2022-09-15 Product Council Meeting notes
Date
Attendees
- Aaron Trehub, Alexis Manheim, Axel Dörrer, Brooks Travis, Charlotte Whitt, Cornelia Awenius, Denise Baker, Dung-Lan Chen, Gang Zhou, Hkaplanian, Ian Walls, John Ballestro, julie.bickle, Karen Newbery, Kristin Martin, Marc Johnson, Maura Byrne, Owen Stephens, Peter Murray, Sharon Wiles-Young, twliu, Tod Olson
Recording
https://recordings.openlibraryfoundation.org/folio/product-council/2022-09-15T09:30/
Discussion items
| Time | Item | Who | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 min | Announcements | All | |
WOLFCon Debrief: action item - revitalize SIG relationships and understanding
| All | Revitalizing the SIGs has been on a wish-list for an agenda item for a while, and it came up as a topic of discussion at WOLFcon. Is there a way we could be sharing information better about what the SIGs are doing? Which ones are active? Which ones need a product owner? (Do we have Product Council liaisons for each of them?) Some SIGs are more active at a sub-group level. Noting the wiki is not up-to-date everywhere...noting especially about sub-group levels. Lots of changes and additions to the "Spreadsheet of SIGs" (see link to the left) Privacy SIG might be a good group to include in a discussion about scope criteria for development. Public Library SIG: might it be time to try reviving this group and see if it can gather funding for specific development needs that they have? SysOps SIG is getting a little more traction with issues that were identified years ago (e.g., minimal platform installation) but are now more urgent with more FOLIO installations. Can these needs get addressed before they cause problems for a bigger community? These tend to be cross-cutting and architectural questions. | |
WOLFCon Debrief: coordination with other councils
| All | The chairs of the councils are going to try to set up quarterly cross-council meetings for information sharing and raise issues that straddle councils. It is probably impossible to manage at a level of functional detail and at the overview/coordination level. So it is important for the PC to decide and what level it wants to operate. This is a good topic for the cross-council discussion. PC should also be more up-front with CC when we have resource struggles. The TC is also thinking about reviewing its charter (not a radical change but examining its responsibilities). | |
| WOLFCon Debrief: criteria creation to evaluate modules - review Scope/Criteria work to address action items | Kristin Martin | Proposal in 2 parts: 1) practical steps to return to what this group does (to be reviewed in the group tomorrow and eventually brought to PC); 2) looking at the FOLIO architecture and longer-term plans. For a future meeting: a process for how we keep the roadmap up-to-date. There was a lot of work to tie the roadmap into current development; how do we best leverage this work? | |
Discovery/Integration API
| Postponed to next week. | ||
Kristin will work on a template of questions to ask SIGs (in the same spreadsheet). We can return to the debrief in the next meeting as well. |
Meeting chat log
00:02:15 Owen Stephens: And whatever you do “don't blink†00:02:25 Julie Bickle: 😂 00:09:10 Harry: Looks pretty to me! 00:12:30 Harry: Be back in 2 mis 00:18:09 Harry: Once this exercise is complete. It would be interesting to compare to the roadmap. What SIGs need to start to get some progress made on Roadmap items definition? 00:18:35 Harry: Rather, What SIGs need to be creat5ed to support the roadmap? 00:22:03 Brooks Travis: which one is which ;) 00:23:03 Brooks Travis: It's a user group, really… 00:23:52 Julie Bickle: Yes: their interest is not to provide dev requirements. 