2024-06-13 Product Council Agenda and Meeting Notes

5 min

Announcements

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• SIG updates on 20th June

• PC meeting 27th June cancelled

• For those rotating off PC, please keep the July 11, 2024 meeting on your calendars for the hand off.

45 min

PC action items from Things that could be better about FOLIO survey

Governance (24) -- Alexis
Collaboration & Onboarding (13) -- Martina S.
Development Resourcing (20)
Market Fit & Maturity (8) -- Kristin
Balancing Innovation v. Current Features (13) --Kristin
Releases & Roadmaps (11) – Jesse
Architecture (17) - Brooks
Complexity (14) -- Paul
Ilities (11) – Gang
Process & Procedure (12) -- Owen
Documentation (18) -- Martina T.
User Experience (27) -- Martina S.
Data Import (14) -- Jennifer
Reporting (12) -- Jennifer
Functionality (33) -- Charlotte

For Functionality, Data Import, and Reporting, Charlotte and Jennifer paired up and created these slides.

Owen: There seems to be a lack of awareness of how things are done and get funded. How can people get what they need? What is the process? Can people campaign with hosting providers? How do we get action? We need documentation from the PC to outline what works to get projects going and done. For example, a volunteer writing up requirements. However, we also need a development team to work on those requirements. We need to get investment to make that happen. Charlotte agrees with Owen’s comments. Can the PC look at crowdfunded sources? We can’t leave things just at the paperwork level where requirements just sit for years because this work will be outdated as FOLIO moves on. We do refinements and have POs take that up to get it done.

Todd: What is so qualitatively different from how single record import and Courses was implemented? It seems like we were able to get people to fund that. What’s different now? The community is bigger. The big difference is that the FOLIO team picked up the single record import and there’s a continued maintenance for single record import whereas Courses no one picked it up. What are the features/areas that are most important for market fit? Does that affect how we secure development effort for these features?

For Market Fit and Stability: Kristin looked at Market Fit and Stability and the comments relate to what Jennifer and Charlotte presented. We need to check in with the SIGs about Market Fit. Most FOLIO libraries find single record import a beneficial tool. With Courses, there are some libraries that need it but many others don’t need it. Courses might be just falling in the margin area. For example, the serials management app might fall into this margin. Have we reached a point with Data Import where we want existing features to work? How do we balance innovation with current functionality? Many comments were concerned about FOLIO being too retro or too complex and smaller print workflows. Should we divert resources to Courses? When do we shift lanes?

Jenn Colt: At what level do we do the health check? We don’t have the resources to divert. Do we have to approach the bigger question of how things are funded? Would we ever consider providing more support for resources? It seems more additive than moving around.

Owen (Process and Procedures): It’s not clear what we can do in terms of a body that diverts resources. PC has influence but not divert resources. ARLEF is in a better position to do this rather than PC because it is comprised of customers. What is getting done? In the comments that Owen looked at, it is difficult to know what works and the processes are that are available. Can we establish crowd funding as a mechanism for institutions to get work done? As a governance body, we need to make sure those processes and procedures are clear for the community. There’s a lot of frustration with the lack of information.

Charlotte: New customers drive a large part of the development. From the topics raised, libraries who have implemented feel that there is functionality is missing because the process hasn’t been completed. Can PC facilitate the crowd funding?

Todd: The Community Council has spent time on how to secure funding on how to do things. Do they have mechanisms to handle money? The organizational part should fall within CC.

Owen: As far as I can see, development work happens when:

• A service provider sees it as a key feature and invests dev effort in it (Eureka, Data import)

• One or more institution see it as a key feature and commissions dev effort to get it done (Serials)

• An institution decides to do specific work themselves (Workflows)

The themes are to create more visible documentation on how work/development gets down, and guidelines for crowd source funding. SIG convenors will be here next week. How could the SIGs convenors facilitate this conversation? The current trajectory is not sustainable from the SME effort side of things. How do we keep this going?

Alexis looked at governance. Do SIGs need a different direction?

Next steps:

• Take to SIGs about these conversations.

• For Functionality, Charlotte will create another column for what SIG should address it.

5 min

Future topics

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SIG updates next week