Insight for post-GA

[David Nalley]

On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 3:00 PM, Paul W. Frields <stickster at gmail.com> wrote:
> OK, referencing our meeting minutes here:
> http://meetbot.fedoraproject.org/fedora-mktg/2010-04-22/fedora_insight.2010-04-22-18.01.txt
>
> Insight is not ready as of our go/no-go meeting this afternoon, and
> based on our self-imposed production schedule, we are going to target
> post-GA for this work.
>
> However, I am still concerned about an issue that's plagued us since
> we started, which is that as a group, it doesn't seem like we're
> developing our skills at *solving* problems on the Zikula platform.
>
> We've been extremely fortunate to have some wonderful people from the
> Zikula community who are spending time helping us fix problems when we
> run into them.  To what extent is that collaboration helping them?
> Are we going to approach a point where they are expending much more
> effort than what they're getting in return?  What does that mean for
> sustainability?
>
> These are hard questions.  I'm not proposing that we simply not work
> on Insight.  It's a worthwhile effort many people have said they want,
> and would increase the visibility and depth of content we could offer
> a lot of different types of users and the public at large, in a way
> our wiki can't.
>
> We also don't have to halt work on the remaining tickets by any means.
> Are there some alternatives we should pursue at the same time?
>


If you look at projects similar in scope that we've tackled there is
something we're missing, and that's a real project owner/champion.

Please don't take this as criticism of anyone. Besides, even if I
meant it that way, I'd be most at fault.

What I mean by a real project owner is that we need someone who is
passionate about getting this done, learns the software (whatever that
may be), and then works on it, heavily if needed, and becomes the
champion for this project. As wonderful as our friends at Zikula have
been, I fear that we have used them as a crutch, to our detriment, and
not taken ownership.

To date we've had people who took ownership of portions of this
project (packaging, workflow, infrastructure, etc) And they've done
good work. And we've had great luck in pulling in help from Zikula,
and other parts of the community. But the end of the day, we have to
be able to run, troubleshoot, administer, and fix this ourselves. If
we start with something less than that, I fear it will be an exercise
in frustration.