[openstack-dev] [all] How can we get more feedback from users?

Mike Spreitzer mspreitz at us.ibm.com
Fri Oct 24 05:05:07 UTC 2014


Angus Salkeld <asalkeld at mirantis.com> wrote on 10/24/2014 12:32:04 AM:

> I have felt some grumblings about usability issues with Heat 
> templates/client/etc..
> and wanted a way that users could come and give us feedback easily 
> (low barrier). I started an etherpad (https://
> etherpad.openstack.org/p/heat-useablity-improvements) - the first 
> win is it is spelt wrong :-O

> We now have some great feedback there in a very short time, most of 
> this we should be able to solve.

> This lead me to think, "should OpenStack have a more general 
> mechanism for users to provide feedback". The idea is this is not 
> for bugs or support, but for users to express pain points, requests 
> for features and docs/howtos.

> It's not easy to improve your software unless you are listening to your 
users.

> Ideas?

I very much agree with this.

I am actually surprised that OpenStack does not have something fairly 
formal and organized about this.  I suppose it is part of the TC's job, 
but I think we need more than they can do.  I would suggest some sort of 
user's council that gets involved in blueprint and change reviews. Perhaps 
after first working toward some degree of consensus and some degree of 
shaping what the developers work on in each release (this latter is part 
of the overall program of improving review queue speed, by better focusing 
developers and reviewers on some shared agenda).

Other products have discussion fora, some explicitly dedicated to 
feedback.  You could approximate this with etherpads, or use some real 
discussion forum platform.

Regards,
Mike
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