Open Stack

Regarding what we could be working on as the Product group:  I thought I’d send email and see if it sparked input rather than make Wiki changes at this point.

I don’t think we need to be focused on the topics that are more “operations” focused – such as tracking quality or even prioritizing specific bugs.  I do think, however, there are needs for some sort of Product Management-type of deliverables where we could add value:
*  User Personas.  Define the different users and their high level needs and areas of focus.  This would be an aggregation of actual users and characteristics they have.  I think it could result in Personas such as IT Manager, Cloud Admin, Infrastructure Admin, Application Developer, etc.  For each there would be information about what their jobs are, what they need out of a cloud technology, how they prefer to interact with the environment, etc.
*  Drive collection and consolidation of information about where OpenStack might need to go – on a multi-release / multi-year type of level.  This could result in things like Multi-Cloud Support, Significantly Easier Deployment, Higher Level Application Services, Billing Integration, Directory Integration, Security/Hardening, etc.
*  Work with project teams during release planning on blueprint definition and prioritization.
*  Provide a cross-project perspective that might not come through at the individual project level.  The API consistency issue is a very good example of this kind of issue.  The individual projects might not see this as having as high a priority as a user does who is consuming multiple projects and has to deal with it on a day-to-day basis.

IMHO all of the above should be offered in the spirit of providing input to the teams, NOT telling them what is to be done.  I also think once a release is off-and-running (from a development perspective) that this group’s involvement would be minimal – possibly nothing at all.  It seems to me the processes around actually developing what is decided to be developed are working pretty well.  Things seem to be getting done as planned.  I don’t see a need for the projects to have additional involvement during the development and release process.

The bottom line:  I think there is an opportunity to add greater context as to how the software is being used, where it could/should be going, and working with the project teams as releases are planned to influence that direction.

Jim