Well here goes nothing, There have been other attempts but why not give it another go
I'm not here to find or have any expectation and I'm certainly not saying I have any answers but here are my small thoughts feel free to tack on
I think the biggest area I worry about is understanding what and how priorities are created and maintained and having a clear line of discourse
I think the RFC is a good idea but we need to bang on about it and that's a communcation thing.
Feedback
RoadMaps
Manging expectations
all the above contribute to each other.
By publishing a road map we manage expectations but I think "we" need to understand how those work ie are gold partners contributing
so ideally we publish a road map and this is reported on publically 1 a monh through updates (ocassionally we will have no additional progress but still working on x yz and z
and as part of that we should say here is your chance to contribute to the new Block editor rfc or make comments and have someone maintain that rfc
the idea being.rfcs remain open a little longer for discourse , people can see the decisions and chat
and then sensible open decisions can be made .. so if you say we have other features that have priority we have a mechanism to see that people are pasionate about feature x and maybe it need to be part of the roadmap sooner than dangly widget x
I love and think the idea of having some one Like Arnold visser or group who can talk directly is also good its not just then email . again the idea is personalising the feed back and getting value from the people at the coal face
people asking for a hammer but you have improved the lamp.. (its abad analogy but I am suffering quite badly from hayfever and maybe quite pilled up)
The roadmap also needs to be reviewed at least 4 times a year.. The various gold partner meetings seem a rgeat place to do that and gather local information too
The work that perplex have done for example is great and I know they talked to HQ, but how can we all do that without overloading HQ and making sure we stay even handed.
can we make the Pull request team bigger? that way we stand a greater chance or requests getting merged especially the smaller ones (this is a personal thought just to get some older extant pr's merged
That's an interesting set of thoughts there Ravi :-) Thanks for opening up the discussion here.
I want to start my response by saying, my original tweet that started that big twitter discussion was just a question and it wasn't my intention to start the sort of thread that occurred. :-)
Roadmaps
I have a personal view on the "Road Map", and that is that there should be more than one. There should be a very high level overview one, which I kinda feel is the one we are seeing at the minute, but it would be beneficial to have a dedicated CMS road map (particularly) and maybe another one for Commercial Products (Forms, Deploy On Premise, Cloud, Uno, Headless). Or maybe 2 for commercial products, breaking out Add-ons and SASS offerings into their own roadmaps. This would allow for a bit more of a detailed breakdown of things that are on going, of use for the public/contributors, the CMS one could highlight both HQ driven objectives, as well as Community available objectives. That way people who want to get involved know where they should focus their attention.
RFCs
I don't like the RFC process, I don't find it very clear but I don't know how it could be changed to improve it. I don't think a "Pull Request" in GitHub, is the right platform as people a) aren't necessarily users of GitHub, or b) Know how to actually read it. I know I struggle to read them properly. I can read the comments, but I don't fully get how to read the actual RFC itself.
Communication
The HQ has it's own priorities, especially around it's commercial offerings and I think that's great. And I have an idea on how they could improve communication around that, which in turn may help engagement with it.
In general, I think the HQ does a fairly good job with communication, however I do feel they drop the ball a bit more often than I'd like to see. I'm happy to talk with the HQ about it and explain my personal views in more detail with them but I do also think that, for the most part, they do a great job.
Community engagement
I would love to see a bit more "general" involvement in public discussions from the HQ, even if they can't answer the questions being asked knowing that they are taken on board and, at a future date, or in private, an update/response could be provided. Arnold did a great job getting involved and defusing/responding to the twitter thread that sparked this post of yours and for that he deserves a H5YR for sure. :-)
It is the lack of response/acknowledgement that I think annoys/irritates some people and starts the negative spiral of conversations. And unfortunately that has a knock-on affect on anyone who sees those conversations.
I'd love to see Our rebuilt but with the Forums given more prominence and used for things other than just support. There are many forums out there that do a great job of multi-threaded engagement.
It could be broken down at a top level by product area: CMS, Cloud, Uno, Heartcore, Core, Add ons, etc; then each could have a relevant subset: Forum (General Chat, Support, Feature Requests, Package Chat), Documentation, Packages, References, RFCs, Git, etc.
