FOLIO Product Council Charge

The FOLIO Product Council guides the functional development of the FOLIO Library Services Platform.  The Product Council manages the scope of the FOLIO project and is responsible for the relevance, cohesiveness, and transparency of the FOLIO project.  The Product Council provides a locus for discussions about strategic library management issues that lead to collective action.   Issues may be referred by the Product Council to the tripartite TO BE DEFINED BY PROJECT DIRECTOR for guidance and arbitration. Decisions are made by “lazy consensus” (see definition below) by the PC and documented to the public.

The Product Council will form an Executive Committee to aid in the accomplishment of the goals/activities below.  The Product Council should refer SIG concerns to the Executive Committee if the concerns require more information, more analysis, and consultation with other groups.

Primary functions:

• Synthesize roadmap, establish priorities in the roadmap, assesses strategic developments for impact on the roadmap;

• Identifies functional gaps in the roadmap and acts to ensure the gaps are filled

• Charters Special Interest Groups (SIGs)

• Convenes and charges SIGs

• Coordinates the work of the SIGs

• Ensures appropriate and sufficient representatives of the SIGs are in conversation on topics of shared interest by stimulating the initial membership, and establishing communication pathways that ensure open and transparent operation of the SIG

• Ensures new SIG members are versed in agile, open, transparent, and community-oriented user-experience-first design based on microservice architecture

• Coordinates the work of FOLIO community development partners

• Identifies strategic gaps in development

• Identifies possible development partners to fill in these gaps

• Ensures contributors are versed in the “FOLIO Way” of agile, open, transparent, and community-oriented user-experience-first design.

• Encourages community creates apps that interact well with FOLIO platform features

• Coordinates and encourages community engagement in FOLIO

• Onboards new members, whether individual or institutional

• Reaches out to library partners

• Reaches out to vendor partners

• Reaches out to external projects that are related or strategic to the goals of FOLIO

• Create a cohesive rollout plan for FOLIO as development matures

• Develops cohesive rollout plans for future FOLIO releases

• Coordinate migration and implementation for v1

• Prioritize post-v1 development

• Gather input from SIGs for priorities

• Review SIG input and prioritize items

• Assign appropriate development team

Membership:

The Product Council is comprised of key FOLIO partner representatives.  Each OLE Partner is a member of the Product Council as a key benefit of OLE membership.  Members are appointed by their stakeholders, and may be replaced with appropriate notice.  The Product Council may request a replacement of an appointed member if the member does not maintain acceptable engagement and performance as defined in this document.  While each Member represents a stakeholder, the goal of the Product Council is to further the overall goals of the FOLIO project. Product Council membership and organizational size will be reviewed yearly.

A Product Council member is expected to:

• Attend weekly virtual meetings and other active participation that may occasionally rise to several hours per week

• Group projects or writing efforts

• Individual engagement including email, writing, and review

• Attend and contribute to relevant periodic face-to-face meetings, potentially twice a year

• Identify and bring to bear appropriate expertise from Partner staff

• Keep home institution staff informed of activities of the Product Council

• Actively contribute and work productively on this team

• Serve as a liaison to one SIG if called upon

• Assist the Executive Committee for special projects if called upon

Officers:

Chair

Chair-elect

“Lazy Consensus” is a form of decision-making that assumes that a stated path forward is acceptable to all in the group unless objections are raised (also known as “yes becomes the default”).  Typically this means that someone will state a decision and a plan to act on that decision unless someone objects in a timely fashion (usually 72 hours).  Assume best intent.  See a description of how Lazy Consensus is used in the Apache OpenOffice project and how it has been applied to library operations.