Archive for the ‘Canonical’ Category
Posted on September 1, 2010 - by jono
Rest Well, My Friend
It was with great sadness that I read earlier that my friend and colleague Ian Clatworthy passed away after his fight with cancer. Although I never knew Ian that well, whenever I did work and spend time with him I always found him to be a fun, light-hearted, and always pleasant person to be around.
Words escape me.
You will be missed, my friend. Rest, well.
Posted on August 20, 2010 - by jono
On Visibility And Change
OK, before I begin, this is going to be a terribly presented ramble. I have written it, proof read it, and proof read it again, and it still sounds like a child with a crayon wrote it. This is because my thoughts are unstructured, but I am keen to share them anyway. Patience is appreciated, friends…
Recently I have been thinking about how my work as Ubuntu Community Manager balances out between the work I perform with volunteers in the community, and employees of Canonical who contribute to the community as well as other business units. The reason for these thoughts is that recently I have been feeling that I could do a better job of spending more time with our volunteers and supporting them with their goals. We have a tremendous, inspiring, hard-working and excitable community…and I have just been feeling like I could improve in how much “face time” I have with our active contributors.
So, I have been evaluating methods in which I can do this. As I thought more about it, I came to the realization that part of the limitations on my time these days is because my responsibilities today compared to my responsibilities when I started this role are two quite different places.
Just under four years ago when I joined Canonical as the Ubuntu Community Manager, life was a lot easier. Back then it was just me, I had no team, the company was a lot smaller, and not only were there no direct reports for me to manage, but there were far fewer other departments, units, teams, and other entities that needed input from me. When I started I had three primary high-level responsibilities:
- Provide leadership and guidance in a core set of community projects.
- Help to resolve and unblock issues and problems across the community.
- Provide inspiration and encouragement for the community to feel passionate about the problems we are trying to solve and the opportunities that we are seeking together.
The majority of time working on these goals was working with our volunteers. I certainly did have tasks and objectives within the company, but by and large the majority of my focus was with our volunteers. One might suggest I was “foot loose and fancy free”, if you can say that about someone who plays in a thrash metal band…
Today things are quite different. I now have four employees who report to me, I am now a platform manager (this means I am one of the managers on the Ubuntu team), and the company has grown significantly in size, which means far more departments, units, teams, projects, and other entities who have subsequently requested input and assistance from me. Of course, I myself have experienced this change and growth first-hand, and so have my colleagues, but I have also realized I have not done a very good job talking about this change with our community.
Today my role has evolved to include an additional three high-level sets of requirements:
- Provide leadership and guidance in a core set of community projects.
- Help to resolve and unblock issues and problems across the community.
- Provide inspiration and encouragement for the community to feel passionate about the problems we are trying to solve and the opportunities that we are seeking together.
- Manage a team to help them be successful in their own work and bring value to the community.
- Provide guidance to other teams and units inside Canonical.
- Provide a public face and representation for Ubuntu (and increasingly, Canonical).
The challenge that I have faced is that these latter three additions require a significant amount of work. As one such example, my team is very distributed — I am based in California, Jorge is in Detroit, Daniel is in Berlin, David is in València, and Ahmed is in Cairo. With us being so distributed, I consider 1-on-1 time with the guys as very important in helping them to be successful in their roles and feel a strong sense of team spirit and morale. As such, it is important to me that I have an hour each week with them on a voice call for 1-on-1 time. When we take those four hour-long calls and also add our team call, that already sucks up half a work day just for the team. When we then factor in all the other interaction between the team and the guidance the team rightly expects from me, “managing the team” takes up a significant amount of time. Of course, it is valuable time, and time well spent and important for our team, but it is also time in which I am primarily working with my colleagues as opposed to volunteers.
Another element has been the sheer growth of Canonical. We are much bigger than we were, and I see a core responsibility of my role and my team’s role is in helping those who join us, particularly those who don’t come from an Open Source background, to get a strong sense of our community values and commitments. This not only involves helping to on-board new team members, but with six times as many employees than when I started, it also significantly raises the number of instances in which such team members are looking for help and guidance to ensure that such community relations, which are so important to the company, are well executed. Again, this is important and valuable time well spent, but again time in which I am primarily working with the company and not volunteers.
