Iterating on the ad-hoc nature of improving TOP.

[kashura]

Observations / Ideas

Although I was invited to contribute to TOP due to being the "process" person, I want to be extremely cautious of the fact that this is a volunteer led environment, so my intentions are to not turn this into a job for anyone, so everything I say are just some thoughts based on experience, and they should be discussed.

Everything below is specific to TOP improvement from the core/maintainers group. It is NOT about how we handle issues in Github or moderation of Discord.

1. Use GitHub or another "home" for discussions rather than keeping them in Discord.

   • Discord is not a great place to keep up with discussions if they are not focused on a specific topic. Currently we have #maintainers-discussions and #maintainers-offtopic channels. They are fine for general chatter and moderation, but they are a bad medium to have a dialogue around an initiative due to the lack of threading and an easy way to follow a conversation if you're not present in the moment.

   • Therefore, there are 3 options that I suggest:

     1. Keep everything flowing through Github including discussing ideas and plans.
     2. Use Github for broad proposals/ideas and supplement with Discord channels that are focused on those topics.
     3. There are a few Notion users, and we could use Notion.

     The BIG piece for any tool that we use should be transparency to the community on what is being worked on. For example, there should be an easy way for us to share to the community what the next 2-3 big items we are working on are.

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2. Setting priority on what the TOP team is focusing on. Voting process that involves both core/maintainers and the community.

   • If I asked you now about what is the priority for TOP, would there be a consensus on what it is? What if there is a tie, how do we pick the winner?
   • IMHO, we need to create a flow of rough ideas (mostly gathered from the community) that then get narrowed into possibilities, and prioritized by core and moved into the working stage. Kanban type of flow in other words. Currently we have lots of ideas bounced around in Discord, but they get lost.

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3. The Process Piece: There needs to be agreed upon timebox on accomplishing something. Regular communication on the progress. Someone to own keeping an eye on that.

   • Once the priority is set, then the work should be organized in Github. That means breaking down the deliverables into smaller pieces, and running it through a sprint of sorts.
   • A specific Discord channel gets created for the purpose of keeping discussion in one place.
   • There needs to be an owner for the paperwork and keeping an eye on the flow of work ( hey you got me! :D ).
     • Actually documenting broken down deliverables into stories/tickets, for example from the HTML/CSS course plan - "Write lesson on Introduction to HTML" and within the ticket we have broken down pieces on what it needs to included.
   • Imho, we need a cadence of catching up to talk about how things are going. Even if they are once a month, and even if they are via IM.
   • The timebox itself can be whatever, but should not be more than a month. And it's not to make it a job, but to not let things fall through the cracks.

[kashura]

Meeting minutes from 7/16 discussion

Attendees: @kashura , @KevinMulhern , @wise-king-sullyman , @marvingay , @codyloyd ; late attendees @I3uckwheat , @ZachBaird

Some pre-notes from James:

People > process, so it's not about tools.
Can't half ass it. Trying something different after giving up for a while is not iterating on experience.

Need an ok from people to be checked in with.

Focus on increasing transparency.

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Minutes:

• We discussed about the painpoints around Discord, specifically that it is not good for discussing an idea/decision that should be kept for posterity. Discord becomes very noisy and it is tough to reference back. The group felt that we should give Github Discussions another shot since it will allow us to continue keeping things in Github, allow for transparency, and to supplement we will create temporary Discord channels to keep discussions on point.

  • Action items:

    • James will work on creating a space for discussions and outlining suggestions on how those should be organized. Kevin already granted permissions to remove that roadblock.
    • Cody and Kevin volunteered with creating the channels once we figure out which ones we need.

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• We discussed that currently we don't have a good funnel of ideas and we don't have a way to keep those ideas somewhere to reference later. We also discussed that a voting system on what should be worked on for TOP needs to be solidified.

  • Additionally, we spoke about that although it is nice to work on stuff that someone is passionate about, there are also things that might not be sexy, but still need to be done, and we need to prioritize those accordingly.

  • Action Items:

    • James is going to suggest a flow for Github Projects where we can start doing some prioritization, and projectize some of those initiatives.
    • - Github Projects might not be the perfect tool for this, or it might be. Would be nice to brainstorm some ways to have a voting system that includes the community as well.
    • - How do we prioritize a decision and how many people need to attend/vote/share opinion (core/maintainers).

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• HTML/CSS course seems like the prime candidate to try out using GP more actively, and building out some touch point cadence around it.
  • Action Items:
    • James to start working on organizing this and suggesting a lightweight process around it.
    • James + Volunteers to start breaking down the course into actionable small pieces and creating stories/tickets in GP.