Open source expirience for efficient product requirements management. Decision making, priorities, roles and artifacts

1. Requirements
management in open
source
Alex Astapenka, GrowthGrind 1.0 - Requirements
May 1, 2016
1 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com -- Level: 101

2. Alex Astapenka Intro
1. several years of project/delivery management in EPAM Systems
and Oxagile
2. Caspowa.com - cloud service for websites performance
acceleration
3. CTOcast.com - very popular Russian podcast about people and
processes in IT
Subscribe: bit.ly/growthgrind
2 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com -- Level: 101

3. Global shift
• Tehcnologies and innovation is a key for
success in all industries
• Shift happened ~6 years ago (AWS,
GitHub)
• Engineers are opinion leaders and
drivers of changes
• Software development department is
now a buying center
3 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com
-- Level: 101

4. OSS requirements
who and how
• single vendor open source projects
(MySQL by Oracle) VS development
communities (Linux foundation)
• Who makes decision about features?
(Responsible people, Community driven,
End users driven)
• How decisions are made? (Consensus,
Voiting, Democracy with Vetoes,
Benevolent dictator, Upper class
dictatorship)
4 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com
-- Level: 101

5. My OSS expirience
(Summary)
• single vendor OSS (Mixed bazaar/
cathedral)
• users: developers, merchants, merchant
buyers
• how decisions are made: upper class
dictatorship
5 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com
-- Level: 101

6. My OSS expirience (Roles)
• Product manager is an advocate of merchants and merchants
buyers
• Architecture council is an advocate of developers
• Development team
• PMO/Scrum master (facilitator)
• Developers Community
• Solution/technology/hosting partners
6 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com -- Level: 101

7. My OSS expirience
(Artifacts)
• High level design document
• Epics/User stories (Definition of Ready)
• Unified Definition of Done
• Developer and merchant documentation
• GitHub issues
7 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com
-- Level: 101

8. OSS Survey results
How decisions are made?
Consensus 69%
Upper class dictatorship 38%
Who makes decision about features?
Responsible people 90%
Community driven 40%
8 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com -- Level: 101

9. How do you support end users?
GitHub >80%
Bug Tracking Systems >50% (in addition)
What type of issues have the highest priority?
Functional Bugs >80%
Security issues >70%
9 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com -- Level: 101

10. How do you discuss features?
Issues tracking tool 100%
Messenger (IRC, Slack etc) 60%
What is an average length of your Roadmap?
No Roadmap 33%
10+ months 20%
10 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com -- Level: 101

11. Prioritization of features
"Impact on existing or potential customers"
"Number of users requesting the feature Development effort Strategic
impact of the feature"
"Pick whatever feature I like - Whoever has time to implement"
"By I-can't-live-without-it level"
"The one I need"
"Noisier contributors get more attention"
11 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com -- Level: 101

12. "Make it fun, deploy often, and give credit where due"
"Time is valuable. You don't have enough. Learn identifing good
contributors from the bad ones. Only spent your time with the good
ones."
"People will complain about anything."
"Say no to features more often, and build your separate features into
plugins where possible."
"Be helpful, be open, be willing to take on new ideas."
12 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com -- Level: 101

13. Questions?
Caspowa.com
CTOcast.com
Twitter: @aaliaksandr
facebook.com/astapenka
BR, Alex Astapenka
13 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com -- Level: 101