2021-10-13 Meeting notes

Tod Olsonis next in the list, followed by Philip Robinson

This is a carry-over from last week.

• The tech leads group not being a decision making body
• Whether it's realistic and/or desirable for the TC to make every technical decision
  • There was some overlap here with the external code submission topic

Related - in the wake of last week's slack vote:

• Revisit voting rules:
  • quorum: 8 (tie is no, so minimum 5 votes to pass)
    
  • simple majority: yes
  • of vote casted (including abstentions): yes
    
  • Abstain: Yes
    
  • Delegate: Yes
    
  • voting via slack: No, it has to be in person only
• Future for Tech Leads Group?  Who makes technical decisions, how?

Brainstorming on how to make technical decisions

• TC meets one hour per week, not all decisions can bubble up to TC.
• Tech Leads doesn't have much structure, nor does it have the power to make things stick.
• Example: coding standards. How do we cause a decision about that be made?
• Original design of Tech Leads/TC relationship was that if there was dispute it would go to TC. This is intended for the strategy decisions, but winds up with low-level decisions being bumped to TC.
• Tensions:
  • Need designs to be documented, but taking time for review interfered with timeline of getting things done
  • Technical Designs and Decisions
  • Appears teams often don't review technical decision log before moving ahead
• Problem: Need to have a documented, common understanding of how we do things in FOLIO
  • How do we do this with Tech Leads and not re-invent the TC?
  • Tech Leads originally for technical consultation
• Question: what level of standardization do we want/need?
  • There is some overlap with Acceptance Requirements
• Tech Leads for tactical decisions and TC for strategic?
• Zak Burke sees a need for more standardization, decisions that are cheap for an individual team or developer often become costly for the project. Suggests a process for one group to deal with the tactical and another to deal with strategic.
• Do we have consensus that TC is strategic and Tech Lead is tactical?
  • Maybe not, there's a question of scope. Maybe this is the division at the Platform level
• Revive the RFC process?
•  Tension:
  • More rules make it harder for external teams to make contributions, but make things more consistent/smoother within the project
• How are topics taken to the TC for a decision?
  • The TC is not good at taking a broad topic, having a discussion, and coming to a decision in a reasonable amount of time
  • Much better when there is a concrete proposal that the TC and review and respond to.
  • RFC process could be revisited.
  • Need a standard format/process
  • Could be used for both tactical and strategic decisions
  • Call to revisit the RFC process
    • Process documented in README.md in https://github.com/folio-org/rfcs
    • Take review as homework? 
    • Concern is that this will not be effective to do this in TC, but more effective to have a small group review
• Goal: define a decision-making process for technical decisions.
  • Broad goal is to have a decision-making process for the project, narrower goal for volunteer(s) is to make a proposal that moves us forward.
  • Presentation would include the scope of the process
  • Who is the target audience, who makes the proposal? 
  • Check-in: 1 week; Deadline: 2 weeks
• Actions
  • VBar can commit to re-present the RFC process next week
  • Jakub Skoczen will try to define what we are trying to accomplish

Ian Walls/All

• Ongoing work on Acceptance Criteria and Processes (submission, evaluation, etc.)
  • Has the Acceptance Criteria v1.0 been published somewhere yet?  What about references/links in other places.
    • Will pick a Github repo and deposit it later (Jakub)
    • Tod Olson RFC might be a good choice
  • Agree on short and long term goals, will continue to work on:
    
    • Define processes for submission, evaluation, review, feedback, acceptance
    • Improve the AC with more verifiable criteria, links to supporting documentation, etc.
    • Time frame: Ian and Jakub will take a look at Lotus dates and inform the team next week
  • LDP Review: reach out to Jeremy Huff and Nassib Nassar and sort out this by today

Jakub Skoczen will create a new GitHub repo for TC

Follow-up from previous meetings...

Previous notes:

From Mike Gorrell:

I have created a clean copy of what the Community Council created to identify which FOLIO Goals/Objectives were under the purview of the CC. We also took a stab at what thought would be handled by PC or TC. Please feel free to give us feedback/etc. https://docs.google.com/document/d/17jVxW2XEK2bRSpXG9_FvdVtgqDfCTeKKM5h49IIhmRw/edit#heading=h.m2gdb67ibe1x. and use for your planning purposes.

Update from Tod Olson, Jeremy Huff, Craig McNally who met to discuss this last Friday.

• The Friday meetings will be at 11am EST, please join if you can.

Marc Johnson

Follow-up from previous meetings...

Proposal from Marc Johnson: https://folio-org.atlassian.net/wiki/display/~marcjohnson/Check+Out+Performance

Marc Johnson was asked to make a proposal for checking out performance; draft document is available by the first link above. Feedback is appreciated

There's a link to PTF analysis from the first mentioned doc

Julian Ladisch