Designing An Agile Community Program: Funambol Code Sniper v. 2

Designing An Agile Community Program Funambol Code Sniper v. 2 Stefano Maffulli, Community Manager Agile Day Bologna Nov 20 th 2009

Open Source and Agile Main assumption: customer = community

Funambol Code Sniper v 1
Current setup
Funambol maintains a list of 'wanted' software
Community members pick one and write a proposal
The proposal is discussed with the Funambol engineers and approved
Code Sniper developer writes a full specifications and submits them for approval to Funambol
The development starts
Once code is working according to specs the grant is released
End

Sniper Developer Code Sniper v1 process Community & Funambol Eng

Limits
Too much 'solo' work
Possible conflicts
Two people or groups want to develop the same project
Risk of abandonment
decreased incentive to maintain the software after version alpha is released
Not agile

Funambol Code Sniper v. 2
Funambol keeps a list of desired software
Customers (community) write user stories, create backlog
Developers (community) evaluate user stories and take them to develop
For each story written and completed, community members earn Sniper Points
Write a User Story = 1 point
Develop a User Story = X points (according to evaluation)
Test a User Story = x/2 points
Sniper Points can be exchanged with money or goods

Code Sniper Process v. 2

Challenges
Overcome the cultural barrier
Educate on what a user story is or how to write an effective one
Provide effective and easy to use tools
Few free-as-in-freedom software suitable for Agile mgmt
Balance the mixed roles of owner, developer and customer with very small teams
Some projects may not be well suited for an Agile Open Source method (example: those few users)

Advantages
The community takes an active role
involve users, not just developers, at early stage
involve users for testing and approving stories
Requirements emerge as a shared effort of the community (the Product Owner)
The project grows step by step, each step is releasable
as per the definition of user story
Developers can pick up small chunks of functionality (it better meets people's time constraints)
Increased incentives to contribute after initial release
as long as more user stories are added there is incentive to contribute and maintain the code

Open questions
How to estimate User Stories?
Hours? Weeks? Story Points? Do they make sense?
How to define 'Done'?
The community should define DONE
Ideas:
Changes Log and Design Document updated
Unit tests implemented and passed
Acceptance tests defined and passed
no new bugs on the user story, no regression bugs
Releasable (installable and working in real life conditions)
Documentation, upgrade impact, backward compatibility, performance impact

Further discussion
Join Funambol Discussion Forum
https://core.forge.funambol.org/discuss
http://identi.ca/group/funambol
http://twitter.com/funambol

Designing An Agile Community Program: Funambol Code Sniper v. 2

by Stefano Maffulli on Nov 19, 2009

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