Re: Communications in Projects...

[jg pa dec com (Jim Gettys)]

Exactly correct....

One of the lessons the IETF teaches in their "Welcome to the IETF"
course is that face to face meetings can be very useful, but
decisions should not be ratified without referring the topics to
the mailing lists.

So this is the natural extension of this principle to open source
projects, where there may be a group working intensively on a topic in
a corporate setting where face to face meetings are easy.

If your ideas or sound, referring suggested solutions to mailing lists
won't take long, and will tend to catch the unsound decisions, above
and beyond allaying suspicions.

And if you can't explain your ideas in cogent mail messages, it is
probably not time to be writing code yet :-).
				- Jim

 
> Sender: foundation-list-admin gnome org
> From: Drazen Kacar <dave arsdigita com>
> Date: Wed, 5 Dec 2001 00:27:57 +0100
> To: Jim Gettys <jg pa dec com>
> Cc: gnome-hackers gnome org, foundation-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: Communications in Projects...
> -----
> Jim Gettys wrote:
> > I promised to draft this last summer: I did, but did not see a good
> > opportunity to send it when people were listening
> 
> Wise.
> 
> > 	o if development of key technology is mostly done in a small
> > 	teams, particularly when commercially supported, much paranoia can
> > 	be avoided by good communications of plans, enhancements
> > 	and changes (particularly incompatible ones that affect other
> > 	projects).  Recommendation: do all your development on open
> > 	mailing lists, reserving a infrequently used list for proprietary,
> > 	commercial discussions.  If you already have heavily used internal
> > 	only mailing lists, habits die hard, so turn them off and reestablish
> > 	public lists to force this separation, or your developers won't
> > 	bother to switch.
> 
> I have a small addition here.
> 
> I think it would be good to recognize the fact that in reality all
> development won't happen on public mailing lists. The reason is simple:
> human communication takes time and it's much faster to talk with a small
> group face to face than to discuss things on the mailing lists.
> 
> It saves time, you can draw little circles on the flip charts, you can
> discuss things in a pub or some other place where you feel comfortable,
> you can steal some time from your local expert who works on a completely
> unrelated project etc.
> 
> So if we have small corporate backed teams, the probability of them
> working at the same physical location is rather high. In that case
> they'll tend to discuss things face to face, because it's more efficient.
> This usually happens early, with the design decisions. There's nothing
> wrong with that as the initial design strategy, I think.
> 
> However, from the outside it might appear as the corporate conspiracy
> because the design decisions were apparently made by the small team which
> didn't communicate enough.
> 
> Another possible problem is that the small group, even if enhanced with
> the local experts who work on unrelated projects, might not be
> technically as good as the larger Gnome population.
> 
> Therefore, I would suggest the following: after your co-workers have
> mutilated half of your grand ideas while not attempting to make a
> complete idiot of yourself, write down what remained and send that to the
> mailing list. If the team was good enough and the ideas were technically
> sound, mailing-list discussion won't take too long and it will tend to
> avoid noise. Small bits and pieces that somebody else can fill in could
> save a lot of trouble later. And if somebody manages to find a large
> problem with your design, it's even more important to know about it as
> early as possible.
> 
> --
>  .-.   .-.    Unlike good wine, bullshit doesn't improve with age.
> (_  \ /  _)                                                    -- John McLean
>      |        dave willfork com
>      |
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--
Jim Gettys
Cambridge Research Laboratory
Compaq Computer Corporation
jg pa dec com