Open Stack

In Denver we had a Forum session on how to facilitate driving common 
goals, here is a quick summary.

We started by defining the different types of common goals in OpenStack. 
There are OpenStack-wide consistency goals (having common support for a 
feature across all OpenStack components, raising the minimal 
QA/doc/operations bar, improving overall "openstack" experience). And 
there are cross-project changes that only affect some projects: project 
refactoring (like extracting placement), multi-project features (like 
volume multi-attach) or architectural changes (like having common 
node-centric agents).

The discussion then shifted to discussing why cross-project is hard. 
While I thought the projectteam-centric structure made the cross-project 
work less rewarding, discussion revealed that most of the difficulty 
comes from lack of initial directions / contacts, and lack of 
synchronous discussions to get buy-in from the various stakeholders.

We then moved to discuss implementation models. The release goals 
(small, limited to one development cycle and affecting all teams) are 
great to drive consistency goals. SIGs are great to drive long-term 
cross-project changes, care for special interests, or global concerns 
that affect both software production and software consumption. That 
leaves a gap for short or mid-term cross-project changes.

Popup teams are designed to fill that gap. Those would be used to drive 
a clear, limited cross-project objective. They are temporary like 
release goals, but can extend beyond a release cycle. They just need a 
clear disband criteria. During the rest of the session we discussed how 
to best implement them to facilitate that work. We ran out of time 
before solving the key question of whether the TC should approve the 
idea, the technical implementation, or the team membership itself.

The implementation discussion continued during the TC meeting at the PTG 
on Saturday. The general consensus in the room was that the TC should 
look at the scope/goal of the proposed popup team (before any spec), and 
offer to "support" it if it looks like a viable goal and a desirable 
objective for OpenStack. Supported popup teams would get listed on the 
governance website, and get a experienced community member sponsor to 
serve as a liaison with the TC and mentor the popup team through initial 
steps (like getting the right connections in the various affected 
teams). Further discussion on implementation specs may reveal that the 
goal is impossible or not desirable, in which case the popup team can be 
disbanded.

Action items to move this idea forward include documenting the popup 
team concept / approval criteria and create a home for them on the 
governance website (ttx), documenting best practices on how to get 
cross-project work done (ildiko), and documenting the difference between 
project teams, SIGs and popup teams (ricolin, ttx, persia).

-- 
Thierry Carrez (ttx)