* Michael Meeks (michael.me...@collabora.com) wrote: > Hi there, > > > * ESC tender project proposal process (Thorsten) > > + proposal would be: (Thorsten) > > + share the draft in public: see > > https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/YprpsFP45z7a7p3 >
..... > + the unnecessary lengths we go to exclude people: the three > years is egregiously punitive - particularly in light of > the forward looking Declaration of Potential Conflict; lets > remove it. The future matters, for future tendering, not > the past. As someone who has very recently left a large relevant company, the other problem is that in a large company there are people who are on entirely different projects with no overlap with TDF stuff. Excluding ~300k people seems a little exessive when a few 10s of them may be relevant. Dave > + the effort we go to to exclude people - when the output of > this is just good advice for the board to act on is staggering. > > + the balance seems very substantially wrong in terms > of preserving our statutory meritocracy & efficiency > > + it is not worth sacrificing these to this extent to > try to solve every possible concern someone could > raise: there is already significant ongoing risk of people > using such spurious concerns to unbalance our governance. > > + Effort Estimate & exclusion is silly: > > + excluding the few non-conflicted experts in the > space - who are vital to review the code is totally > counter-productive. > > + if someone is not going to tender, and is not > affiliated - just assessing the estimate > should not exclude them from further process - > such as eg. seeing if it was delivered properly. > > + it is very unclear what rational can be used to > add a whole extra layer of CoI here. > > + the pool of skilled people here in any specific > area is small. > > + There are also many deeply wrong ideas embedded in > this idea of an accurate effort estimate. > > wrong premise 1. that effort is easy to estimate - for > extreme accuracy it takes a significant %age > of the time to do the job. > > + such estimates are best done by 2x > skilled people, with a range of > best/likely/worst triple-point > estimates, breaking down the problem > etc. > > + even so - fixed-priced projects bankrupt > skilled consultancies in all industries, > even non-innovative traditional ones eg. > building projects. > > wrong premise 2. that all engineers have the same > skill/experience level - there is no > "person day" - this varies 10x depending > on the person even among experienced engineers > cf. Fred Brooks, passim ad nauseum > > wrong premise 3. that person days can be meaningfully linked > to cost for a fixed-price project. > > + pricing include risk of overruns > > + pricing includes load factors & other > concurrent bids, capacity, probability of > other bids closing etc. this is a commercial > nightmare; think Ryan-Air, over-selling the > plane by a factor of two. > > + payment risk as well as reputational risks of > contracting for TDF are -very- substantial. > > the only sensible determination of price is > by seeing the result of a public, contested > tendering. To pretend otherwise is silly. > > 4. many tendered fixed-price tasks cost the people > executing on them rather more than they are bid > for - not even the companies with the experts > can get this perfectly right. > > + worse - this quest for an accurate estimate seems to > serve no very useful purpose. It is fine to have a > hyper-accurate number, but if no-one will deliver it in > that time - you wasted your time. > > + I would suggest that we instead have a process that > ranks tasks, tenders them by priority top-down and then > decides on reasonableness based on a number of ball-park > estimates. > > + the wisdom of crowds can give us several rough > ball-parks reasonably easily. > > + and otherwise to completely ignore this step, or > at least explain what extra purpose it tries to solve > > + Obvious hostages to fortune: > > "Only non-Conflicted Members can vote in the ESC." > > + this needs to be profoundly (and redundantly) > specialized - in the text - to avoid its mis-use, > and mis-quoting outside the context of this policy. > > + please add many more un-necessary words - Carlo > has made a nice neat text, but the messy political > reality is of constant word twisting at TDF. > > + the sign that we need a 'Note:' here to stop > people panic-ing - is a good one that this > will cause problems and mis-understandings > in future. > > + wherever there is a note - make the text > more verbose, and clearer as to scope at > the expense of redundancy. > > + this will save much acrimony & discussion > in future - the definition of Conflicted here > is excessively broad for no obvious reason, it > should not be widely applied. > > With those fixed, it looks fine - plenty of non-controversial & well > drafted stuff in there. In fact - I'm rather pleased with the tone, approach > and balance in general - it's refreshing. > > Since the ESC has (as yet) not been poisoned, and still works by > consensus - it seems good to build a social solution on top of that here > that can work well to avoid the (AFAICS) totally theoretical problem of > people advising the board to invest in one thing or another. > > As I said in the call, there are ideas to have simpler ways to avoid all > of this legalese: for example having the Trustees vote on things they > particularly like / want - although - generally (having helped to run the > ranking in the past) - it is like pulling teeth even getting enough > individuals of the ESC to spend the hour(s) it takes to read all the > proposals, give them a fair hearing and provide a sensible ranking for them. > Possibly this could be a bonus for membership. > > Then again the ESC has traditionally focused on on-sexy, technical debt > type things that we can be sure no-one else will be able to do for fun / > afford. > > Regards, > > Michael. > > -- > michael.me...@collabora.com <><, GM Collabora Productivity > Hangout: mejme...@gmail.com, Skype: mmeeks > (M) +44 7795 666 147 - timezone usually UK / Europe -- -----Open up your eyes, open up your mind, open up your code ------- / Dr. David Alan Gilbert | Running GNU/Linux | Happy \ \ dave @ treblig.org | | In Hex / \ _________________________|_____ http://www.treblig.org |_______/