Open Stack

Excerpts from Flavio Percoco's message of 2017-05-07 09:49:41 -0400:
> On 05/05/17 08:45 -0400, Sean Dague wrote:
> >On 05/04/2017 01:10 PM, Flavio Percoco wrote:
> ><snip>
> >> Some of the current TC activities depend on the meeting to some extent:
> >>
> >> * We use the meeting to give the final ack on some the formal-vote reviews.
> >> * Some folks (tc members and not) use the meeting agenda to know what they
> >>  should be reviewing.
> >> * Some folks (tc members and not) use the meeting as a way to review or
> >>  paticipate in active discussions.
> >> * Some folks use the meeting logs to catch up on what's going on in the TC
> >>
> >> In the resolution that has been proposed[1], we've listed possible
> >> solutions for
> >> some of this issues and others:
> >>
> >> * Having office hours
> >> * Sending weekly updates (pulse) on the current reviews and TC discussions
> >>
> >> Regardless we do this change on one-shot or multiple steps (or don't do
> >> it at
> >> all), I believe it requires changing the way TC activities are done:
> >>
> >> * It requires folks (especially TC members) to be more active on reviewing
> >>  governance patches
> >> * It requires folks to engage more on the mailing list and start more
> >>  discussions there.
> >>
> >> Sending this out to kick off a broader discussion on these topics.
> >> Thoughts?
> >> Opinions? Objections?
> >
> >To baseline: I am all in favor of an eventual world to get rid of the TC
> >IRC meeting (and honestly IRC meetings in general), for all the reasons
> >listed above.
> >
> >I shut down my IRC bouncer over a year ago specifically because I think
> >that the assumption of being on IRC all the time is an anti pattern that
> >we should be avoiding in our community.
> >
> >But, that being said, we have a working system right now, one where I
> >honestly can't remember the last time we had an IRC meeting get to every
> >topic we wanted to cover and not run into the time limit. That is data
> >that these needs are not being addressed in other places (yet).
> >
> >So the concrete steps I would go with is:
> >
> >1) We need to stop requiring IRC meetings as part of meeting the Open
> >definition.
> >
> >That has propagated this issue a lot -
> >https://review.openstack.org/#/c/462077
> >
> >2) We really need to stop putting items like the project adds.
> >
> >That's often forcing someone up in the middle of the night for 15
> >minutes for no particularly good reason.
> 
> We've been doing this because it is a requirement in our process but yeah, we
> can change this.
> 
> >3) Don't do interactive reviews in gerrit.
> >
> >Again, kind of a waste of time that is better in async. It's mostly
> >triggered by the fact that gerrit doesn't make a good discussion medium
> >in looking at broad strokes. It's really good about precision feedback,
> >but broad strokes, it's tough.
> >
> >One counter suggestion here is to have every governance patch that's not
> >trivial require that an email come to the list tagged [tc] [governance]
> >for people to comment more free form here.
> 
> I've mentioned this a gazillion of times and I believe it just keeps going
> unheard. I think this should be the *default* and I don't think requiring a
> thread to be started is enough. I think we can be more proactive and start
> threads ourselves when one is needed. The reason is that in "heated" patches
> there can be different topics and we might need multiple-threads for some
> patches. There's a lot that will have to be done to keep these emails on track.
> 
> >4) See what the impact of the summary that Chris is sending out does to
> >make people feel like they understand what is going on in the meeting.
> >Because I also think that we make assumptions that the log of the
> >meeting describes what really happened. And I think that's often an
> >incorrect assumption. The same words used by Monty, Thierry, Jeremy mean
> >different things. Which you only know by knowing them all as people.
> >Having human interpretation of the meeting is good an puts together a
> >more ingestible narrative for people.
> 
> I disagree! I don't think we make those assumptions, which is why Anne and
> myself worked on those blog posts summarizing what had been going on in the TC.
> Those posts stopped but I think we should start working on them already. I've
> pinged cdent and I think he's up to work with me on this. cdent yay/nay ?
> 
> >
> >Then evaluate.... because we will know that we need the meeting less (or
> >less often) when we're regularly ending in 45 minutes, or 30 minutes,
> >instead of slamming up against the wall with people feeling they had
> >more to say.
> 
> TBH, I'm a bit frustrated. what you've written here looks a lot to what's in the
> resolution and what I've been saying except that the suggestion is to not shut
> meetings down right away but evaluate what happens and then shut them down, or
> not, which is fine.
> 
> My problem with this is that we *need* everyone in the TC to *actually* change
> the way they work on their TC tasks. We need to be more proactive in reviews
> that *are not* in the meeting agenda, we need to engage more frequently in
> discussions. Unfortunately, sometimes humans need hard changes to actually
> modify the way they do stuff.

I know everyone on the TC balances their participation with other
work, either in the community or within their company.  Having the
weekly cadence makes it easier for me to set aside a block of time
to think about TC-related issues, so that I'm not just responding
with my first gut response on every review or thread.  I've found
that helps my productivity, and I hope means that my contributions
are more useful, but it also means my response is rarely first. I
hope that whatever new processes we put in place do not change our
work pace in a way that removes that opportunity to think before
speaking.

> Anyway, let's start by removing the requirement on having meetings, the
> requirement for rubber stamping reviews and have Thierry change the content in
> the TC meetings agenda. I'd go as far as saying that we should *NOT* discuss
> things in the meeting if there's no email thread for it already.

I like that.  Let's change our processes until the meetings become
redundant or pointless, and then it will become clear that it's safe to
stop having them.

Doug



> 
> Flavio
>