[PLUG-Devel] "managing" open source projects

[Craig White]

On Thu, 2006-09-07 at 01:58 -0700, der.hans wrote:
> Am 05. Sep, 2006 schwätzte Josh Coffman so:
> 
> >  quick background:
> >  I'm a windows developer who loves linux and open
> > source products. I also happen to be part of team
> > growing towards Agile development methodologies. Not
> > all Agile/XP  would apply well to us partly because we
> > are a virtual office company. I was thinking about
> > this when it occured to me that the way OSS projects
> > are handled might
> >
> >  the question:
> >  Anyone know how large OSS project work on a
> > day-2-day and dev cylcle basis? In particular, the
> > kernel team.. don't they mostly use email and IM to
> > coordinate? And how do they appoint tasks?
> 
> Josh,
> 
> I haven't really worked on large OSS projects. I have participated some
> via mailing lists, etc.
> 
> For $dayjob I work in a semi-virtual environment. Some of the team
> lives elsewhere, heck even those of us in town work in two different
> offices. Some of us don't do the morning thing very well. As a result we
> end up with geographical and daytime seperation.
> 
> We end up doing a lot of email, IRC, and IM for communication. We do some
> telephone conferencing and occasional web conferencing.
> 
> We also do a lot of documentation on the group wiki.
> 
> For task assignment and follow up it goes via the same communication
> mechanisms as the other communication.
> 
> At one point we were maintaining a project spreadsheet, a project
> presentation, a web-based timesheet and a wiki.
> 
> At another point we reported to two managers and 4 project managers. It
> was joyous.
> 
> Our team is pretty self-sufficient, so task assignment and follow up has
> been pretty easy. We even have people who update documentation without
> having to wring it out of them.
> 
> The keys, in likely order of importance, have been 1) self-sufficient
> workers; 2) email/IRC/IM; 3) wiki and good docs; 4) telephone conferences;
> 5) web conferences.
> 
> 2, 4, and 5 probably depends on the mix of people as to what's important.
> 
> For instance, my customers are very heavy with 4 and 5 and mostly just use
> 2 to setup 4 and 5 or arrange for where to eat lunch.
> 
> Important tools:
> 
> . some sort of documentation engine
>  	- wiki works well for small teams, if people will use it
>  	- add RSS feeds for updates to make it easier to get notified
> about changes
> . request tracking mechanism
>  	- can also be used for bugs
>  	- needs to be easy to use
>  	- email interface for most tasks adds to ease of use
>  	- web interface improves big picture view and some people hate
> email
> . group building
>  	- give people a chance to give non-work updates at the beginning
> of meetings
>  		+ at a regular Monday afternoon meeting for another group
> the PM asks what everyone did for the weekend. 15 people and we're usually
> done in less than 5 min. Gives time for latecomers to show up and gives a
> chance for personalities to come out as people make comments/jokes
>  	- have a food meeting: have food brought in for groups in the same
> office and sent to homes of those working out of their house
>  	- have a state of the whatever meeting once in a while to let
> non-associated subgroups see what everybody's doing
----
You get just about all of that from svn & trac

http://trac.edgewall.org/

Craig