A while back, you might recall this thread about improving the way we measure contributions and by this point, every team member has completed their ticket to tag contributions. We now have the stats and they’re not what we expected. We had expected that we’d have blown way past our commitments to contribution.
However, the data paints a different picture. While the team as a whole exceeded the contributed hours commitment last year, on an individual level, most CCs did not hit their target. The reasons were myriad:
Many of our CCs in Falcon, and the majority of the work they’re doing can’t be considered CC work since it’s funded by Axim. That means any CC work from Falcon team members must necessarily be from non-billable efforts, which haven’t been prioritized or have otherwise been constrained.
Some of the team members we have are on assignments that mostly don’t touch Open edX directly at all (say, administrative or ops work)
Some of our most recent projects which could have been considered contributions weren’t set up to be-- such as the XBlocks for WGU, or the Pathways work for HMS.
Number 3 we’re currently in the process of resolving– we intend to upstream these projects. Both projects were stared when the product proposal process was not fully formed, its implications were not understood, and we hadn’t integrated it into our processes, so future incidents may be avoided in our current processes.
However, the other items require more thinking. For some team members and scenarios, it’s hard to imagine a solution other than ‘Direct non-billable contribution budgets’. That is likely the case for Falcon. It might be the case for team members like Gabriel.
But even for Serenity team members, it is likely we could find more ways to align work as conributions.
And, of course we want to maximize our contributions for non-CCs as well where possible– while the CCs have a particular obligation, as much of our work should be contributed as we can make so. That may mean getting more clever with how we handle certain tasks. Can our automations be upstreamed more? Can our mentoring work have more of a public documentation element? What else can we think of?
This thread is to discuss how we might achieve these goals. What things could we place into a contribution-oriented stance which we don’t currently? Are there any solutions for team members like those on Falcon to get CC hours which don’t purely have to come from new non-billable allocations? What could help us capture more effort we’re currently doing as contributions? Is there anything we could do to improve epic management to find more contribution opportunities?
@Fox Can we have some hours for non-cc’s to contribute to the community? Like answering questions on the Open edX forum, volunteering to attend some working group meeting…etc.,
+1 for this one. Sometimes just out of my own curiosity I try replying on the Open edX forum without logging the time.
The option for attending working group meetings could be useful for me as the owner of the upgrade epic. Also, for every upgrade there is a testing working group, which triages and sometimes fixes bugs. We could allocate some of the budget for that as well, or we could ask clients like ASU if they would be willing to fund some of it, since I remember @tikr saying that they had to fix many bugs AFTER the upgrade.
While I generally think we should have those, they work against our sustainability so hours like that would be prioritized for CCs, who are expected to do some forum work, if I recall.
Nevertheless, maybe there is some small amount that could be applied, like an hour or two per sprint for incidentals for non-CCs. There’s certainly enough opportunities to log those. @tikr would have a better idea of the impact.
This is a great idea. Specifically pitching attendance/participation funding to a client who is most critically impacted by a WG is a great way to get contribution/sustainability alignment.
This was great idea. Thanks. When I wrote the initial comment, I had the interest in attending the working group meetings for LTI and the catalog work that’s coming up. As the catalog stuff is specific to a single client, I have actually found a small budget to do the work from the client.
However, LTI remains a personal interest and a small budget like 1-2h/sprint as @Fox mentioned could help. Whe I say personal interest, it’s just stuff I have worked with on multiple occasions for clients. So, keeping up with the developments in that specific area feels useful.
This, I totally get. I think Piotr is assigned the maintainer for the LTI Store plugin and does it in the CC hours and he was attending the LTI meetings way back when it was still happening.
Maybe an seasonal budget that we can reduce to 0 when sustainability becomes an issue?
@Fox@tecoholic@maxim Just a heads-up that I saw your pings and that I’m planning to properly follow up on them once I get Q2 sustainability reviews for Falcon and Bebop done. (I’ve started working on them but they’re not quite ready to post yet.)