00:23:54 Karen Newbery: +1 Tod 00:29:22 Owen Stephens: Just don't want anyone to get the idea that a PO has been found for an area where there isn't one 00:31:09 Owen Stephens: Reporting is a complex area as it has quite a few working groups 00:33:07 Marc Johnson: To add to Harry’s comment, one of the areas we haven’t really addressed in FOLIO is the in-app reports (that live inside the system) 00:33:38 Charlotte Whitt: The Reporting SIG did a huge work on defining In-app reports in FOLIO - that work happened a couple of years ago 00:33:54 Brooks Travis: Yeah, we’ve left those to a really ad-hoc, SIG-by-SIG approach that I don't think is serving the needs of the product anymore 00:34:18 Marc Johnson: I’m glad there is a list of potential in-app reports. 00:34:43 Marc Johnson: What I don’t think we’ve addressed is more general questions about the expectations of how those reports are intended to work 00:35:09 Brooks Travis: that's where I was trying to get to. Thanks, Mark. 00:35:15 Marc Johnson: We’ve had plenty of challenges with some of the reports in circulation with a mismatch in understanding of how the reports should work 00:36:26 Brooks Travis: “Marc†🤦ðŸ»â€â™‚ï¸ 00:37:03 Maura Byrne: +1 Harry 00:38:15 Marc Johnson: Maybe the dashboard could be part of app interaction (given it is cross app)? 00:38:39 Maura Byrne: +1 Marc 00:40:16 Charlotte Whitt: Or per app; e.g. the MM-SIG can define dash board widgets for daily use (task) within Inventory, Data Import, Data Export, Bulk edit etc. 00:41:48 Marc Johnson: Didn’t the privacy SIG recently take ownership of the personal data disclosure form? 00:42:16 Charlotte Whitt: Does Lucy Liu know, maybe? 00:45:28 Peter Murray: Marc: yes--the Privacy SIG took on the Personal Data Disclosure form from Technical Council. 00:45:51 Harry: My apologies everyone, I need to jump off for another call. Great meeting. Thank you! 00:46:36 Marc Johnson: I think the points Owen raises about public libraries is an example of a broader challenge with FOLIO needing to decide who it’s audience is and how it handles divergent needs 00:50:51 Owen Stephens: And “accessibility" 00:51:05 Brooks Travis: Discovery integration 🙂 00:52:23 Brooks Travis: PC would be a good place to do that advocacy 🙂 00:53:30 Owen Stephens: I think (fairly) the sys ops sig would say they have done a lot of advocacy in PC (and elsewhere) but I think we've got to decide how we take that forward from the PC (advocate with the SIGs?!) 00:54:18 Brooks Travis: I think that's what we're trying to sort out in these post-WOFLcon conversations, because that's a definite process deficiency we identified in our conversations there 00:54:55 Owen Stephens: Agreed Brooks 00:55:29 Charlotte Whitt: TC working groups? 00:55:50 Marc Johnson: I might dare to suggest that a part of this is how we define product ownership 00:55:52 Brooks Travis: SIG Tribune 🙂 00:56:15 Julie Bickle: +â¤ï¸ Brooks 00:56:18 Marc Johnson: Charlotte, are you asking if TC working groups would be the ones who take forward the Sys-Ops needs? 00:57:32 Julie Bickle: I guess the Question is: How do you get those sys requests into the Backlogs? 00:57:41 Charlotte Whitt: No, it was to Kristin Martins comment on if there were other cross functional WGs 00:57:57 Charlotte Whitt: The TC WG I was thinking of are: 00:58:15 Brooks Travis: I feel like it's just been slow-going on the sysops’ issues because of the strategic focus of the development resources. 00:58:30 Julie Bickle: 100% Brooks 00:58:38 Owen Stephens: I agree Julie - but not just into the backlogs but prioritised in those backlogs 00:58:48 Julie Bickle: 100% Owen 00:59:16 Owen Stephens: Anyone with ability to create a jira issue can drop something into my backlog 🙂 00:59:16 Peter Murray: I've noted this discussion about SysOps SIG issues in the minutes. 