2024-03-20 Formalization Working Group Meeting notes

• Craig's announcement from slack:
  • As mentioned at the meeting earlier, the Architectural PoC Preview environment is now available.  Please see the google sheet linked below for details.  This document will serve as a mechanism for providing feedback/questions/etc.  Please let me know if you have problems accessing the document.https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1zzW2I1xMhdUpkclQRE2NvCcvx6JlNYUG4aTOiaYraJ4/edit#gid=1733306425
• Application formalization RFC has moved to public review stage:
  • https://github.com/folio-org/rfcs/pull/29

Copied to new doc because things were chaotic https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SdsRmeTLXQRpaC-6xy4sUfoOsNPN2dh2lPSnjwVZNk0/edit

Zoom chat:

00:03:29	Jenn Colt:	https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CC/pages/105710169/2024-03-20+Formalization+Working+Group+Meeting+notes
00:04:38	Jenn Colt:	https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/CC/pages/105710169/2024-03-20+Formalization+Working+Group+Meeting+notes
00:09:17	Charlotte Whitt:	The development team responsible for the module …
00:10:40	Wayne Schneider:	There is a difference between the technical and cultural reasons for the release cycle
00:15:59	Craig McNally:	apologies for joining late
00:19:08	Wayne Schneider:	Of course application formalization is an attempt to cut that knot
00:26:44	Wayne Schneider:	Is this a technical (TC) question or a product (PC) question?
00:28:51	Wayne Schneider:	In other words, the next question :-)
00:29:58	Marc Johnson:	When I say centralised, I mean things like the PC, TC, CC etc

Those folks currently have no input into the organisation of the chunks
00:30:47	Marc Johnson:	Who decides what appropriately sized is?
00:33:50	Craig McNally:	past experience with what?
00:34:28	Wayne Schneider:	I think the question is not of the quality of the outcome, but of what criteria are used to determine a slice of functionality that constitutes the product that may develop independently from other slices.
00:34:52	Wayne Schneider:	That is, development teams may have different criteria than users.
00:35:31	Marc Johnson:	Ok, but who decides whether what the team says is a good fit for the community?
00:35:33	Jenn Colt:	Sorry!
00:35:39	Craig McNally:	why do users even need to know about applications?
00:36:10	Charlotte Whitt:	Replying to "Ok, but who decides ..."

The Dev team need to communicate and collaborate more with the SIGs
00:36:44	Wayne Schneider:	LOL why do development teams?
00:37:30	Marc Johnson:	Who does care about the size of applications?
00:37:54	Craig McNally:	Replying to "LOL why do developme..."

because they are responsible for maintain these applications
00:38:56	Marc Johnson:	Replying to "LOL why do developme…"
Conway’s Law has driven a bunch of module boundary decisions thus far
00:39:01	Ian Ibbotson:	Sorry folks - have to dash  - TY
00:39:58	Wayne Schneider:	I think "users" is being misunderstood here. What I mean is that people who have to do their job using the software have a stake in how functionality is sliced so it can evolve independently.
00:40:15	Marc Johnson:	It isn’t based upon only APIs anymore
00:41:27	Marc Johnson:	Arguably, the same as what Jenn said could be said about module boundaries
00:41:59	Wayne Schneider:	Replying to "LOL why do developme..."

Of course I am being facetious to a degree here. Of course development teams need to care, and am just making the point that "users" broadly defined likely also care, though they may not understand it technically.
00:42:50	Marc Johnson:	If we end up with few mega applications, there can’t be alignment between module owners and application owners
00:43:41	Marc Johnson:	Replying to "LOL why do developme…"
Today, the module developers don’t really need to care beyond their own motivations (because of the flower releases)
00:44:34	Charlotte Whitt:	Looping in more people can also prevent doing mistakes; which later needs to be refactored
00:49:36	Marc Johnson:	What are we throwing away?
00:52:00	Wayne Schneider:	Naively perhaps I thought that we had structures for product governance. Are they not sufficient for application formalization?
00:53:44	Wayne Schneider:	Governance need not mean strong centralization. There is something between bottom up and top down, isn't there?
00:55:21	Marc Johnson:	I agree it’s the most natural from where we are at. I reckon the question is whether it will be more effective this time around?
00:56:52	Marc Johnson:	Replying to "Naively perhaps I th…"
I suggest listening to some of the PC evaluations

To me, they mostly come down to whether they think the functionality bundle is wanted
00:57:23	Marc Johnson:	Are folks happy with the current decomposition of FOLIO?
00:58:19	Wayne Schneider:	There are different answers to that operationally, functionally, and from the end users' perspective.
00:59:17	Marc Johnson:	Replying to "There are different …"
Wrangling the conflicts in those are part of what I would call domain modelling and architecture
00:59:39	Marc Johnson:	Jenn, which question do you want to answer?
00:59:55	Jenn Colt:	The innovation one
00:59:57	Charlotte Whitt:	Re. Inventory as a mega app - here I would like to see: quickMARC, SRS, and MARC Authority to be moved out of Inventory
01:01:47	Wayne Schneider:	Sounds good!