Having a section under each product area dealing with "Feature Requests" should make it obvious to devs/users where to suggest things and make it MUCH easier for HQ to harvest good ones. Package Chat could be a great place for package devs to run an idea up the flag pole and see if it flies before getting stuck in to coding.
If Our, (or another Umbraco top level site) was used as the single communications centre I think engagement would be easier and better.
Okay Craig .. I think this has real value .. I'd never considered lets look at what we have.. and then ask how and if we can use them better..
and in conjunction with high level and smaller tageted product roadmaps we get a level of detail needed to make sure we are all accountable.
and then swiping my smaller less good idea a review and using the Umbraco Community officer type to relay and defuse these things.. and that seems to be working
if we can now show and bring the efforts of the working group into a concrete plan..and the road map can change
It may allow us the super tanker and speedboats.. it eliminates lighthouses and hopefully prevents us running aground ( i think i run my metaphor).. i want to get a You sunk my battleship but only 4 people wil get my joke..
I really like the idea of a more granular roadmap - the high-level view is fine from a consumer perspective, but a technical roadmap would compliment that quite nicely. Transparency is good.
For HQ, I think the difficulty comes from juggling the OS CMS and the growing stable of commercial products (namely Cloud, Uno and Headless, the Big 3). The required/expected communications for these will always differ - it's fair that cards may be held closer for commercial products, since these are the ones that keep the lights on, keep HQ staffers paid, and provide at least part of the foundation for the CMS itself. There is a lot going on, a lot of balls to keep in the air, and only limited resources with which to do so.
It's really only the last couple of years that have seen Umbraco transition from an open source CMS with some paid-for optional extras, to a full-fledged tech company with a range of offerings covering both the commercial and OS spaces. Understandably, that transition will come with a lot of learning, and it will take time to get it right. It will always be a difficult balance to strike - positioning the developer-focused CMS platform alongside the bits that pay the bills.
Communication is really hard to get right. It take time and expertise and money and probably a failure or two. If the community can serve as a guide, I think we'll get to a collective happy place much sooner.
What can we do to improve the roadmap and communicate better on all sides
Well here goes nothing, There have been other attempts but why not give it another go
I'm not here to find or have any expectation and I'm certainly not saying I have any answers but here are my small thoughts feel free to tack on
I think the biggest area I worry about is understanding what and how priorities are created and maintained and having a clear line of discourse
I think the RFC is a good idea but we need to bang on about it and that's a communcation thing.
Feedback
RoadMaps
Manging expectations
all the above contribute to each other. By publishing a road map we manage expectations but I think "we" need to understand how those work ie are gold partners contributing
so ideally we publish a road map and this is reported on publically 1 a monh through updates (ocassionally we will have no additional progress but still working on x yz and z and as part of that we should say here is your chance to contribute to the new Block editor rfc or make comments and have someone maintain that rfc
the idea being.rfcs remain open a little longer for discourse , people can see the decisions and chat and then sensible open decisions can be made .. so if you say we have other features that have priority we have a mechanism to see that people are pasionate about feature x and maybe it need to be part of the roadmap sooner than dangly widget x
I love and think the idea of having some one Like Arnold visser or group who can talk directly is also good its not just then email . again the idea is personalising the feed back and getting value from the people at the coal face
people asking for a hammer but you have improved the lamp.. (its abad analogy but I am suffering quite badly from hayfever and maybe quite pilled up)
The roadmap also needs to be reviewed at least 4 times a year.. The various gold partner meetings seem a rgeat place to do that and gather local information too
The work that perplex have done for example is great and I know they talked to HQ, but how can we all do that without overloading HQ and making sure we stay even handed.
can we make the Pull request team bigger? that way we stand a greater chance or requests getting merged especially the smaller ones (this is a personal thought just to get some older extant pr's merged
v8, dot net core and heartcore
That's an interesting set of thoughts there Ravi :-) Thanks for opening up the discussion here.
