We expect to have something in the range $150,000 - $200,000 to spend in FY24 by not having a centrally funded developer and the successful efforts by the TC to lower AWS costs.
Jesse Koennecke is introducting the PC's thoughts:
- Product Owner for an area lacking one or a Product Owner Coordinator for a set of POs, to help work with Khalilah and other POs with less percentage of time devoted to product, to help coordinate work across teams and keep the PC and Roadmap informed about new developments. We did have some further conversations about the definition of a product owner, and whether a product owner could exist without a development team. Need to follow up on the whole concept of Product Ownership and how it works when a product owner is community-contributed (or paid for by the project), but the dev team is private. What happens if priorities clash? I think that's a separate conversation.
- Product Owners: Available positions
- Some areas are lacking PO's
- Some areas just need some assistance in writing up Jiras
- Money to an institution so they could support a development wrangler/coordinator/advocate: someone who can coordinate and help assign individuals developers who have time contributed from different institutions. Marc Johnson shared that a similar idea came up at the TC. He wasn't actually that enthusiastic about the idea, but we think such a role could help expand community contributions, because it is discouraging to institutions who want to donate some of their developer's time to be turned away because of onboarding and coordination. We think if we can encourage more community contribution, that could also create a positive feedback loop and encourage further development. The Support SIG liaison was enthusiastic about this idea too, as many these developers could pick up bugs that have been languishing as P3 or P4.
- This is from the Roadmap Group: funding for Airtable or other prioritization tool, though we are still waiting for an exact quote.
- Seat per SIG? Group will announce a proposal, how many licenses are needed
Discussion:
- Harry: a PO without developer team could work on requirements but there is no guarantee, that the work will be picked up
- Ian I.: PO is not writing specs - he/she is working for the dev team and follows general product lines and ensures the general product vision and ensures that the task is getting done in time and the right scope
- Harry: maybe we are talking about a project manager / librarian defining the needs and later on this will be passed over to a PO?
- Jeremy H.: PO is responsible for the backlog - ensures that requirements are defined enough to spec out the technical tasks - a well curated backlog is a win for each open source project
- Boaz: good approach - defintions of the work of different roles would be helpful to address tasks easier next year
- Simeon: defined process would be appreciated - how can smaller contributions be better integrated in the processes?
- Shall we address this question to the TC?
- Harry: Courses - is a good example. The community identified a need and someone stepped up and did it. Documentation was provided to calculate the costs and do the development
- Discussion ends.
Maccabee Levine / Jeremy Huff are introducing the TC's thoughts in https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PK57lgZKxLBdpK5fqN55t3nQneid_9Dzdf2s5SCbYxE/edit?usp=sharing, headlines:
- FOLIO reference environment:
- Community would like to have independent access to a reference environment - not sponsored, but funded by the community
- Community developer advocate
- No idea to fund a full blown dev team (or any other full team) but to provide people, who work as advisors / guides and give support to others / new members
- done by people already being in the project for a certain amount of time
- Offer feedback, exchange
- in general: provision of community support and ensure documentation
- Security audit
- Security guidelines needed
- Privacy
- Innovation Grant
- Set of funds for crowdfunding and other specific development
- Github Actions Migration
- Alternative to Jenkins for version control
Questions / discussion:
Boaz: How to prioritize the items above?
TC: The TC thought about prioritization but most items need a person to be funded
CC: Concern that CC has not enough money to fund persons on an ongoing basis
Ian W.: Open source means → activate people → first need: install FOLIO easily as biggest obstacle to join the project
Jenn Colt: all propsals are solutions for a certain missing area in the project - a good definition of the goals could help with the next steps
Jeremy Huff: Proposals shall empower the governance to identify the necessary needs. Community needs an amount of independence and take responsibility on the product / project
Boaz: Adding sections around “RISK” and “Alternatives” - can help understanding how to spend 150k - 200k
Jenn Colt: Understanding better whether the 150k-200k is a one time, every year for three years, every year for the foreseeable future or what it is we are talking about would help. I understand some are one time but that leaves question about the opportunity cost still.
Simeon: more discussion needed and more spec'ed out tasks
Boaz: CC needs to talk to Paula as well (treasurer) - TC/PC shall try to prioritize
Maccabee: Proactively identify technical issues and resourcing needs that the project will need to deal with, ...
Simeon:
Conclusion - CC shall follow up with more discussion in Slack until the next meeting and provide more input before we point the work back to TC/PC.