Finally, Ubuntu has become a global phenomenon. It has become increasingly a house-hold name, a common sight in coffee shops and trains, and with this success has developed (a) a lot of press interest and requests for comment, and (b) an increasing level of critique and expectations from a wider demographic of users. As one of the more public personas associated with Ubuntu and Canonical, I am therefore often expected to provide input and commentary to the press and elsewhere, particularly with anything community-related (which is a pretty wide spectrum of content both actually within and often outside my domain). Again, important and valuable work, but time handling company responsibilities as opposed to working with volunteers.
Of course, while the scope of responsibility has increased with these additional three areas, my time available has not really increased (it increased a little as I work longer days now and I travel a lot less ever since I got married), and as such the additional areas of responsibility have naturally cut into the time that was originally devoted to the first three areas I outlined which were primarily volunteer-targeted. This is why some of you who have been following my work for a long time may have picked up that I am spending a little less time collaborating with our volunteers than I used to – I am basically knee deep in these other responsibilities.
Now, this is to be expected. I now have a team, and priority is my team and their success. Part and parcel of having a team grow up around you is that you end up spending more and more time being a manager and helping your team to enjoy a structured, safe, and enjoyable work environment. In traditional management, this is common and the manager becomes a little less visible to the team as she is focused on managing the team and the expectations of the team from key stakeholders in the company (and in our case, the community).
The problem is, I don’t want to be less visible.
I believe that having a close and hands-on relationship with the Ubuntu contributor community is important, and irrespective of whether it is “important” or not, I just enjoy spending time with our community; they are my friends, my peers, my colleagues, and in many cases people who inspire me.
So, after all this rambling I wanted this blog post to achieve two primary goals. Firstly, for those of you who have not seen me as much as you did a few years back, I hope this explains a little about why that is. Secondly, if you have any ideas and suggestions about techniques and approaches that I can use to continue to fulfill my expectations to my team and peers, but squeeze in more “face-time” time with our volunteers, I would love to hear. Oh, and before some smart arse suggests it…spending more hours in front of a computer is not really an option; I don’t want solve one problem (trying to find smarter ways of working to spend more time with our volunteers) and replace it with another (my wife get the hump that I am working too much).
Thanks for reading.
Posted on July 30, 2010 - by jono
Red Hat, Canonical and GNOME Contributions
Earlier this week at GUADEC, the always affable Dave Neary presented his GNOME Census work. Unfortunately, I was not there to see it, but I read his excellent post on the topic.
One of the reactions from the survey was that Red Hat are responsible for 16% of the contributions to GNOME whereas Canonical are responsible for a measly 1%.
Of course, this has generated some flame, such as a particularly angry post from Greg DeKoenigsberg and the rather pithy response from Jeffrey Stedfast. Greg is clearly pissed, and Jeffrey is clearly pissed at Greg being pissed, and I suspect Greg is going to get even more pissed at Jeffrey being pissed. The worse thing is that they are both going to be pissed at me for this blog post.
First I want to put these figures in perspective and then I want to talk about how we read the figures we do have.
I think the GNOME Census report is excellent, and it provides some excellent visibility into contributions in GNOME, but it only takes into account upstream contributions to GNOME itself. What the report doesn’t take into account are upstream contributions that are built on the GNOME platform but (a) not part of official GNOME modules, and (b) hosted and developed elsewhere, such as Launchpad. As such, while the report is accurate for showing code and contributions accepted into GNOME, there are also many projects built on GNOME technology that are not taken into account due to non-inclusion in GNOME modules or being developed outside of GNOME infrastructure.
As a general rule, Canonical staff develop inside Launchpad. The reason is simple; Launchpad and Bazaar provide a powerful development environment that was also built by Canonical and we therefore have lots of internal skills and best practice based on these tools. Launchpad is also a fundamental component in Ubuntu development and all the software we develop ultimately ships in Ubuntu, so using the same development forge makes sense. Finally, the site is a Free Software and Open Source project, so there really no philosophical reason to move, testified by the 18,000+ Free Software projects happily using Launchpad already.
