All Hands Meeting: Oct 13, 2003

I. Introductions

• Suzette is here working on HR issue -- hiring, benefits, employee stuff.

II. Facilites

• Clean up after yourselves at lunch.
• Security has been improved. OSAF employees with questions should see Jurgen.

III. Informal "State of the Project." Mitch was away last week, did some thinking about OSAF and where we are. Here's his informal "State of the Project." (Since Michael isn't here, all action items are his

A. Exec Summary:

• glass is half-full. Project started with a bunch of ideas, and we're a long way past that now. Lots of concrete accomplishments towards putting something out there that people can use on a daily basis. This is the paramount goal at this point.

• Still have a long way to go. As perfectionists, we need to size the task realistically without getting depressed.

• Built in big tension level between (x) ambition of the project, (y) desire to produce something real sooner, and (z) realities of product development. In the past we've addressed this topic and come up with progress: Product Roadmap, Feature Prioritization, Release Process. It's time to do this again.

B. Context: How we got here.

• Culture: in a new org, those there early have a disproportional effect. So Mitch is very focused on his role in this. Good: enthusiasm, commitment to excellence, vision, etc.

• Mitch not so naturally focused on daily management mechanisms, it doesn't excite him. And we're not quite desperate for resources. So we need focus to perform up to our potential. We need more progress toward usable product per "unit time" than we have.

C. Current State.

• Some of the response is to set the right priorities. Got to focus on the core, not let energies get deferred by other interesting projects.

• Feature set for 1.0 is critical. If work isn't contributing to that needs to be deferred. We will be drawing a sharper line around that which needs to be deferred. Current mechanisms will be maintained: Chao driving the project management, Michael driving the development. But priorities and accountability will be more focused.

• Mitch and those who work for him have great accountability here. Hiring is an example. We've improved a bit, but the organization must do better here.

• Need to interrelate ongoing development and tasks and development of the specification. Needs to get the Feature Prioritiation done, but it needs to be interrelated with inter-dependancies and the architecture. This needs to be done at a very granular level. Lots of desired features will have to be deferred because the infrastructure won't be completed in time.

• Mitch takes comfort from the idea that development will continue post 1.0 that will take into account all the things that don�t make it into 1.0. More a sequencing task than one of giving things up entirely.

• "Sharper priorities, clearer decisions, more accountability"

D. Discussion

• Suzette is a resource for raising and discussing these resources.

• Mitchell views this as an invitation for each of us to describe "what I need to be help accountable." Mitch reiterated that people shouldn't sign up for things that they can't deliver, with specifics.

• The day that there is something interesting useful that is running on a machine that people can use will be phenomenal, the payoff is great. The big vision will take many years, getting something useful needs to be much sooner.

• Ducky: we should be sure to celebrate when people do well, informally as well as formally.

• Mitch: If one can't do what one signed up for: (1) work smarter, get help; (2) work harder; (3) get responsibilities shifted.

• Andi noted he feels he's working hard, accountability is high, and he's making progress. Mitch stressed that this is not a hidden message to anyone about their individual performance. This discussion is focused on general issues. We will need to be less ambitious about some things.

• Andy H noted that this is good, but not concrete. Andy encourages that we "measure and display." Proposes we develop metrics, measure them and keep them in our faces.

• Mitch: you should hold me accountable for taking the general discussion here and turning it into specifics. If this doesn't happen, it's pretty hard to hold others accountable.

E. Action items

• Will emerge gradually, they aren't all yet determined. More detailed discussion will occur at the management committee meetings.

• Mitch's focus: (1) hiring and (2) meshing design and development, using the details of 0.3 as a concrete example. If people can't confidently predict what's likely for 0.3, then we need to understand and fix this lack of confidence.

• Michael to figure out simple but meaningful measurements.

-- MitchellBaker - 13 Oct 2003