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On 08/08/2014 02:37 AM, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> I agree with Eoghan here. The main goal of an agile/lean system is to
> maximize a development team productivity. The main goal of Open source
> project management is not to maximize productivity. It’s to maximize
> contributions. I wrote about that a few years ago here (shameless plug):

I'm not sold on this difference in goals. Ultimately it's all about
doing things better but let's not digress into a philosophical argument
to dissect the meaning of the keywords agile/productivity/maximization
etc and focus on identifying clearly the problem

> The problem today is that our backlog/inventory/waste has reached levels

Agreed, the problem is in the backlog of blueprints/specs to be
processed, in the code reviews that go with them, in the amount of
technical debt accumulated.

> where it starts hurting 

Agreed too, it hurts, there is pain. Can we quantify this pain? I know
the time to merge patches has been constantly increasing across all
projects. That's one pain but one data point not enough IMO to describe
the system. What else can we measure, quantify to understand?

> our goal of maximizing contributions,

Here I lost you and I think we should spell out our goals into
measurable objectives.

> by creating frustration on the developers side. So we need to explore ways
> to reduce it back to acceptable (or predictable) levels, taking into
> account our limited control over our workforce.

Limited,sure, but not inexistent: I think we have ways to put
sticks/carrots in place so that our 'workforce' can improve our (to be
defined) goals.

> Personally I think we just need to get better at communicating the
> downstream expectations, so that if we create waste, it's clearly
> upstream fault rather than downstream. Currently it's the lack of
> communication that makes developers produce more / something else than
> what core reviewers want to see. Any tool that lets us communicate
> expectations better is welcome, and I think the runway approach is one
> such tool, simple enough to understand.

I've asked Dan and John for help in formalizing a proposal. I'll keep
you posted.

/stef

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