Canonical is actively developing upstream desktop software, but doing it in Launchpad. Some examples include:
- notify-osd
- Messaging Menu
- Application Indicators
- Indicator Applet
- Indicator Date Time Applet
- Sound Indicator
- Me Menu
- Indicator Global Menu
- Unity
This is by no means the full list, and is other work such as Simple Scan, the Hardware Drivers tool, Computer Janitor, and more. Many of these contributions (such as Application Indicators and Simple Scan) could bring real value to GNOME, but they have not been accepted. I know that the Canonical engineers who work on them would be delighted if they were included in GNOME.
The above list also doesn’t include significant upstream investment in other areas such as Upstart, Bazaar, Launchpad, and a full team building Ubuntu. I don’t want to turn this into a “who contributed more” competition, but I think for some to suggest Canonical is a bad citizen who is not contributing upstream code is unreasonable. To suggest that Canonical has limited code inside approved GNOME modules is fair.
So that was the first thing I wanted to clarify; Canonical does invest heavily in upstream work, but GNOME is not the only home for upstream contributions.
If there is one thing that the GNOME Census has really outlined is that we should all be proud of Red Hat and their contributions to GNOME. You only have to take a look at all the red items on this image to get a feeling for the wonderful work that Red Hat is doing inside GNOME. Novell too. Look the green items in there; Novell has done a wonderful job maintaining many modules inside GNOME. In fact, there are many companies investing inside GNOME modules and inside GNOME infrastructure. I don’t believe it would be fair to undermine these contributions in any way; they are testament to the ethos of those companies and their commitment to GNOME. All of the people working at those companies are doing good work within the spirit of Free Software.
Likewise, I don’t think it is fair to undermine Canonical’s contributions just because many of them exist outside of GNOME. Our engineers are also doing good work within the spirit of Free Software. I have never claimed for a second that Canonical are equal to Red Hat and Novell in terms of our accepted contributions in GNOME; it is clear that there are far few contributions from Canonical staff inside accepted GNOME modules, but this does not for a second mean that Canonical is not (a) producing upstream contributions and (b) heavily invested in the GNOME platform. Ubuntu, our primary product is a GNOME desktop, and the vast majority of our engineers are GNOME users and developers and they work every day on a GNOME based product.
So in a nutshell, this is my take: both Red Hat and Canonical invest heavily in Open Source development, but they do it in different ways and different places. The GNOME Census clearly outlines that within GNOME modules, Red Hat are doing far more, but that doesn’t mean that Canonical are sitting on their thumbs and doing nothing, far from it.
Posted on July 26, 2010 - by jono
The Five Horsemen
Last week I was in Prague with my team; the first with Ahmed since he joined. It was an awesome week and it was useful to checkpoint our progress.
We also took the first ever full team photos of us, first in our room and second at the end of the week having a drink:
Thanks to Gord for the photos.
This photo makes me feel incredibly to be part of such an awesome team. Rock and roll!
Posted on July 15, 2010 - by jono
Ahmed Kamal Joins The Horsemen
I am pleased to announce that Ahmed Kamal has joined my team at Canonical to build the Ubuntu Cloud Community.
Although Ahmed’s formal background is Electronics and Communications engineering, he was always a Linux geek at heart. He touched his first Linux CD in 1998 with Red Hat 5.x and has been hooked ever since. He says:
“I think the main reasons why I fell in love with Linux was because it’s predictable! It doesn’t try to hide anything, you can always understand why things happen the way they do. Also the Linux community was mind blowing to me, to imagine those millions of people networking and helping each other move Linux forward was/is just amazing. This was especially true back in the days when Linux was not yet an enterprise rock-star. Over the years I had been involved with Linux one way or the other. I had worked at a great redhat partner in Egypt, where I had the chance to do consultation and Linux professional services work for some of the largest enterprises. I had also enjoyed evangelizing Linux and open-source to hundreds of people through various trainings. I started the Egyptian Open-Solaris group as well as engaged in various university talks to introduce open-source concepts in general. It is such a great feeling to introduce and excite minds about FOSS. For the past couple of years, I had been working with a bunch of extremely talented engineers building next generation cloud and virtualization management solutions. The technology base we were working on later got acquired by Sun Microsystems and later of-course by Oracle. Cloud computing is extremely exciting to me, while the term has been abused to fit almost anything, I am confident of the potential cloud computing has to offer. The cloud is not a single technology, it’s rather a paradigm shift of our expectations and how we use technology”.
