[WG: Sakai QA] [Building Sakai] [DG: User Experience] Proposal: create new Jira issue type: proposal

Tue May 5 07:48:18 PDT 2009

I have in mind (to start) technical issues that are cross-cutting and  
require community consensus before we choose to implement a change.   
In other words, issues like:

upgrade our supported technology stack to some new version (e.g.,  
Java 1.6, Tomcat 6, Maven 2.0.10)
upgrade a shared dependency to a new version (e.g., commons-io)
delete Eclipse meta-data files from svn
etc.

At times proposals are made on the list that generate discussion but  
no resolution.  Sometimes they are added to Jira, sometimes not.   
Sometimes they are remembered and reintroduced (e.g., delete eclipse  
metadata files, first proposed back in 2008), sometimes forgotten.

I think it would be good to develop a consistent practice with  
respect to capturing these suggestions in a single place rather than  
having to search the dev list and Jira to locate proposals like those  
outlined above.  The suggestion to upgrade our default version of  
Maven or that we need to upgrade to Java 1.6 (more an imperative than  
a proposal) our two threads that you won't find in Jira.  In Jira  
there exist cross-cutting issues that get proposed by people (e.g.,  
upgrade commons-io to 1.4), but there is no good way to search and  
retrieve all of them for review without dredging up a whole raft of  
extraneous issues.

It is this difficulty that motivates my suggestion that we add an  
issue type: proposal (to simplify tracking/searching) and that we  
modify our practice of on list proposal-making to ensure that the  
proposal is accompanied by an entry in Jira that captures the issue  
and ultimately its resolution.

Cheers,

Anth

On May 5, 2009, at 4:08 PM, Michael Korcuska wrote:

> I'm with Stephen on this one. I almost proposed the same idea  
> (using some keyword in the issue title) this morning....
>
> Michael
>
> On May 5, 2009, at 16:03, Stephen Marquard wrote:
>
>> Maybe you could define "proposal" more clearly. Mark's response  
>> seems to suggest that a proposal is like something submitted to  
>> the Requirements WG (a broad functional requirement). So already  
>> there is some confusion...
>>
>> What concerns me is whether people will file feature requests as  
>> proposals. I suppose someone could always go and convert those to  
>> FRs. Still, it seems like clutter in JIRA confusing to newcomers  
>> for something that wouldn't be used that often.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Stephen
>>
>> Stephen Marquard, Learning Technologies Co-ordinator
>> Centre for Educational Technology, University of Cape Town
>> http://www.cet.uct.ac.za
>> Email/IM/XMPP: stephen.marquard at uct.ac.za
>> Phone: +27-21-650-5037 Cell: +27-83-500-5290
>>
>>
>>>>> Anthony Whyte <arwhyte at umich.edu> 2009/05/05 03:57 PM >>>
>> I think creating a new issue type called proposals is much less
>> brittle than opting for a pre-fix "Proposal" in the subject line.
>> Creating a component called "proposals" seems to me to stretch the
>> definition of component beyond what was intended and appears a
>> confusing alternative to me.
>>
>> The Type field which is positioned directly below the Key field when
>> you look at an issue seems to me an unambiguous pointer regarding the
>> nature of an issue; i.e. is a bug, a task, a proposal, etc.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Anth
>>
>>
>> On May 5, 2009, at 1:51 PM, Stephen Marquard wrote:
>>
>>> Rather than creating a new issue type, which has the potential to
>>> confuse newcomers to JIRA, why not just use a Task issue type with
>>> the convention of putting Proposal: in the subject line? Or use a
>>> component.
>>>
>>> Cheers
>>> Stephen
>>>
>>> Stephen Marquard, Learning Technologies Co-ordinator
>>> Centre for Educational Technology, University of Cape Town
>>> http://www.cet.uct.ac.za
>>> Email/IM/XMPP: stephen.marquard at uct.ac.za
>>> Phone: +27-21-650-5037 Cell: +27-83-500-5290
>>>
>>>
>>>>>> On 2009/05/05 at 12:18 AM, Anthony Whyte <arwhyte at umich.edu>  
>>>>>> wrote:
>>> Sakai-Dev sees its share of technical proposals; some get approved,
>>> some get rejected, while others get put on hold for one reason or
>>> another.  Searching for proposals can be tricky as some proposals  
>>> get
>>> recorded in Jira, others proposed only on a Sakai list.
>>>
>>> I'd like to propose that we add a new task type called "proposal" in
>>> Jira where proposals can be submitted, voted on, watched, assigned,
>>> tracked, resolved and closed.  "Feature Request" won't do; my recent
>>> proposal to delete Eclipse metadata files is a task not a feature
>>> request, one worth polling the community to see if support existed
>>> for such work (so far unanimous approval along with several  
>>> excellent
>>> suggestions as to how it should be done correctly).
>>>
>>> Adding "proposal" as a type permits easy searching: searching on
>>> "upgrade" or filtering on "global" does not return a clean list of
>>> outstanding proposals and I think we should promote easy ways for
>>> people to search and track suggested initiatives (after all, for
>>> instance, we have the end of life of Java 1.5 to contemplate).
>>> Requiring that technical proposals are logged in Jira would create
>>> one central proposals repository.
>>>
>>> Along with it we adjust our proposal handling protocol to something
>>> like this:
>>>
>>> 1) document your proposal in Jira
>>> 2) announce it on Sakai-Dev and/or other appropriate Sakai lists and
>>> seek community comment and support (vote on list or in Jira)
>>> 3) record community feedback  (e.g., "I suggest this approach",
>>> "Don't forget to do x", "This is not the right time for n reasons,"
>>> etc.) in Jira
>>> 4) if proposal approved change status to approve / if not approved
>>> change status to rejected, resolution "won't fix" (or add another
>>> resolution type)
>>> 6) when ready to implement, change type to task, add affects  
>>> version,
>>> status open/in progress
>>> 7) resolve, test, close
>>>
>>> That is my proposal.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Anthony
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Some outstanding proposals :
>>>
>>> Add a proposal type in Jira
>>> Delete Eclipse metadata files from SVN
>>> Upgrade to Maven 2.0.10 (or thereabouts)
>>> Upgrade to Java SE 6 (e.g., 1.6)
>>>
>>> Upgrade to Tomcat 6
>>> http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-8544
>>> http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-10720  (closed)
>>>
>>> Upgrade to Spring 2.5.6
>>> http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-16029
>>>
>>> Upgrade to Hibernate 3.2.6
>>> http://bugs.sakaiproject.org/jira/browse/SAK-12508
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
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>
> -- 
> Michael Korcuska
> Executive Director, Sakai Foundation
> mkorcuska at sakaifoundation.org
> phone: +1 510-931-6559
> mobile (US): +1 510-599-2586
> skype: mkorcuska
>
>
>
>
>

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