2023-11-09 Product Council Agenda and Meeting Notes

From TC: "At WOLFcon, several comments were made about lack of multi-lingual support in FOLIO. The TC has been trying to get a subgroup together to start thinking about, discussing the possible direction the project might want to go with this, but we've found it difficult to find volunteers. A suggestion was made to see if there is any interest from the other councils to help move this forward. A good first step which the other councils might be able to help with is clarify requirements and expectations." Charlotte Whitt will find out more information.

Some points from the Internationalization SIG (now inactive)

• https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/display/TC/DR-000009+-+Handle+i18n+where+messages+are+generated
• https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/display/TC/DR-000012+-+Localization+parameter+for+back-end

• New SIG reporting process: The reports page was trialed in October. All reports came in for October. From our experience thus far, the separate column for Jira issues wasn't necessary. There is also a question about the column for the roadmap which may not be needed. We are doing this again for November and an announcement went out. Some responses have been submitted. PC liaisons' job is to follow up with the SIGs to get the reports in each month.
• Regular SIG convener visits? The reports are good. However, the SIG convenors feel less connected with the PC. Having SIG convenors come less frequently makes sense. Do we invite all convenors at once or do we rotate? Should the visits be synchronous? How often do convenors want to join? Is there still a monthly meeting? We were doing monthly and we switched to a written report. There seemed to be a preference to have all convenors together to learn where FOLIO is going and hear updates. We want to focus on how the PC can help or how the topics tie into the roadmap. We should ask SIG convenors if this sounds like a good plan and underline that topics that they bring are those that need attention or that needs to be discussed. In the report template, there is a submit a request for topics that need discussion with the PC. Could we combine the SIG reports with releases? If we want a different format, we need a different question for the convenors. This seems like a show and tell. There is a tension between wanting to get together and being mindful of people's time. We could have prompts for these meetings to ensure topics are not so much show and tell. We could use the written monthly reports to pull out topics that need more discussion.
• SIG setup checklist: The description on SIGs roles and responsibilities was updated. We also talked about what makes SIGs successful and added a definition for product owners and the PC liaison. This provides guidance on setting up a SIG.
• Working Groups vs. SIGs: Working groups can be topical or on a specific development enhancement. They can be convened by a product owner or SME. Typically they are time bound. When should something be a SIG rather than a working group? There are some groups that fall into another category and for those groups should they be SIGs? Examples include Data Import which has been ongoing with development and covers a lot of functionality. Should this be a SIG? Another example is the Entity Management and should this be a SIG? Is there development work that needs to be done and what would be their role? For Entity Management we would need to invite Metadata Management to explore these questions on whether we need a SIG for this? Working groups don't report to the PC but rather to the SIG convenors. The other areas of Entity Management and Bulk Edit/List App are also potentially problematic areas in terms of product definition and what functionality goes where. This reinforces the idea that such groups need to report themselves or the SIG convenor need to be the conduit for the report. The Metadata Management co-convenor remarked that it is difficult to keep track of working group. Some of these working groups are not solely focused on metadata. They go into other areas such as acquisitions or users. This is great.
• Entity Management/BIBFRAME SIG discussion at future PC meeting (Nov 30?): We should invite the EBSCO and anyone who is working on this type of functionality (LC, Stanford, ...) folks to participate in the conversation. We should provide the option of the consequences for decisions. For instance, if it is a SIG, then we need a convenor, etc. If it isn't a SIG, then what happens to this group. We need some paths to make sure this work is successful for everyone.

Entity Management/BIBFRAME SIG on 11/30.

No planning meeting or PC meeting the week of Nov. 20th.

The Hygiene working group will come to report to PC in early December 2023.