On Monday, 10 February 2014 at 23:20:50 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
wrote:
Terrific. The challenge here is to adapt project management
theory to the realities of a volunteer project.
Yes, I understand that. I guess it often means that key people
have to do the "unfun" stuff and let the more intermittent
volunteers do the "fun" stuff…
But I believe that "democratic design" requires very strong
communication of vision if you want to create something new
(otherwise you tend to end up with bastardized copies of what
exist, since people will navigate towards the safe common ground).
that. I'm all ears on advice on how to do better. I just have
difficulty seeing how more management would help.
Just a suggestion of some possibilities:
Externally (front of web page):
- More clear communication of the boundaries of the project.
- Stating clearly what ground you do not cover.
- Defining short term/long term goals on your front page.
- Make it visible when they are met or changed.
Internally (you probably do this already in some form):
- Map out a list of dependencies between long term goals and use
it for planning so that people who are more inclined to do
proof-of-concept stuff can help out.
- Some sort of social reward mechanism (borrow from MMOs?). I
like the bounty stuff, but social rewards are much stronger.
- Make commitments in key areas. Like stating how the project
will change if you cannot meet deadlines. Like a priori stating
what you will do with the GC if benchmark X is not met by date N.
That could make those wanting GC push harder and those not
wanting GC more complacent. Ok, maybe the wrong thing to do for
the GC, but you get the idea, get the direction set.
(Is it reasonable to limit features/production-quality to the
shared common denominator of 3 backends? Can you somehow mitigate
that?)
