[GRASS-PSC] Fwd: Product management processes in OSGeo projects

Sun Jun 9 08:50:14 PDT 2019

Hi PSC,

I took liberty in participating in Steven Feldman's Questionnaire re
"Product Management processes in OSGeo projects" which is a planned talk in
FOSS4G 2019 Bucharest.

See for the answers below.

Since Steven plans a followup call with me in the next day(s), please let
me know your comments.
I am happy to adjust, extend or whatever needs to be done.

thanks,
Markus

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Google Forms <forms-receipts-noreply at google.com>
Date: Sun, Jun 2, 2019 at 11:40 PM
Subject: Product management processes in OSGeo projects
To: <neteler at osgeo.org>

[image: Google Forms]
Thanks for filling in Product management processes in OSGeo projects
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSepJf73WAxem6lxBCY0grv4KGln3M0frmIW0fgoM-injyn8YA/viewform?usp=mail_form_link>
Here's what we've received from you:
Product management processes in OSGeo projects
Thank you for agreeing to help me in researching product management
processes in OSGeo projects. My aim is to try and establish:

• Does the Open Source collaborative development model incorporate and
support product management disciplines?
• Are there formal product management strategies within the OSGeo Community?
• How is a roadmap developed?
• Is the roadmap inspired by a cohesive vision or is it driven by the
willingness of larger users to fund features?
• How do projects get to hear the voice of the user?
• Do software development methodologies impact product management?
• Are there best practices that we can learn from and share?

Following on from this survey I plan to contact some (most) of the
respondents and if you are available conduct a short interview with you via
a call or by email.

It would be great if you could complete this survey by 3rd June 2019.

I hope to present the results of this research at FOSS4G at the end of the
summer, I will also write up the results and share with our community and
others. Subject to timing I will make an early version of my
presentation/write up available to respondents for comment before
publication.

Thanks once again for your help

May the FOSS be with you

Steven

Email address *
neteler at osgeo.org
A bit about you and your project
If you think someone else on your project steering team should be
completing this survey as well as or instead of you please forward the
survey to them

Your name *
Markus Neteler

Project *
GRASS GIS

What is your role in the project team?
Steering Committee Chair or Member, Contributor, Other?
Steering Committee Chair

How long have you been active within the project team?
25+ years

Are you willing to participate in a short interview

   - Yes
   - No
   - Maybe

Best way to contact you for an interview

   - Google Hangouts
   - Skype
   - WhatsApp call
   - email
   - Other:

Product management processes
I have set out a series of questions below that will help me to understand
how your project sets goals, converts them to a roadmap and then
prioritises features. It will make collating your response easier if you
can respond to these questions but if you find that too tedious or if your
responses don't fit with the structure of my questions then I have given
you the option of including a long form text answer at the end of the
questionnaire.

Vision and Goals
Has your project set out a vision and a set of goals that drive the roadmap?

Does your project have a clear statement of vision or purpose?
Why are you and others committing time to this project? What do you hope to
achieve?

   - Yes
   - No
   - Sort of

Does your project have a set of goals or targets that you are trying to
achieve?
These may be the metrics by which you can measure success,

   - Yes
   - No
   - Sort of

Do you gather any usage metrics about your project

   - Yes
   - No
   - Other:

Vision and goals
If available please paste your vision and goals in this section or add a
link to them
GRASS GIS is a complete GIS and Earth Observation suite with focus on
analytical functionality. Our goal is to further develop GRASS GIS an an
analytical GIS backend with all needed interfaces for a large user base,
i.e. Desktop frontend (own interface; QGIS processing), cloud support
(docker, actinia, HPC job manager) and a huge set of proven and efficient
methods and algorithms. A short term goal is to be fully Python 3 compliant.

Roadmap
How do you establish and maintain the roadmap for your project?

Do you have a roadmap for your project?

