Proposed working practices for SDW-IG - no more regular teleconferences

Hello SDW-IG folks...


It’s been a while since we had a [plenary] teleconference; it’s been
difficult to find times that suit participants from all time-zones, and now
that we’re in boreal summer, it’s even more difficult.


So earlier this week, Linda, François, Bill, Michael and myself met
(virtually) to figure out if teleconferences were essential - and, if not,
what alternatives we could use. Minutes [1]


We concluded that we don’t need the regular teleconferences. Instead we
will aim to complete our work by correspondence using GitHub and the SDW-IG
mailing list.


That said, this will put more emphasis on our F2F meetings to discuss and
debate complex issues. The next one is planned as a side-event during the
upcoming OGC Technical Committee meeting in Fort Collins, CO (USA) which
runs from 4-8 June.


Also, if we find there’s a need to talk about a specific issue, we can
simply schedule an ad-hoc WebEx (or whatever) at any time. François can set
up WebEx calls as required.


Below are some recommendations about how to work in GitHub to keep things
moving along. Working in this way will likely require the activity leaders
(like Bill, Michael, Armin) and IG chairs to “animate the show” to keep up
momentum of activity.

   1. Make sure comments raised here and there appear in a GitHub issue -
   and raise a new issue if comments don’t seem to have a home
   2. Make sure issues are labelled/tagged correctly
   3. Consider grouping sets of related issues into Milestones to make it
   easier to track progress
   4. Make sure issues are assigned to someone - or, if no one is willing
   to lead, then write a comment to that effect ... most likely this will mean
   that work on that issue will stall or progress very slowly
   5. Make sure that proposed resolutions to issues get reviewed
   6. Make sure that Pull Requests (PR) are linked to issues - as this
   makes the PR review easier to complete (e.g. it should be obvious what the
   change is and why it is proposed)
   7. Regularly ping assignees to check on progress
   8. Set deadlines
   9. Close issues when appropriate - so that we can focus on the open
   ones


While GitHub issues often relate to very specific topics, we can still use
issues to capture broader discussions too.


Pretty much, these are already things that we’re doing in the IG. Thank you!


We’ve configured the mailing list to capture everything that the GitHub
mailer sends out - so there’s no escape even if you’re not paying close
attention in GitHub, albeit its not particularly easy to follow those
threads because the labelling/tagging isn’t evident. François says we can
amend these settings if we find it’s not meeting our needs (e.g. volume of
email on the list from GitHub starts to become an irritant!). Indeed, he
took an action to see if we can get the GitHub labels/tags and milestones
included in the mailing list - so long as the GitHub mailer API supports
that!


Having a regular schedule of calls helps keep pace on things...


In addition to assigning deadlines on specific issues, we’re also
suggesting that we identify 2-3 days in the first week of each month where
we, the IG membership, will have a focused “sprint” on moving things
forward. This should help us plan our time and participation.


We’ll use the same days for all the plenary and sub-group activities - no
reason why they can’t all be done in parallel.


To help this along, we (editors and sub-group leads) will write a short
“editorial” or monthly summary outlining the priority issues and topics to
try and focus the work.


We’ll kick this off next week, with the first “sprint” at the beginning of
May. I’ll do a plenary “editorial” too.


Finally, we talked about whether we needed multiple repositories for our
work; e.g. one for each sub-group. For now, we’ll stick with a single
repository. If we find this gets too crowded/congested, we can adapt!


Please let us know if you’re happy with this approach. As a minimum, it
should mean an end to regular late night/early morning calls!


Best regards, Jeremy & Linda


[1]: https://www.w3.org/2018/04/17-sdw-minutes.html