2022-07-28 Product Council Meeting notes
Date
Attendees
Aaron Trehub, Alexis Manheim, Brooks Travis, Charlotte Whitt, Denise, Gang Zhou, Hkaplanian, Ian Walls, Jana Freytag, Jesse Koennecke, Karen Newbery, Khalilah Gambrell, Kirstin Kemner-Heek, Kristin Martin, Marc Johnson, Martina Schildt, Martina Tumulla, Maura Byrne, Owen Stephens, Peter Murray, Sharon Wiles-Young, Stephanie Buck, twliu
Goals
Discussion items
| Time | Item | Who | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 min | Announcements BugFest updates (from Anton):
| All | Testing has been going well (test failure rate is low). More people are needed for testing. WOLFcon Asia-Pacific conference had over 2,200 watching the live broadcast using Zoom and some other Chinese-specific tools. 9 experts joined the Expert Committee of China's FOLIO community (officially called the Chinese Alliance for Library Service Platform (CALSP)) , expanding committee members to a total of 45. Currently, there are 24 member institutions in the Alliance, including 13 libraries and 11 vendors. A news release was posted to the wiki. English versions for some of the Chinese presentations will be posted. |
| 10 min | Soft deletes/Block on Delete
Purpose: Information dissemination, taking comments | Brooks Travis | There is a need to have a way to discuss technical decisions when there is a large, cross-cutting impact on the user interface. Broadly, there is a need for coordination between UX experts and technical architects. This particular case, soft deletes, is well on its way to be handled, but there are other cases where there is this need (e.g., some challenges in handling users, working with acquisitions units and would other apps benefit from this work). How do we let innovation continue to happen in groups while efficiently bringing that innovation to other apps? Is this an area where product owners need closer working relationships with each other to coordinate these areas? Allowing innovation to happen in apps when the need is urgent could require re-work when solutions are talked about across the entire platform. Alternatively, focus on early cross-platform analysis will likely result in months-long delays to solving the needs for a particular app. A meeting at WOLFcon can continue this with some ideas for how these kinds of projects can move forward. |
| 40 min | Council Updates: Community Council
Membership drive
Topics
Website (www.folio.org)
WOLFcon '22
Technical Council Product Owners
| Many updates are in the "Item" column on the left. Additional notes are below. Shanghai Jiao Tong University Library in China asked for a draft Memorandum of Understanding, and may be joining the community. Now that FOLIO is bigger, the TC is considering how the project manages and communicates technical change (e.g., infrastructure requirements). TC is participating in the ElasticSearch versus OpenSearch discussion and the developer capacity planning as well as the issue of supporting multiple locales in the same tenant (as brought up by the Knowledgeware team, including the translation of reference data). Regarding the multiple locale issue (translating back-end messages and reference data), there is now a group meeting to address this, and if product council members have ideas or concerns about this area, now is the time to get engaged. (Zak Burke is leading the group.) This group is looking at the requirements and reviewing the work that Knowledgeware did and seeing if it makes sense to integrate that work into FOLIO. The Knowledgeware solution does require developers to make changes to apps in order to support the solution, and the TC i18n group is evaluating those tradeoffs. The Internationalization SIG has been dormant since 2017; is it time to resurrect that group to serve as a sounding board for the technical work? The PC supports the internationalization work happening in the TC and intends to create a group of subject matter experts to offer the product focus for internationalization. | |
| 20 min | WOLFCon:
Purpose: strengthen WOLFCon schedule, agenda creation for in-person meeting | Should we reconsider how agile is implemented in the project, how cross-app decisions are made, how does communication with our development cycle happens? There has been some recent discussion on Slack channels started by Ian that talks about the boundaries between product, project, and platform. Is this related to what the scope critera group tried to do? | |
| 10 min | Topics for upcoming meetings | All |
Chat logs
00:04:10 Owen Stephens: "The dog ate my Okapi" is going to be my new excuse for anything that doesn't work in Folio 00:04:22 Kirstin Kemner-Heek: +1 Owen 00:04:37 Charlotte Whitt: :-D mine too, Owen 00:04:43 Jana Freytag | VZG: 😠00:08:17 Kristin Martin: https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/display/FOLIJET/2022-07 00:15:52 Marc Johnson: Please can we refer to the folks who contribute to FOLIO as people rather than (human) resources 00:26:14 Charlotte Whitt: The channel you talk about Marc, it that #tc-i18n ? 00:26:20 Brooks Travis: Do we not have the requirements they used to build their solution? 