00:59:36 Brooks Travis: Optimization is usually deemphasized in early phases of development, which tend to focus on end-user feature development 00:59:59 Brooks Travis: This is about the time I would expect such a shift in this project 01:00:02 Julie Bickle: @Owen: We notice that is Vega too 😬😅 01:00:26 Julie Bickle: *in Vega 01:00:53 Marc Johnson: As I understand it, there is a degree of indirection between what the SIGs talk about and what is built that affects all SIGs It’s that it’s more pronounced for cross-cutting concerns 01:01:22 Tod Olson: ++Marc 01:03:11 Marc Johnson: Brooks, the CC is conducting brief interviews with a few folks about challenges and opportunities. One of the respondents raised concerns about scale e.g. data import limits, that I think relate to optimisation The topics of bulk edit and batch APIs (which are strangely disconnected) are other examples, that also overlap with Sys-Ops 01:04:13 Marc Johnson: Owen, just because they can doesn’t mean they should 😃 (But then I have a very different understanding of backlog to many folks in FOLIO and believe they should be very limited in size) 01:05:57 Peter Murray: Thanks, Marc—yes, this came out of the TC working group meeting yesterday. 01:06:03 Owen Stephens: Agreed Marc 01:11:38 Brooks Travis: Thanks, Marc. That's good to hear (CC's work on this) 01:12:26 Marc Johnson: The responses to the CC’s interviews are really interesting. They are like a microcosm of the challenges and concerns that have been floating around for a while 01:14:55 Tod Olson: The link to the "List of three things that could be better" document is in the #community-council channel for anyone who wants to look. 01:15:11 Charlotte Whitt: Thanks Tod 01:15:16 Tod Olson: #folio-community-council, that is 01:15:18 Kristin Martin: Here is the CC document collecting challenges: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-F613EM2d4pOwgRQobRQyS0k5T2T9RjoprNcfA_NLa0/edit 01:15:46 Brooks Travis: Thanks, Kristin 01:16:07 Marc Johnson: I think of the PC as advocating for the community about what it needs from the product 01:16:47 Marc Johnson: It might also establish constraints on aspects of the product 01:17:41 Owen Stephens: Absolutely agreed Kristin 01:18:25 Marc Johnson: For awareness, the TC is reviewing its charter (it is 4 years old) and that charter is likely to change 01:18:25 Ian Walls: I completely disagree. a year is plenty of time to see that the current governance model isn't working, and fundamental changes need to be made 01:19:08 Brooks Travis: I'd argue that we've not really exercised our current charter… 01:19:16 Brooks Travis: Not that it needs to change 01:20:19 Marc Johnson: The TC has a mixture of both of those conundrums, it hasn’t been exercising all of its current charter and the charter doesn’t fit with the current reality 01:20:43 Ian Walls: but the CC doesn't have any significant resources to apply to needs 01:21:03 Brooks Travis: But it's the council charged with acquiring them 01:21:20 Marc Johnson: There is a CC working group for that 01:21:38 Owen Stephens: I think there is a difference between changing our charter and changing how we pursue the charter. I don't have an objection to revisting the charter, but my view is aligned with what Brooks and others have said. 01:21:55 Marc Johnson: Practically though, it is unlikely the CC can acquire sufficiently directly run development capacity to satisfy folks 01:22:13 Owen Stephens: i.e. lets look at whether we can improve the way we pursue our goals before we change the goals on the basis we haven't been effective so far 01:22:34 Ian Walls: why would folks contribute resources to CC when then could just put them into the project directly? 01:23:20 Marc Johnson: An excellent question 😃 01:23:32 Brooks Travis: Yes 01:24:55 Marc Johnson: To me, the Councils are better suited to guiding contributions (and that might include some hard constraints) 01:25:04 Brooks Travis: I think there's a very strong case for doing so, especially through providing a mechanism for smaller libraries to pool fiscal resources effectively 01:25:38 Tod Olson: Or even larger libraries to pool resources effectively. 01:25:42 Marc Johnson: That’s an interesting topic, how do we facilitate smaller contributing groups working together 01:25:54 Ian Walls: resource pooling is a great use case 01:27:54 Owen Stephens: Thanks all