Steering Committee Update: Project Coordination
Hi all, The steering committee has discussed the current state of yt, where things are and where they are going, and talked through various strategies for moving forward effectively. Where we're at right now is that many of the maintainers have been timesliced quite a bit; this often results in bursts of activity, which is then not followed up, and a long delay between (for instance) pull requests being issued, being looked at, and issues being responded to. Additionally, the thing that seems *really* lacking, which needs to be addressed, is that the decision making process for the community isn't entirely obvious -- not so much in terms of the rules, but of what is being worked on, who's working on things, and how to engage. I've been somewhat less engaged with the project than I'd like lately, and part of that has been situational (teaching, family, pandemic overhead) and some of it has been that I've been trying to engage at the project level without stepping on any toes *and* to try to contribute code. The upshot was that neither was really happening! So, after discussion with the steering committee, we've decided that the best way forward for now is for me to step into a "project manager" role. What this means is that I'll be taking on a much more active daily role in yt. This will include being the first point of contact for new issues and pull requests, being more assertive about "assigning" issues to individuals (with the knowledge that they may decline!), applying labels, editing issues for clarity and so on, and also stewarding and managing the review process. This also means that I'll be more engaged in public planning of projects and utilizing the project management systems provided by Github. We've long thought these were worth using, but where we ended up was that in the absence of a consensus (or a lazy consensus) we tended not to utilize new things for fear that they would go unused or that others would not approve, or whatever. Additionally, we have in place a structure for governance. But, this structure isn't self-enforcing, and it will be in this role that I will work to ensure we're following the guidelines, processes and structures we have enumerated in our governance documents. Finally, I'll be taking on the problem of holding and running "meetings" and drop-in office hours. I have also been thinking about ways of providing weekly updates on activity in the project for folks who may have unsubscribed from the repo or who find the overall communication volume to be not-quite-right. But, all of this text aside, the proof will be in the actual *doing* of things, and I look forward to *doing* things and being more vocal about it. -Matt
Hi Matt, yt is lucky to have you as a project manager. I know you'll do awesome things. As someone with a few bit-rotting PRs, I'll try to clean them up and do my best to get them back into review shape. May the Force be with you. Mike On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 2:07 PM Matthew Turk <matthewturk@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi all,
The steering committee has discussed the current state of yt, where things are and where they are going, and talked through various strategies for moving forward effectively.
Where we're at right now is that many of the maintainers have been timesliced quite a bit; this often results in bursts of activity, which is then not followed up, and a long delay between (for instance) pull requests being issued, being looked at, and issues being responded to. Additionally, the thing that seems *really* lacking, which needs to be addressed, is that the decision making process for the community isn't entirely obvious -- not so much in terms of the rules, but of what is being worked on, who's working on things, and how to engage.
I've been somewhat less engaged with the project than I'd like lately, and part of that has been situational (teaching, family, pandemic overhead) and some of it has been that I've been trying to engage at the project level without stepping on any toes *and* to try to contribute code. The upshot was that neither was really happening!
So, after discussion with the steering committee, we've decided that the best way forward for now is for me to step into a "project manager" role. What this means is that I'll be taking on a much more active daily role in yt. This will include being the first point of contact for new issues and pull requests, being more assertive about "assigning" issues to individuals (with the knowledge that they may decline!), applying labels, editing issues for clarity and so on, and also stewarding and managing the review process.
This also means that I'll be more engaged in public planning of projects and utilizing the project management systems provided by Github. We've long thought these were worth using, but where we ended up was that in the absence of a consensus (or a lazy consensus) we tended not to utilize new things for fear that they would go unused or that others would not approve, or whatever. Additionally, we have in place a structure for governance. But, this structure isn't self-enforcing, and it will be in this role that I will work to ensure we're following the guidelines, processes and structures we have enumerated in our governance documents.
Finally, I'll be taking on the problem of holding and running "meetings" and drop-in office hours. I have also been thinking about ways of providing weekly updates on activity in the project for folks who may have unsubscribed from the repo or who find the overall communication volume to be not-quite-right.
But, all of this text aside, the proof will be in the actual *doing* of things, and I look forward to *doing* things and being more vocal about it.
-Matt _______________________________________________ yt-dev mailing list -- yt-dev@python.org To unsubscribe send an email to yt-dev-leave@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman3/lists/yt-dev.python.org/ Member address: michael.zingale@stonybrook.edu
-- Michael Zingale Professor of Physics and Astronomy Dept. of Physics & Astronomy • Stony Brook University • Stony Brook, NY 11794-3800 *phone*: 631-632-8225 *e-mail*: michael.zingale@stonybrook.edu *web*: https://zingale.github.io github: https://github.com/zingale <http://github.com/zingale>
participants (2)
-
Matthew Turk -
Michael Zingale