[openstack-dev] [all] [ptl] Troubleshooting cross-project communications

Shamail itzshamail at gmail.com
Fri Sep 18 18:28:33 UTC 2015



> On Sep 17, 2015, at 7:50 PM, Mike Perez <thingee at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> On 16:16 Sep 16, Thierry Carrez wrote:
>> Anne Gentle wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> What are some of the problems with each layer? 
>>> 
>>> 1. weekly meeting: time zones, global reach, size of cross-project
>>> concerns due to multiple projects being affected, another meeting for
>>> PTLs to attend and pay attention to
>> 
>> A lot of PTLs (or liaisons/lieutenants) skip the meeting, or will only
>> attend when they have something to ask. Their time is precious and most
>> of the time the meeting is not relevant for them, so why bother ? You
>> have a few usual suspects attending all of them, but those people are
>> cross-project-aware already so those are not the people that would
>> benefit the most from the meeting.
>> 
>> This partial attendance makes the meeting completely useless as a way to
>> disseminate information. It makes the meeting mostly useless as a way to
>> get general approval on cross-project specs.
>> 
>> The meeting still is very useful IMHO to have more direct discussions on
>> hot topics. So a ML discussion is flagged for direct discussion on IRC
>> and we have a time slot already booked for that.
> 
> Content for the cross project meeting are usually:
> 
> * Not ready for decisions.
> * Lack solutions.
> 
> A proposal in steps of how cross project ideas start, to something ready for
> the cross project IRC meeting, then the TC:
> 
> 1) An idea starts from either or both:
>   a) Mailing list discussion.
>   b) A patch to a single project (until it's flagged that this patch could be
>      benefical to other projects)
> 2) OpenStack Spec is proposed - discussions happen in gerrit from here on out.
>   Not on the mailing list. Keep encouraging discussions back to gerrit to keep
>   everything in one place in order to avoid confusion with having to fish
>   for some random discussion elsewhere.
> 3) Once enough consensus happens an agenda item is posted cross project IRC
>   meeting.
> 4) Final discussions happen in the meeting. If consensus is still met by
>   interested parties who attend, it moves to TC.  If there is a lack of
>   consensus it goes back to gerrit and repeat.
> 
This approach makes sense.  It will also allow items that don't reach consensus to possibly be captured (once) and rise to the top again when/if it becomes a pressing need.  There has to be some process to abandon changes eventually too (if the scope changes or the initial ask if no longer relevant).  

> With this process, we should have less meetings. Less meetings is:
> 
> * Awesome
> * Makes this meeting more meaningful when it happens because decisions are
>  potentially going to be agreed and passed to the TC!
> 
> If a cross project spec is not getting attention, don't post it to the list for
> attention. We get enough email and it'll probably be lost. Instead, let the
> product working group recognize this and reach out to the projects that this
> spec would benefit, to bring meaningful attention to the spec.
+1 
If something needs attention, we would be glad to help evaluate/socialize.
> 
> For vertical alignment, interaction like IRC is not necessary. A very brief,
> bullet point of collected information from projects that have anything
> interesting is given in a weekly digest email to the list If anyone has
> questions or wants more information, they can use their own time to ask that
> project team.
> 
> Potentially, if we kept everything to the spec on gerrit, and had the product
> working group bringing needed attention to specs, we could eliminate the cross
> project meeting.
> 
Does it make sense to propose a continuation of this discussion at the summit (using the tool that Thierry just linked in another message) or a cross-project meeting before the summit?  A few of us from the Product WG will be glad to participate.

> -- 
> Mike Perez
> 
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