Ahmed is hugely excited about being part of the team and helping to grow the community:
“What excites me the most about joining the Ubuntu community team is the far reaching impact of what that team’s work on the foss community at large. My role is to connect the Ubuntu cloud community with Canonical’s engineering teams making sure community contributers can find their way, as well as to ignite worldwide excitement about the great work Canonical is doing to innovate in the open-source cloud computing domain. What I find very exciting is that the result of our work with the community, is far more reaching than anything I could have ever done on my own”.
Ahmed is exciting about making the cloud accessible to all:
“Cloud computing is re-shaping computing as we know it. Ubuntu is easily the master of the Linux desktop, and is re-shaping the open-source desktop and server experience. Put the two together, and you can understand why I am tremendously excited about a cloud computing solution based on Ubuntu and open-source software. While Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud is an awesome product, that’s not where it ends. I’ll let you in on a little secret, Canonical’s server and cloud engineering teams are hard at work innovating on top of the cloud. And from what I’ve seen, it is going to be awesome. If you’re into open-source and you’re into cloud computing, you’re in for a treat, so stay tuned!”
All, please welcome Ahmed to the team!
Posted on July 13, 2010 - by jono
Sound Indicator
I am totally digging the sound menu that is shipping in the development branch of Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat:
It feels well designed, implemented and sleek. Great work mpt and Conor!
Posted on June 25, 2010 - by jono
Unity Love
Unity from our Ubuntu Netbook Edition. I absolutely love it.
You can try it out easily by just running:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:canonical-dx-team/une
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-netbook-unity-default-settings
It is also packaged for Maverick in the repositories, just install unity.
Posted on May 28, 2010 - by jono
Maverick Community Team Plans
As many of you will know, I manage the Ubuntu Community Team at Canonical, which has horsemen Holbach, Castro and Planella in it. A large chunk of my job is to take into account the wide range of needs from our different stakeholders (community teams, Canonical teams, upstreams etc) and to flesh out a strategy for my team for each cycle. To do this I gather input and feedback from the team and these stakeholders and put together strategy that will guide the team’s work through the cycle. Today I want to share this strategy with you all.
Most components in this strategy includes a blueprint which itself includes a set of actions that outlines the goals for Maverick. The benefit of this approach is that you can subscribe to blueprints you are interested in and keep track of those projects as we work through them. If there are elements of these blueprints that you would like to contribute to and get involved with, do let us know. 
So, on with the blueprints. Please note: each of these blueprints is targeted for the Maverick cycle only and these are the blueprints that my team specifically is working on with assistance from the community – other Canonical teams are of course working on their own sets of blueprints. Also, this does not include all community blueprints: there are many blueprints that are not part of my teams expected deliverables.
Ayatana
Socialize Indicator Application Menu with upstreams
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-global-menuContinue work with upstreams on adopting application indicator technology
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-application-indicators-outreach
Daily Builds
Document the daily builds infrastructure and workflow
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-document-daily-buildsAdvocate, promote and enthuse the use of daily builds for a range of tasks
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-advocate-daily-builds
Developer Growth
Improve Harvest usability
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-improve-harvest-usabilityImprove Harvest speed
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-improve-harvest-speedFind opportunities for reducing the complexity of the workflow as a developer
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-development-workflow-reviewCreate a graphic high-level overview of common development process
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-development-workflow-reviewCreate initiative around Packaging Documentation and update the docs
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-packaging-docs
Patch Review
Patch Review Process Review
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-patch-review-processPatch Review Initiative
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-patch-review-initiative
Upstreams
Launchpad upstream bug workflow improvements
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-launchpad-upstream-improvements-bugsLaunchpad upstream patch visibiity improvements
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-launchpad-upstream-improvements-patchesEvangelize daily builds to upstreams
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-upstream-dailybuildsContinued upstream contacts growth
