Open Stack

Hi all,

It was great to meet with some of you in one of the summit sessions.

I am keen to get developers thinking more about users when writing up
nova-specs.

Right now we indirectly define two users in the template:
"end user" and "deployer"
http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/nova-specs/tree/specs/template.rst#n49

Also see:
http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/nova-specs/tree/specs/template.rst#n175
http://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/nova-specs/tree/specs/template.rst#n209

This is obviously massively coarse, but its better than what we had
before (i.e. nothing). Before we had issues with people thinking about
a private cloud as used by the people who deployed that cloud. While
we shouldn't make it hard for them, clearly the split deployer / end
user case is also important. A list of deployment scenarios, with a
collection of personas related to each, might be where I am currently
thinking we could go.

API design is probably where I am most concerned. We are working hard
on the next generation of our API during Juno, and it would be good to
do that with a clearer view of our users. Technically the compute
programme still owns python-novaclient as well, but for now I am more
concerned about getting an API that maps well to users' metal models
of the system, and as we add new features, that we don't break that.

I am currently battling (in my head) with the idea of nova really just
being a component, rather than the complete system. For example GUI vs
CLI vs API is less of a big deal to us, as in some sense, its someone
else's issue. Having said that, creating an API that means the GUI is
unable to deliver a good experience is clearly a bad thing. In a way,
horizon could be one of our "end users", but thats a bit odd really.


Anyway, lets take baby steps:

I would love to help review the current personas / persona generation
process, and see how we can improve the nova-spec template to
reference that effort. I got some buy in for trying this out during
the Nova un-session design summit session.

I am happy to become a sort of Nova UX champion, as part of the
Blueprint Czar role. No real idea what that means yet, but thats the
fun part, right?


Many thanks,
John


IRC: johnthetubaguy
Nova Blueprint Czar
Software Developer IV at Rackspace
Working from home, in Cambridge, UK