Open Stack

On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 4:15 PM, Lauren Sell <lauren at openstack.org> wrote:

> Hi Kenny,
>
> Thanks very much for starting the discussion on the list. I am not
> involved with the team day to day, but from my perspective, I would caution
> against changing the name to “User Stories" because I think it undersells
> the mission.


I disagree. Our mission is clearly focused on "creating user stories that
reflect the voice of users/operators."[1] It's right there in the first
sentence. :)


> That said, I would definitely support evolving from a “Working Group” to a
> “Team” (although I think you’re already using that term in some cases).
>
> I know the Board and the User Committee view the Product (Team) as a very
> strategic initiative, and I’m afraid the name change would imply a very
> tactical scope.


I'm actually all for tactical scope, even in strategic initiatives. We can
fulfill a strategic role (providing a place to develop unified user stories
for the broader User Community to communicate to the broader Technical
Community) by doing a very tactical task (drafting, reviewing and
publishing user stories).

My understanding is that in an ideal world, the Product Team is a
> horizontal body that helps aggregate, prioritize and find commonality
> across feature requests from the different vertical teams / constituencies
> (such as Scientific, Large Deployments, Enterprise, Telco, etc.), in order
> to bubble up and evangelize the top priorities across the community in a
> consumable way.


Isn't our primary consumable deliverable, and method for finding that
commonality in the proposing and joint review of User Stories?


> The Product Team would also ideally follow some of the top priorities
> through the design and development process, and of course help document the
> roadmap, as you are currently doing quite well.
>

I'd argue we could have a separate Work Group (now that I've clarified that
WGs can be long-term) that puts together the roadmap.


>
> There are of course challenges to achieving the full vision, including
> resources and culture / process changes, but as a heads up the Foundation
> staff intends to provide better support for the Product Team in 2017 (both
> upstream and downstream to help close the feedback loop) :)
>
> Just my thoughts as you are considering the change...
>

+1 appreciate it.

Part of my general concern that I didn't communicate, but should have, is
that by remaining strategic without a tactical purpose we are not
adequately broadcasting to potential and current members that being a
member of this group/team involves the not-often-fun work of drafting,
reviewing and updating user stories. If we had 100 members, but only five
of them were committed to that not-often-fun work, I'd consider this group
a strategic failure.

>
> Best,
> Lauren
>

[1] https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/ProductTeam#Mission

>
>
>
> > On Dec 6, 2016, at 1:57 PM, Kenny Johnston <kenny at kencjohnston.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >   - There has been some recent discussion around what it means to be a
> >   Working Group vs Team, with one of the guiding principles highlighted
> being
> >   that Working Groups should be short-lived in nature, whereas Teams can
> >   exist in perpetuity
> >   - Given our role as the reviewers of the
> >   openstack/openstack-user-stories repository[1], I believe we should
> exist
> >   in perpetuity
> >   - The term "Product" has implied a number of things that I think we no
> >   longer intend:
> >      - That our membership is made exclusively Product managers
> >      - That it is our role to treat OpenStack like a "product"
> >      - That we serve only those organizations who build products around
> >      OpenStack
> >
> > For these reasons I'd like to propose that we change our name to the User
> > Story team. I thought I would start the discussion here and ask that we
> add
> > it as an agenda item for next week's meeting[2].
> >
> > Thoughts? High-fives? Boos?
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > --
> > Kenny Johnston | irc:kencjohnston | @kencjohnston
> > [1] https://github.com/openstack/openstack-user-stories
> > [2] https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/Meetings/product-team
> > _______________________________________________
> > Product-wg mailing list
> > Product-wg at lists.openstack.org
> > http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/product-wg
>
>


-- 
Kenny Johnston | irc:kencjohnston | @kencjohnston