Update on the Sakai Development Process

1. Sakai Development Process
Michael Korcuska
July 8, 2009

2. Agenda
• A bit of history
• The proposed process
• The process applied
• 2.7 & 3.x
• Nominations for product council
• How to get started

3. A bit of history
• Inputs
• Community Survey
• Selected Interviews
• Open Source Comparison Projects
• Project Goals exercise
• 2-day retreat in February
• Post retreat work
• Much email/phone follow up

4. Survey & Interviews
• 50+ Organizational Responses
• 150+ Individual Responses
• About a dozen 30-60 minute phone calls
• Conducted by facilitator (Kim Thanos)
• Overall Result
• Sense of overall stability
• Trust in Sakai board
• Want to spend more time on community
Sakai
• Believe that Sakai will be the best platform

5. Community Wants
• Clear product vision & direction
• More communication from Foundation
• Roadmap that allows campus advocates to
effectively communicate with stakeholders
• Project structure that attracts sufficient resources
and uses them effectively
• More input from functional experts & designers
• Allow diverse types participation
• Large and small, Formal and informal, Institutional
and individual

6. Comparisons

7. Ways of Getting Work Done
• Organic – Contributors participate in the community
based on personal/local interests and priorities. It is
the responsibility of the individual to communicate and
request broader contribution.
• Coordinated – Community structures actively seek to
identify and align common contributions. Unmet needs
are identified to leaders to encourage investment.
• Managed – Resources are committed to achieve a
defined set of deliverables. Central authority
determines priorities.

8. Product Life Cycle

9. Community
Major Product Changes
• Generate new ideas
• Try new technologies
• Prove desirability
• Create dev team/plan
• Reduce dev risks
Product Council
• Finish building
• Test
• Document

10. Product Development
• Structuring of work in this phase is key
• Projects probably need
• Project management
• Project schedule and plan
• Functional leadership
• UX (including accessibility and i18n)
• Multiple organizations involved
• Exceptions possible
• K2 using Apache-style management successfully
Key: Ability to predictably deliver quality product

11. Product Council
• Authority:
• Decide what is in the official release
• How:
• Based on objective criteria as much as possible
• Open process and document decision-making
• Also:
• Provide guidance to incubation projects who are
wondering what they need to do to make the
release

12. Product Council
• Qualifications:
• A broad understanding of the Sakai product
• The ability to advocate for the needs within his/her area of
expertise and maintain a broad view of community and
product needs
• Demonstrated commitment to engage with and contribute
to the community
• Expertise in more than one aspect of the product
• User experience, including accessibility and usability
• Teaching and learning
• Research
• Software design and architectures
• Software production management (deploying and
administering)

13. Changes
• What’s the same?
• Open development process
• Low barrier to entry for R&D projects
• Independent projects possible/encouraged
• Small feature development remains the same
• What is different?
• Adherence to criteria from Incubation to Release
• Managed process for development team(s)
• Product Council to enforce criteria for making release
• The idea of a maintenance group
• R&D ≠ Contrib, Incubation ≠ Provisional, Product ≠ Core

14. Independent projects
• Contrib projects that don’t intend to become part of the main
release (e.g. Melete)
• Desire to establish rating system for these tools
• Current proposal too complex
• My recommendation: 3 simple ratings (scale of 1-5) based on
community consensus
• UX
• Does it follow Sakai conventions?
• Is it accessible/localizable/documented?
• Technical
• Does it follow Sakai conventions?
• Is it secure/scalable?
• Support
• How widely is it used in production?
• Is anyone maintaining code?

15. Product Council
• Nate Angell (rSmart)
• Noah Botimer (Michigan)
• Eli Cochran (Berkeley)
• Michael Feldstein (Oracle)
• Clay Fenlason (Georgia Tech & Sakai)
• David Goodrum (Indiana)
• John Lewis (Unicon)
• Stephen Marquard (Cape Town)
• John Norman (Cambridge)
• Max Whitney (NYU)