Hi,
I read this in Stephen's summary from the FOSSP thread and I wanted to
discuss it:
== Role Process ==
Jóhann does not like the term PRD and feels that the term as
defined[4] doesn't really make sense for a community project.
Moreover, he feels it doesn't make sense when applied to the role
projects. He envisions that each role we harden and tie into our
deployment API should be developed as a project of its own, following
a different (non-PRD-driven) process. He suggested that Stage-Gate[5]
might be a useful approach for this.
Why doesn't a PRD make sense for a community project? Why, specifically
is having a PRD at odds with the product having various roles?
Stage-Gate doesn't appear to be a substitute for creating a PRD... it
looks like a standard software development process, to be honest. And
you could say we're following it right now - Stage 0 / Discovery was the
Fedora.next proposal and iterations, Stage 1 / Scoping is the ongoing
working group discussions... But please correct me if I'm wrong - I
never heard of Stage-Gate before.
The main alternative to using PRDs that I'm aware of is the agile model,
which I don't think we're following. But even in agile you have to put
requirements together in the form of user stories [1]...
That being said: isn't it a "Pandora's Box" to start geeking out on
software development methodologies? Is this really the best use of our
time? We need requirements, no matter what.
Please, can we just come up with a requirements document?
~m
[1]
http://www.agilemodeling.com/artifacts/userStory.htm