing "product" as it's hard to rule out functionality that is useful to at least one library
- Overhead for hosting institutions and service providers in managing and upgrading Folio installations
...
Problem statements: What are challenges we currently see with the Product? What impact will these changes have on these challenges? 5-10 of these?
...
- Releases
- Large overhead of a Flower release
- Product owners and development teams
- Community testing (bug fest)
- Balance between stability vs new functionality
- Deadlines for release cause bottlenecks especially in relation to new modules
- Overhead for hosting institutions and service providers in managing and upgrading Folio installations
- Large overhead of a Flower release
- Product functionality
- Ever growing "product" as it's hard to rule out functionality that is useful to at least one library
- Struggle to have a definition of the 'product' that the "Product Council" is responsible for
- Determining what should be included in an application's functionality vs extended
- Determining what is part of a "platform" - FOLIO LSP, ERM, etc... vs. Extended
- Development processes
- Difficulty of getting a "Folio" development environment setup
- Ease with which a new development team can contribute to the system
- Impacts on our ability to expand as a community
- Functionality prioritisation and definition
- Difficulty of recruiting people to join SIGs and POs and lack of clarity as to how these roles contribute to actual functionality that is developed (i.e. a SIG can influence but not decide, a PO without development resource cannot make things happen etc.)
- Difficulty for PC of managing a roadmap that only reflects what the PC is told is happening, not what the PC would like to happen
How will the proposals help with these issues?
Stakeholders
- FSE team responsible for flower releases
- Self hosting institutions (e.g. TAMU)
- Index data hosting team
- Service provider marketing teams
- Institutions using FOLIO LSP
- Institutions looking at FOLIO LSP as a possible solution...
Questions
- Would support windows be defined at Application level rather than Platform (or 'release') level?
- And what does "supported" mean anyway / LTS discussion
- The new proposed model brings new focus to this question
- How will versioning of platforms, applications and modules interact and if there is a need to patch a module, how will the patched version get into the application and ultimately the platform (i.e. what is the equivalent of the CSP?)
- Who would decide what was in the "functionality" vs "extended" tier for a platform?
- Which platform(s) would the PC be involved in?
- If there was an "App Store" what governance would be necessary (probably a very long term question)
- Is offering all the modules in the "Extended" tier a requirement of saying you support a platform as a service provider? Or is this not relevant as you could simply have a different platform definition
- What is the need for the "Flower" release - are their product needs to have named releases?
- Institution to institution conversations
- Market conversations / marketing purposes
- What can we learn from Apple naming conventions?
- Folio Core → OS?
- Platform Functionality tier → bundled apps (tend to be updated with OS?)
- Platform Extended tier → user installed apps?
- Assuming we answer most or all of the above, what do prioritization and roadmap process(es) look like?
- SIGs - will they become App based?
- POs - will they become App based?
- Does the proposal offer the opportunity of moving away from a monolithic frontend, and if so could this open up the ability for institutions to draw on several different options for hosting apps - e.g. have apps hosted by service provider, then self-host a couple of additional apps that they wish to run or have developed locally
What stage are we at?
General discussion of how to move forward?
...
- Product side - take a look at how we do releases going forward.
Deliverables:
- List of questions - some may come from TC, some from PC, some from other channels
- What is PCs role(s) in a project to implement this
- Is there code already written as if this is in place?
- Are we reacting to something already in motion, or are we recommending a path forward?
- Present to PC prior to Tri-Council (by October 5)
To Do:
Jesse - gather recordings and slide decks - some may need to be edited from a longer multi-session videvideo.
Jesse - Set up meetings - weekly at least until October same time slot 8:30 Eastern - Monday
- Get FOLIO Zoom link
Add to Questions and Problem Statements above
Recommendations for our group: Read back-and-forth in TC Slack: https://folio-project.slack.com/archives/CAQ7L02PP/p1694016217856909