I want to start my response by saying, my original tweet that started that big twitter discussion was just a question and it wasn't my intention to start the sort of thread that occurred. :-)
Roadmaps
I have a personal view on the "Road Map", and that is that there should be more than one. There should be a very high level overview one, which I kinda feel is the one we are seeing at the minute, but it would be beneficial to have a dedicated CMS road map (particularly) and maybe another one for Commercial Products (Forms, Deploy On Premise, Cloud, Uno, Headless). Or maybe 2 for commercial products, breaking out Add-ons and SASS offerings into their own roadmaps. This would allow for a bit more of a detailed breakdown of things that are on going, of use for the public/contributors, the CMS one could highlight both HQ driven objectives, as well as Community available objectives. That way people who want to get involved know where they should focus their attention.
RFCs
I don't like the RFC process, I don't find it very clear but I don't know how it could be changed to improve it. I don't think a "Pull Request" in GitHub, is the right platform as people a) aren't necessarily users of GitHub, or b) Know how to actually read it. I know I struggle to read them properly. I can read the comments, but I don't fully get how to read the actual RFC itself.
Communication
The HQ has it's own priorities, especially around it's commercial offerings and I think that's great. And I have an idea on how they could improve communication around that, which in turn may help engagement with it.
In general, I think the HQ does a fairly good job with communication, however I do feel they drop the ball a bit more often than I'd like to see. I'm happy to talk with the HQ about it and explain my personal views in more detail with them but I do also think that, for the most part, they do a great job.
Community engagement
I would love to see a bit more "general" involvement in public discussions from the HQ, even if they can't answer the questions being asked knowing that they are taken on board and, at a future date, or in private, an update/response could be provided. Arnold did a great job getting involved and defusing/responding to the twitter thread that sparked this post of yours and for that he deserves a H5YR for sure. :-) It is the lack of response/acknowledgement that I think annoys/irritates some people and starts the negative spiral of conversations. And unfortunately that has a knock-on affect on anyone who sees those conversations.
I'd love to see Our rebuilt but with the Forums given more prominence and used for things other than just support. There are many forums out there that do a great job of multi-threaded engagement.
It could be broken down at a top level by product area: CMS, Cloud, Uno, Heartcore, Core, Add ons, etc; then each could have a relevant subset: Forum (General Chat, Support, Feature Requests, Package Chat), Documentation, Packages, References, RFCs, Git, etc.
Having a section under each product area dealing with "Feature Requests" should make it obvious to devs/users where to suggest things and make it MUCH easier for HQ to harvest good ones. Package Chat could be a great place for package devs to run an idea up the flag pole and see if it flies before getting stuck in to coding.
If Our, (or another Umbraco top level site) was used as the single communications centre I think engagement would be easier and better.
Just my two penn'th :)
Okay Craig .. I think this has real value .. I'd never considered lets look at what we have.. and then ask how and if we can use them better..
and in conjunction with high level and smaller tageted product roadmaps we get a level of detail needed to make sure we are all accountable.
and then swiping my smaller less good idea a review and using the Umbraco Community officer type to relay and defuse these things.. and that seems to be working
if we can now show and bring the efforts of the working group into a concrete plan..and the road map can change
It may allow us the super tanker and speedboats.. it eliminates lighthouses and hopefully prevents us running aground ( i think i run my metaphor).. i want to get a You sunk my battleship but only 4 people wil get my joke..
I really like the idea of a more granular roadmap - the high-level view is fine from a consumer perspective, but a technical roadmap would compliment that quite nicely. Transparency is good.
For HQ, I think the difficulty comes from juggling the OS CMS and the growing stable of commercial products (namely Cloud, Uno and Headless, the Big 3). The required/expected communications for these will always differ - it's fair that cards may be held closer for commercial products, since these are the ones that keep the lights on, keep HQ staffers paid, and provide at least part of the foundation for the CMS itself. There is a lot going on, a lot of balls to keep in the air, and only limited resources with which to do so.
It's really only the last couple of years that have seen Umbraco transition from an open source CMS with some paid-for optional extras, to a full-fledged tech company with a range of offerings covering both the commercial and OS spaces. Understandably, that transition will come with a lot of learning, and it will take time to get it right. It will always be a difficult balance to strike - positioning the developer-focused CMS platform alongside the bits that pay the bills.
Communication is really hard to get right. It take time and expertise and money and probably a failure or two. If the community can serve as a guide, I think we'll get to a collective happy place much sooner.
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