D8 Lessons Learned and How We Can Make D9 Better
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After a year of "project managing" Drupal 8, I've learned a lot with some fellow PM's who support me on a weekly basis - Ashleigh & Shyamala. I've also started having retrospectives with the team, so it's great to get their direct feedback and share common trends on these projects.
This proposal is essentially a post-mortem for core development from a non-technical perspective. I'd like to share with you my experiences, both good and bad, and ways I think we could do better.
Some basic problems we'll cover are:
- Community disinterest in project management, difficulties we face in planning and organization ("I don't have time", "I don't know where to begin" etc)
- Problems around managing volunteer projects (unreliable deadlines, plannings that aren't, resource issues)
- Problems around managing core projects (lack of visibility into issues, unpredictability and sheer size of the beast)
I also have a vision of how I'd like to see Drupal 9 core development change, and resources are a big part of that. We have a ladder of expertise to climb in order to build and foster adoption of our Drupal releases, and we're missing key rungs.
I hope to share with you my ideas about:
- What we are doing now to solve the build & upgrade issue (how to get people to build & use the next version)
- How we coule organize teams to maximize support for core development
- What we need to build those teams
I think it's an ideal time to brainstorm with people in the room as well during Q&A to make the most of the time as a group.
Comments
Shannon is very experienced in PM, has a lot of insight and we need more sessions like this to learn what works and what doesn't when it comes to the Drupal project itself. I hope this one gets selected as it would be a great forum to pick up ideas on how we can get better at making Drupal better.
Drupal 9? Love that Shannon is thinking into the future. I hope she gets to share her vision.
Shannon has been a real asset to the Drupal 8 core initiatives. As a co-initiative-owner myself (on a team of four), I'm increasingly convinced that effective project management in core is going to play an important role in Drupal's success going forward. I'm really looking forward to this session and to having a good discussion on the topic while there's still plenty of time to re-shape the D9 cycle.