On Sat, Dec 4, 2010 at 8:30 AM, Peter Robinson <pbrobinson@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
As maintainer of two spins I have enough problems recruiting people to
do the core stuff in the Spins let alone trying to get people for QA,
Design and everything else. And I even have problems with getting the
other groups to do even basic things for my spins with a few
exceptions like QA who have been exceptional. If I had to attempt to
recruit people to do everything I would just drop the spins altogether
as it just wouldn't be worth the stress and problems.
I suspect that this is a pretty good encapsulation of how most people feel about their spins. And we've got two sentences here that illustrate, to me, the nature of the problem:
1. "I even have problems with getting the other groups to do even basic things for my spins with a few exceptions like QA who have been exceptional."
2. "If I had to attempt to recruit people to do everything I would just drop the spins altogether as it just wouldn't be worth the stress and problems."
More simply: "I'm not getting support for my spin, but I don't have time/energy to find that support myself." And it feels like that frustration becomes amplified when that support is expected, but never comes.
We say it often, and I think it's appropriate here: "It's better to be disappointed than surprised." We've got a number of work queues that will accept tickets. Accepting those tickets creates expectations. But then those tickets languish -- that is to say, some tickets languish, but other tickets go through because there's more support. No one's fault, everyone works hard and does their best, but there aren't enough bodies, and hard choices have to be made. And the person who makes a request in good faith and never gets a response ends up sending an email two days before release saying "geez, did anyone ever look at this?"
So maybe the right approach is to be crisper about what services spin maintainers can *expect* to get help for. Looks like QA has a handle on what they can and can't offer. What about docs? marketing? design? translation? Even if the answer is "sorry, we don't have the bandwidth to help spins," that's better than "sure, put it in our queue, maybe we'll get to it," and then the spins folks end up waiting for the cavalry that never comes.
Again: no blame here. None. Everyone works their ass off. But a large part of being successful is managing expectations, and it seems like we can do a lot better in that regard, project-wide.
Recruiting is another hard question, of course. There's hard questions all around. :)
--g
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