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-upstream-contactsOrganize Canonical presence at upstream events
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-conferences
Best Practice
Document and consolidate core community processes
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-process-improvements
Translations
Improve Translations Packaging for Help in Ubuntu Applications
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-improve-translations-packaging-for-help-in-ubuntu-applicationsTranslations Community Advocacy
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-translations-community-advocacyTranslations Community Learning Content
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-translations-community-learning-contentTranslations Community Events
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-translations-community-eventsExtend the translations status reporting
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-improving-translation-status-reportingHealthcheck for core translation teams
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-translation-teams-healthcheckLaunchpad Translations Reporting API
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-launchpad-translations-reporting-apiDeveloper education on localization
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-developer-education-on-localization
Software Delivery
Process for post-release updates
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-post-release-app-process
Infrastructure Improvements
LoCo Directory – Improved Events Handling
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-loco-directory-plansdeveloper.ubuntu.com
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-opportunistic-developer-outreach
Regular Cycle Activities
Tuition Week plans (Open Week, App Dev Week, Dev Week)
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-tuition-weeksUbuntu Global Jam
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-global-jamRelease Parties
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-release-partiesUbuntu Free Culture Showcase
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-free-culture-showcaseMaverick Governance Changes
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-m-governance-changes
As you can see, we have quite a bit to keep us occupied in this cycle. If you want to watch the sausage being made, subscribe to the blueprints you are interested in, track out burndown chart, and do join us in #ubuntu-community-team on Freenode where we work together.
We look forward to seeing you there! Horsemen…roll out!
Posted on April 29, 2010 - by jono
Thank You Everyone For Ubuntu 10.04
Today we released Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, available in Desktop, Server, and Netbook editions.
Lucid is a phenomenal release that has brought a new finesse and shine to what we as a community have worked together to achieve. I see this finesse executed in a fantastic array of features (which you can read about here), and underlined by an unwavering commitment to quality through the many disciplines involved in building Ubuntu. This work has not only been undertake by our development team at Canonical, but also by our passionate global Ubuntu community.
Today is a day in which everyone involved in the Ubuntu community should sit back for a moment and feel proud of our achievements. Whether you have worked on code, packaging, testing, bugs, documentation, translations, advocacy, or whatever else, your contributions have made Lucid and it’s supporting global network of community contributions what it is. Building an Operating System is a large and complex task which demands a wide variety of different skills and personalities to achieve, and I am so proud of everyone who has brought their gift to the Ubuntu table to help make Ubuntu better for everyone.
As one person riding this train, I just want to thank you to all of you for your hard work. Now it is time to celebrate!
Posted on April 23, 2010 - by jono
Lucid Community Team Review
One thing I have been working hard to continue to grow and refine with each cycle is how I manage my team at Canonical, the projects that we are working on, and how we coordinate ours and other projects with the wider community. As I have focused on improving this project management approach, I have been working to help better structure and plan our projects.
While I started doing this with my team specifically, I was keen to see if I could improve this in the wider community too. As such, at the last Ubuntu Developer Summit I worked to better socialize the idea of teams developing a firm idea of what they want to achieve in a cycle, planning that work out, assigning the work across the wider team and making steady progress on those goals throughout the cycle.
To do this I encouraged teams to build roadmaps with a core set of goals, divide those goals into blueprints and to track actions inside those blueprints. Some teams embraced this more structured approach and were successful in achieving their goals.
As part of this work I approved a set of blueprints that I would manage as part of my team. This core set of blueprints, a mix of my team’s and other community goals, set the primary goals and workflow for my team throughout the cycle, and my role was to keep everything on track.
