Tracking contributions

[Josh Boyer]

On Mon, 2 Jun 2008 12:41:10 -0800
"Jeff Spaleta" <jspaleta at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 2, 2008 at 5:42 AM, Josh Boyer <jwboyer at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Why do you need to track that?
> 
> 
> Why does any volunteer organization want to keep track of the amount
> of time individuals are committing and what things they are doing?  We
> want to make sure we are putting human resources into the overall
> project in a way that we aren't creating bottlenecks, or worse in a
> way that is wasteful.  The most critically important resource we have
> is available volunteer time and goodwill, and we need to start looking
> seriously at how well we are managing those resources as they come
> into the door.  We need to make sure that when we encourage people to
> participate we are doing it a way that we are asking people to spend
> time in a way that makes a positive impact. And we need to find ways
> to measure that impact.  If we think mentoring is a good idea, then we
> need to try to measure that impact. But we cant really gauge impact
> unless we have a reasonable estimate of the manhours going in. More
> important for me we need to try to make a long term effort to trend
> the impact of different areas of 'contribution' that we stand up.
> Unless we attempt to track manhours spent in different areas how do we
> ever really get a handle on whether we need to push one area over
> another through a project wide recruitment program?   Different parts
> of the project are going to grow organically on their own...but not
> necessarily at the same rate. As one bit grows it can create growing
> pains for other groups, and its exactly this sort of imbalance that we
> need to watch out for and respond to via recruitment drives.

Fair enough.  Good points.  And I agree that having such data would be
great for planning, etc.

Now, you have issues with all of that too.

1) How do you do it across the Project as a whole without resorting to
a "timecard" that contributors punch.

2) How do you get around the fact that some people might not want their
contribution time tracked?

3) How do you account for transient contributors?  E.g. The overall
contribution time for a particular area may stay the same across two
different time periods.  It could be all from the same contributor
base, or it could be spread across a bunch of different contributors
that come and go.  The wiki would likely be a decent example of the
latter.

Or, put another way, do we want to track contributor retention?  (See
lkml thread from last week for a similar discussion and the
observations they saw there.)

4) How do you balance "paid for" time vs. volunteer time?  Both are
invaluable, and it's a fine line to walk in some cases.

5) How do you quantify "intangibles" like helping people on #fedora?

6) How do you actively "recruit" people to areas that need help without
driving them away altogether?

None of those are easy questions, and I don't really expect answers in
a reply immediately.  But they are things that need to be carefully
considered if we're going to implement any kind of manhour tracking.
Hopefully the Board (and/or FESCo) can work on those in the next term.

josh