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On 9/6/19 3:48 AM, Thierry Carrez wrote:
> Nate Johnston wrote:
>> On Thu, Sep 05, 2019 at 11:59:22AM +0200, Thierry Carrez wrote:
>>> - allow "PTL" role to be multi-headed, so that it is less of a 
>>> superhuman
>>> and spreading the load becomes more natural. We would not elect/choose a
>>> single person, but a ticket with one or more names on it. From a 
>>> governance
>>> perspective, we still need a clear contact point and a "bucket stops 
>>> here"
>>> voice. But in practice we could (1) contact all heads when we contact 
>>> "the
>>> PTL", and (2) consider that as long as there is no dissent between the
>>> heads, it is "the PTL voice". To actually make it work in practice I'd
>>> advise to keep the number of heads low (think 1-3).
>>
>> I think there was already an effort to allow the PTL to shed some of 
>> their
>> duties, in the form of the Cross Project Liaisons [1] project.  I 
>> thought that
>> was a great way for more junior members of the community to get 
>> involved with
>> stewardship and be recognized for that contribution, and perhaps be 
>> mentored up
>> as they take a bit of load off the PTL.  I think if we expand the 
>> roles to
>> include more of the functions that PTLs feel the need to do 
>> themselves, then by
>> doing so we (of necessity) document those parts of the job so that 
>> others can
>> handle them.  And perhaps projects can cooperate and pool resources - for
>> example, the same person who is a liaison for Neutron to Oslo could 
>> probably be
>> on the look out for issues of interest to Octavia as well, and so on.
> 
> Cross-project liaisons are a form of delegation. So yes, PTLs already 
> can (and probably should) delegate most of their duties. And in a lot of 
> teams it already works like that. But we have noticed that it can be 
> harder to delegate tasks than share tasks. Basically, once someone is 
> the PTL, it is tempting to just have them do all the PTL stuff (since 
> they will do it by default if nobody steps up).
> 
> That makes the job a bit intimidating, and it is sometimes hard to find 
> candidates to fill it. If it's clear from day 0 that two or three people 
> will share the tasks and be collectively responsible for those tasks to 
> be covered, it might be less intimidating (easier to find 2 x 50% than 1 
> x 100% ?).
> 

Just to play a bit of devil's advocate here, in many cases if a problem 
is everyone's problem then it becomes no one's problem because everyone 
assumes someone else will deal with it. This is why it usually works 
better to ask a specific person to volunteer for something than to put 
out a broad call for *someone* to volunteer. That said, maybe this ties 
into what Doug wrote earlier that if something doesn't get done maybe it 
wasn't that important in the first place. I'm not entirely sure I agree 
with that, but if it's going to be our philosophy going forward then 
this might be a non-issue.

I'll also say that for me specifically, having the PTL title gives me a 
lever to use downstream. People don't generally question you spending 
time on a project you're leading. The same isn't necessarily true of 
being a core to whom PTL duties were delegated.

Again, I'm not necessarily opposed to this, I just want to point out 
some potential drawbacks from my perspective.