dmd 2.065 - Agenda

[Brad Roberts]

On 11/14/13 10:23 AM, Dejan Lekic wrote:
>> Scrum etc is for commercial software development. It does not really work for Open Source
>> development, because people will always work on what they personally consider most important and
>> most interesting. In the agile world there is a customer, who prioritizes work items. This cannot
>> be applied here.
>>
>> Bugzilla votes and stuff are nice to let devs know about bugs, but not necessarily motivates to
>> fix them.
>
> My Scrum experience tells me to humbly disagree because Scrum like all other agile process tools is
> all about experimentation. Almost all Scrum practices are applicable in open-source world. No Scrum
> team works the same as the other, they all have different ways of applying Scrum (that is why it is
> called a "process tool", not a methodology as many people use to call it).
>
> Kanban is (IMHO) even more applicable in the open-source world as it has only two prescribed
> practices, the rest is up to the team to apply any agile practice they think will help the project...
>
> Take a look how "big open-source guys" do things. Their core team (typically full-time employed)
> works on whatever is on the sprint backlog, while contributors all around the world take whatever
> they like working on (with help of mentors quite often). So, it is possible to have a nicely
> organised open-source project, if people are willing to do so.

Which is pretty much exactly what we have.  All the paid developers (no one) follow a core mission, 
and all the volunteers scratch the itch they want to address the most.

More seriously, can you look at the linux kernel, or any of the major browser projects, or any of 
the major gui tool kits, or... and find a nice clear list of what's going to be in them before they 
release?  Maybe close to the end of the release, but before or at the beginning of the cycle?

More organization would be nice, but let's not ascribe too much faith that we're all _that_ 
different from many other projects.  I think a key difference is that we have so many more big 
things that aren't near where we want them to be that it's easier to be unhappy.