At the start of the Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx cycle I blogged about these plans for my team in Lucid. They included these blueprints:
Engage in outreach with targeted upstreams to build support for Application Indicators into their code
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-application-indicators-outreachHelp communicate needs of upstreams to Launchpad team
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-launchpad-upstream-improvementsContinued documentation for Upstreams
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-upstream-documentationUpstream Contacts
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-upstream-contactsAdopt-an-Upstream initiative
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-adopt-an-upstreamGet Harvest more production ready
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-harvest-next-stepsImprove Kernel community patch flow
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/kernel-lucid-bugs-with-patchesFacilitate transition of Permissions Reorganisation
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-permissions-reorg-process-changesHelp the IRC Council in being effective
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/irc-council-lucid-plansImprove translation status reporting
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-improving-translation-status-reportingIncrease community participation in coordinating translations
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-community-participation-in-coordinating-translationsDefinition of translations best practices and policies
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-translations-best-practices-and-policiesImprove Quality Assurance on translations
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/lucid-qa-community-testing-translationsIncrease community developer contributions in Launchpad Translations
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-increasing-lp-translations-dev-community-contributionsRaise awareness of LoCo team work
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-loco-storiesHelp the LoCo council to be successful
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/loco-council-lucid-plansMake LoCo Directory usable for the LoCo Community
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-loco-directory-developmentLoCo Council
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-loco-council-nominationsEMEA Membership Board
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-emea-board-changesAmericas
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-americas-board-changesAsia/Oceania
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-asia-board-changesKubuntu
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-kubuntu-council-changesUbuntu Open Week
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-ubuntu-open-weekUbuntu Developer Week
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-ubuntu-developer-weekRelease Party Coordination
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-release-party-coordinationUbuntu Global Jam
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-ubuntu-global-jamUbuntu Free Culture Showcase
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-ubuntu-free-culture-showcaseImprove UDS Scheduling
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-summit-improvementsTeam Sprint Planning
LoCo Docs Day(s)
Release Name Announcement
Governance Assessments
LoCo Week
Debian Relationship
LoCo Stories
UDS Planning
DebConf
Desktop EventsThe Fridge
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/fridge/+spec/community-lucid-fridge-improvementssummit.ubuntu.com
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-lucid-summit-improvementsLoCo Directory
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/loco-directory/+spec/community-lucid-loco-directory-development and https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/loco-directory/+spec/loco-directory-event-registrationHarvest
https://blueprints.edge.launchpad.net/harvest/+spec/community-lucid-harvest-next-steps
So, we had a large set of blueprints with an even larger set of actions and I was keen to ensure I could provide as much support guidance across these different communities and blueprints.
I did by using the burndown chart approach that we in the Ubuntu platform management team have been experimenting with recently. I decided to trial this for the Lucid cycle to see if it would help me provide a sense of perspective and oversight over the team, and more importantly, help optimize my team and the community for success.
As we draw the Lucid cycle to a close, the burndown looks like this:
For those unfamiliar with a burndown chart, the Y axis is the number of committed actions in all of the projects I am managing, and the X axis is the time until the end of the cycle. Each bar on the chart indicates the number of items yet to do (red), the number of completed actions (green), and the number of postponed actions (orange). To use the chart effectively I need to keep the number of completed actions under the thick black line; this then provides a constant stream of progress across the collection of actions.
Doing this effectively is not as simple as saying “make sure you complete two actions every day until the end of the cycle”. Some actions take seconds to achieve, some actions take days to achieve. As such, while using the chart, I found myself developing a better awareness of the size and scope of tasks so I could better plan for the team. This was particularly important around vacations, holiday periods and other downtime.
I already have a pretty structured way of managing the team; we have weekly calls, I sent out call notes, create new actions, review outstanding actions etc, and the burndown just factored into our weekly workflow in a fairly non-invasive way.
While the burndown is primarily a useful tool for me, when I look at that chart I am hugely proud at how the team was responsive to keep the various projects on track. While this certainly applies to horsemen Castro, Holbach, and Planella, this also applies to the wider community. Take a look at the assignment summaries:
Let me explain what we have here. Across all of the blueprints that we committed to with their included actions, this is a list of who had actions assigned that affect the burndown. Naturally Jorge, Daniel, David and I have the largest assignments, but I am hugely proud to see that (a) we had lots of community participation and (b) those who did participate were hugely successful in completing their actions. Even there many folks only had a few actions to complete, this experiment demonstrated to me that the tool is useful for helping raise the opportunity for success.
As such, in the Maverick cycle I am going to use the same approach, but continue to encourage more community participation in these structured blueprints. I think that the burndown approach not only helps me guide all these projects and keep them on track with a regular flow of achievements, but it also helps raise my visibility on the different actions which helps me easily identify the next pieces of low-hanging fruit and coordinate with the community around completion of those tasks and unblocking any problems.
So, in a nutshell, I am proud of everyone’s achievements and I look forward to even more success in the Maverick cycle
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