Some recent changes

[Paul W. Frields]

On Tue, Oct 20, 2009 at 01:31:25PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> On 10/20/2009 01:12 PM, Adam Williamson wrote:
> This has been the shortest Fedora release cycle yet, hasn't it? I can
> relate to trying to get as much polish as possible with what time is
> left with the major features under folks' belts.

Not much shorter than our usual six months, actually -- although it
probably seems like it after the longer F10->F11 period.

> I know the schedule is important, but more times than not in the various
> projects I've worked on, it's the small usability tweaks that get
> dropped, the schedule is used as the justification, and it is a really
> disappointing loss of an opportunity to make a big positive impact.
> Sometimes, also, these kinds of tweaks do need to be made towards the
> end part of the implementation cycle as sometimes initial designs for
> features evolve between initial requirements, spec, and implementation -
> usability tweaks you would have proposed early on aren't always
> applicable anymore.
> 
> Moving forward, for F13, could we propose a feature called 'small effort
> / big impact polish'? We could brainstorm early on these sorts of
> changes we might make to the desktop default configuration and enumerate
> them on the wiki? Maybe if they are clearly communicated up front using
> the Features page, at the beginning of the cycle, folks could get more
> used to the idea / know its coming with a little less stress / perceived
> risk. The 'implementation' work for this 'feature' during the cycle
> would be less actual development and more doing any research /
> comparative studies / usability testing needed to help make a call on them.
> 
> In short, I don't want us to lose out on big impact polish changes, but
> I also don't think the ends always justify the means. I do understand
> the concern that discussing these sorts of changes openly will turn into
> a useless flame-fest, but if we can apply just a little bit of structure
> to that (maybe a designated feedback period is scheduled into the f13
> feature, for example) the feared flame-fest could be avoided.

This seems very rational to me -- the middle paragraph above seems a
bit coincident with "Fit and Finish," but that's not a bad thing. :-)
I wrote a reply earlier with much the same point.  I feel like the
response to every Desktop change should not be "This is different!
Different is bad!", and at the same time we can do a better job as a
project of propagating change *notices* around in advance with just a
little effort and goodwill.

-- 
Paul W. Frields                                http://paul.frields.org/
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