00:30:30 Alexis Manheim: K-ware? 00:30:47 Alexis Manheim: ah, got it 00:31:56 Brooks Travis: I feel like the product council should make a formal statement that this type of internationalization solution is a high priority in our roadmap that we would like to see included in FOLIO in the next release cycle or two. 00:37:56 Harry: And then the planning for each PO and dev team, when do we do this work, what features get delayed, testing, etc. 00:42:45 Charlotte Whitt: Maybe a SME working group - so not just one person 00:44:21 Harry: +1 Brooks 00:44:44 Marc Johnson: Also +1 00:46:30 Brooks Travis: I think that the desired timeline could be part of the charge, maybe? 00:47:16 Marc Johnson: Zak is the lead of the work, he can be the point of contact 00:50:03 Charlotte Whitt: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11ST_V-JA_uk1bIKepd99rtXghDt4xU8GUPsnh6dCypM/edit 00:53:08 Marc Johnson: I totally agree the solutions tend to be bounded to the particular case folks have been tasked with rather than more holistically 00:55:08 Marc Johnson: Identification is one of the significant challenges. One of the things the TC struggles with is that topics don’t even make it to the TC because folks don’t recognise it as significant or don’t realise the governance structures have a role to play 00:56:30 Charlotte Whitt: Draft document from the Solution Architect for Mark instance for deletion: https://wiki.folio.org/display/~Raman+Auramau/Mark+instance+for+deletion 00:57:05 Marc Johnson: We have a challenge when solutions aimed at a particular area take up / impact the global space of the whole project 00:57:18 Charlotte Whitt: Mark instance for deletion - detecting and resolving conflicts requirements: https://wiki.folio.org/display/AppInt/Mark+for+Deletion++-+Detecting+and+Resolving+Conflicts+Requirements 00:57:56 Marc Johnson: This connects with folks expressing with how they want the system to be more modular and less interconnected 00:59:17 Kristin Martin: It's like a parent saying, "we'll see..." 00:59:37 Marc Johnson: I’d say it’s more like at least 2 flower releases for that process 01:00:37 Owen Stephens: Absolutely Kristin - we need to be able to have these conversations at PC without that being seen as a threat to development 01:00:52 Marc Johnson: Awareness is sometimes the biggest constraint 01:02:13 Aaron Trehub: Have to leave for another meeting... 01:04:34 Khalilah: A PO/Dev lead working with a system architect is also key to ensure we understand platform impact and dependencies. 01:06:06 Harry: +1 Marc 01:08:22 Marc Johnson: We can’t entirely avoid trying something and learning from it. Sometimes we can know up front, sometimes we won’t. Even with the best intentions, sometimes we’ll only realise after the first (or first few) implementations 01:08:38 Harry: +1 Marc 01:08:41 Ian Walls: if we added a workflow engine to the Platform (like Camunda or Airflow), we'd be in a better position to address these kinds of cross-App concerns, and on a configurable basis 01:09:34 Marc Johnson: We still need the hooks in place to allow the workflow system to interact with the parts 01:10:20 Marc Johnson: For example, if we want to block deletion based upon dependencies, then the workflow system needs to know how to communicate with the originator and the dependents 01:10:32 Karen Newbery: +1 Marc 01:11:19 Ian Walls: right. emit events to Kafka, which kick off workflows (which may wind off emitting other events) 01:11:47 Marc Johnson: I think workflows systems tend to allow folks to fill in the details of organisational processes and policies. 01:12:27 Marc Johnson: Sure, emitting events is a common part of technical solutions in this space 01:19:05 Marc Johnson: + 1 I would very much like FOLIO to define the platform, the product and the project 01:19:31 Harry: I would argue that FOLIO is a project, not a product. 01:20:13 Marc Johnson: I think that’s exactly why we need to define what we mean by those words and what we are trying to achieve 01:21:14 Brooks Travis: My apologies. I have thoughts on this topic, but don't feel I'm ready to articulate them today. 01:22:05 Maura Byrne: I have to go. thanks, everyone. 01:22:05 Harry: But if we get rid of voting or governance, and it has no impact, why do we do it. 01:22:18 Peter Murray: "Ituri" is still available as a name for the platform. ;-) 01:22:56 Marc Johnson: If folks are considering evaluating how we build this, in the context of agility, then we should consider our lags for feedback and the interdependencies between the parts / teams 01:23:37 Peter Murray: At the risk of cultural appropriation, the Ituri Rainforest is the home of the Okapi. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ituri_Rainforest 01:24:02 Marc Johnson: +1 Harry there is definitely a challenge in understanding the efficacy of the governance structures in relation to the development of the (parts of the) system 01:25:47 Harry: Everyone, please have a good weekend! I need to jump off. 01:26:04 Ian Walls: I would (and do) argue that Membership makes more sense for a Users Group than an open community. membership, by it's nature, defines and 'in' group and 'out' group, in this case based on resource availability 01:26:22 Marc Johnson: Do we know if many developers are going to WOLFCon? 01:27:01 Charlotte Whitt: I know about 10 developers 01:27:06 Charlotte Whitt: But maybe more 01:27:52 Marc Johnson: Are those from a variety of orgs or mostly hosting providers? 01:28:10 Ian Walls: gotta drop; thanks folks! 01:28:11 Alexis Manheim: I like that idea 01:28:39 Brooks Travis: I need to step away. Thanks for the time, everyone.