Doug Hellmann wrote:
We are consistently presented with the challenges of trying to convince our large community to change direction, collaborate across team boundaries, and work on features that require integration of several services. Other threads with candidate questions include discussions of some significant technical changes people would like to see in OpenStack's implementation. Taking one of those ideas, or one of your own idea, as inspiration, consider how you would make the change happen if it was your responsibility to do so.
Which change management approaches that we have used unsuccessfully in the past did you expect to see work? Why do you think they failed?
Which would you like to try again? How would you do things differently?
What new suggestions do you have for addressing this recurring challenge?
I think it takes three ingredients: some individual(s) leading the change, over-communication, and leadership. As other mentioned we won't go anywhere if there is nobody signed up to drive the work. Cross-project work is going orthogonal to our organizational structure, so it requires extra work (something we should continue to fix, but that's another topic). Without someone committed to drive that against all odds, it just won't happen by fiat. You also need to over-communicate: in an open source community, people are often more annoyed at feeling excluded from the decision, than at the decision itself. Finally you need a leadership group to say that this large goal is desirable for the group -- that is where the TC comes in, and I would say we need to do more of it. -- Thierry Carrez (ttx)