Aeolus Team Leads

Hugh Brock hbrock at redhat.com
Wed Jan 9 19:54:22 UTC 2013


On Wed, Jan 09, 2013 at 02:41:20PM -0500, Hugh Brock wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 09, 2013 at 07:32:48PM +0000, Martyn Taylor wrote:
> > Gents,
> > 
> > We are stuck in a pattern where, after hours/days of frustrating debate, we create
> > delicate balances of agreement on topics only to have our consensus break
> > when a new point of view is interjected or another conversation
> > takes place.  I really think it is time to add some layer of
> > leadership to the team.  Our team is simply too large to act as a
> > democracy.
> > 
> > I realise that the Tech Cabal is an attempt to address the
> > aforementioned problems, but I do not feel that adding another sub-democracy
> > can help us in this issue.  The Cabal has its advantages
> > when trying to solve integration/cross project problems, but I don't
> > think it helps us steer individual projects.  I really think we need
> > technical leads that have the power to make decisions, or at the very least to
> > decide when debate is closed and carry forward ideas that have been agreed upon.
> > This is how the majority of projects both inside and outside of RedHat operate.
> > I'm not sure why we do not have this in Aeolus, but I'd be much
> > happier in my position if I had some clear direction on approach,
> > whether I agreed with that approach or not.  Let me be clear and say
> > I don't expect Team Leads to simply make all and every decision
> > alone and dictate to the rest of the team.  Rather, we need someone who
> > listens to all points of view and makes a decision and takes
> > responsibility for it.
> > 
> > How do you guys feel about this idea?
> > Would you be willing to give up some control for clear direction?
> 
> I like this idea and I agree we have probably grown to the point that
> it's necessary.
> 
> How would you propose we choose team leads, and do you envision a way of
> rotating the position or do you think it should be permanent (at least
> until the lead gets tired of it or decides to go do something else)?
> 

For what it's worth, I've asked about the OpenStack model for this, and
it is:

* Each project has a group of core contributors who have commit rights
  for that project. Core contributors can vote to accept other folks as
  core. 

* Each project has a yearly vote among the core contributors to choose a
  project technical lead for the project.

Fairly simple. In our case of course everyone on a project is core,
we're not so big that we have people sending patches who don't have
commit rights. Hopefully that will happen at some point.

Thoughts on this?

--Hugh

-- 
== Hugh Brock, hbrock at redhat.com                                   ==
== Engineering Manager, Cloud BU                                   ==
== Aeolus Project: Manage virtual infrastructure across clouds.    ==
== http://aeolusproject.org                                        ==

"I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I’m
not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant."
--Robert McCloskey


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