   - None
   - 1 year
   - 2 year
   - 3 year
   - Other:

What methodology do you use to manage your roadmap?
These are some of the most common methods for managing a roadmap, do you
use one of them? If not please describe how you plan and communicate your
roadmap.

   - Priority Buckets (Now, Next, Later)
   - Categorize, Cluster and Communicate (e.g.
   https://library.gv.com/climbing-mount-enterprise-99a4d014f942
   <https://www.google.com/url?q=https://library.gv.com/climbing-mount-enterprise-99a4d014f942&sa=D&ust=1559515200860000&usg=AFQjCNHfdQL2KAlrM4v2u-b5OwCndXEebQ>
   )
   - 3 feature buckets (Customer requests, Metrics movers, Customer delight)
   - No formal process to manage roadmap
   - Other:

Link to your roadmap
If you publish a roadmap please provide a link to the current version
https://trac.osgeo.org/grass/wiki/Grass8Planning

Feature prioritisation
How do you prioritise features within the next release(s) of your project?

Sponsored Features
To what extent do you prioritise features that are wholly or partly
sponsored by users of the software? Does this create any conflicts in terms
of feature prioritisation or your roadmap? Please be assured that any
responses on sponsored features will be anonymised so that your project and
sponsors will not be identified.
Since the GRASS GIS development team is an open team there is no strict
management or regulations to develop features only upon sponsorship.
Indeed, it happens that companies finance feature development which is
eventually merged into the master but there is no large budget nor legal
body so far to hand out contracts to freelancers.

What methodology do you use to prioritise features within your next
release?
These are some of the most common methods for prioritising features, do you
use one of them? If not please describe how you prioritise features.

   - Kano (Delighters, Satisfiers, Basic Expectations)
   - MoSCoW (Must, Should, Could, Won't)
   - Buy a Feature (each team member gets an allocation of points and
   assign to features)
   - RICE (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort)
   - No formal process to prioritise features
   - Other:

Requirements Capture
How do you capture and document requirements within your project?

Requirements
How do you identify user requirements

   - User Stories
   - Job Stories
   - Detailed feature descriptions
   - Surveys
   - Other:

I can't describe our product management process by responding to your
questions!
This is the pint where you can just write whatever you wish about the
product management processes in your project and include answers to the
questions that I have neglected to ask!

Answering your way
Write whatever you wish in this section
The fact that feature development has not (yet?) been formalized needs to
be seen along with the fact that GRASS GIS is under active development for
35+ years. Just now, in April 2019 we moved to GitHub which offers the
possibility of a quite different development model. Probably a bit more
formal model may come up but who knows... Innovation is triggered by the
needs of the developers (who are mostly strong users of GRASS GIS
themselves in all kind of settings, i.e. academia, commercial businesses or
others) which may differ from software projects in which many developers
don't really use the software. We do a lot of quality control, keep
backward compatibility and have an eye on the support of different
operating systems. Now, more CI/CD and QA systems are on the way which will
further help to keep quality high.

The last bit
A few questions about the organisation of product management within your
project, your analysis of your competitors and your communications with
your users.

How do product management decisions sit within your project's organisation?
Who makes the decisions?

   - Project Steering Committee
   - A Product Management sub-committee
   - The contributors decide
   - Other:

Do you track what your competitors are doing?

   - Yes
   - No
   - We don't have any competitors
   - Other:

How do you track competitor developments?
If you are tracking competitor developments how do you do so? If not, can
you explain why this is not a consideration in determining the direction of
your project?
We use the software of competitor as well. Often, when it comes to massive
data processing, GRASS GIS frequently outperforms other software packages.

Do end users get a say on the roadmap?
Do you have a channel for dialogue with your users? How do you reach them
and how important is their input in determining your roadmap?
Sure, we have mailing lists, issue trackers, talk at conferences and listen
and react to comments on social media.

Any last thoughts?
Anything I haven't asked you that you would like to share
Thanks for the interview

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