Open Roadmaps for Open Communities

Oleg Nenashev,

@oleg_nenashev

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FOSS Backstage

Mar 2023

> whoami

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Oleg Nenashev

“I am a beaver who builds and maintains the communities”

> whoami --community

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Future Russia -

Switzerland

#RussiansAgainstWar

#StandWithUkraine

Agenda

• What is the roadmap?
• Guiding principles
• How do public roadmaps help open source?
• Our story in Jenkins
• How to do it better?

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Slides:

bit.ly/fossbackstage2023-roadmaps

NOTE: The first version of the talk was done together with Mark Waite for cdCon 2021. Credits to CloudBees for sponsoring time for the roadmap work in Jenkins

It is NOT a success story

… but you might have one

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What is roadmap?

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What is roadmap?

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_roadmap

A technology roadmap is a flexible planning technique to support strategic and long-range planning, by matching short-term and long-term goals with specific technology solutions

Keywords:

• flexible planning
• support strategic and long-range planning
• matching short-term and long-term goals

Roadmaps take different forms

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// Visual & Slides - CDF SIG Interoperability

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cd.foundation/blog/2021/01/19/cdf-sig-interoperability-2020-year-in-review

// Dashboards

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github.blog/2020-07-28-announcing-the-github-public-roadmap/

//Just Text

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github.com/tektoncd/pipeline/blob/main/roadmap.md

NOTE: Actual Roadmap is on GitHub Projects

// DYI Roadmap

jenkins.io/project/roadmap

​

​

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RELEASED PREVIEW CURRENT NEAR-TERM FUTURE

Why roadmap?

Our story in Jenkins

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Who is Mr. Jenkins?

• Automation server/framework
• Open-source
• More than 1900 plugins
• Big community
• 4,000+ contributors per year
• A part of the Continuous Delivery Foundation (CDF)

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www.jenkins.io

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Jenkins’ recipe of success

• Extensible
• General-purpose
• Community

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Jenkins community

• Open governance
• Jenkins is contributor-driven
• Open to any individual and company
• Maintainers have full freedom

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Growth challenges

• Isolated sub-communities
• Lack of transparency
• Perceived lack of focus
• Perceived and, sometimes, real vendor lock-in
• Hard to get multiple contributors behind big initiatives
• Hard to join initiatives

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Jenkins community consolidation

• 2011 - Open Governance, Governance Meetings
• 2015 - Teams, Jenkins Officers, sub-projects
• 2016 - First Contributor Summit
• 2017 - Jenkins Enhancement Proposals
• 2018 - Special interest groups (SIGs)
• 2019 - Governance Board elections, CDF Membership
• 2020 - Graduation at CDF

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2020 Time to become more public about our plans?

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Public Roadmap!

jenkins.io/project/roadmap

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Jenkins Roadmap. Our Timeline

• Feb, 2020 - Contributor Summit @ FOSDEM
• Initial discussions
• Mar, 2020 - Jenkins Enhancement Proposal (JEP-14)
• https://github.com/jenkinsci/jep/tree/master/jep/14
• Apr, 2020 - Initial preview
• https://www.jenkins.io/project/roadmap/
• Apr - Jun 2020 - Roadmap reviews
• Mailing list discussions
• SIG meetings and planning
• Jul, 2020 - Public announcement

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Our guiding principles

• Community-driven
• Open and transparent process
• Open data
• No commitment on dates
• No commitment on delivery at all

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github.com/jenkinsci/jep/tree/master/jep/14

Public Roadmap

jenkins.io/project/roadmap

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Published on July 15, 2020

Revised periodically

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Target audience:

• Jenkins users
• Contributors
• Adopters and vendors

​

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RELEASED PREVIEW CURRENT NEAR-TERM FUTURE

Roadmap Contents

Key initiatives in all areas

• Features
• Distributions and packaging
• Documentation
• Developer tools
• Infrastructure and services
• Community, Governance

Grouping by use-cases

Initiative Horizons

jenkins.io/project/roadmap

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RELEASED PREVIEW CURRENT NEAR-TERM FUTURE

Let’s zoom in!

jenkins.io/project/roadmap

​

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Example: User Experience and User Interface

UI/UX Revamp: Look & Feel, Themes, Accessibility

User documentation and guidelines

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www.jenkins.io/sigs/ux

… and Cloud Platforms

Kubernetes, Kubernetes, Kubernetes, …

Pluggable Storage

Jenkinsfile Runner – Portable Pipeline engine

Support for more Pipeline engines, esp. Tekton

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Roadmap is NOT

just about features!

Roadmap is used by the community

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+ All Community Initiatives

• Contributor onboarding and outreach programs
• Developer tools and services
• Open Governance
• Community Events
• Outreach Programs

​

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Jenkins: It is a great time to contribute!

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https://jenkins.io/participate

• Internal Project infrastructure

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Stories where Our Roadmap helped

• Contributor Onboarding Flow
• Quality & Static analysis efforts
• Dark theme
• Tekton Client Plugin
• Jenkins Operator for Kubernetes
• Read only configuration as code
• New Windows installer

​

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… and where it did not

• Attracting company contributors
• Advocacy and Outreach efforts
• Community marketing
• The roadmap itself
• … anything else in longer term

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We failed in Jenkins

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github.com/jenkins-infra/jenkins.io/commits/master/content/_data/roadmap/roadmap.yml

NOW:

Jenkins

Roadmap is stale and outdated

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Challenges we experienced

1. Bus factor
2. Inconsistencies
3. Stalled progress
4. Roadmap bloat
5. Off-roadmap initiatives

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Source: impactplus.com/blog/7-cant-miss-ways-to-overcome-any-creative-roadblock

Bus factor

It is not enough to have one champion of the roadmap

“It’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me”.gif

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Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHZBMjnF6-4

Challenge:

Roadmap Inconsistencies

Solution(s)

• Regular roadmap reviews
• Regular status reviews at SIG meetings

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Roadmap-as-Code

may have been a mistake

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Challenge:

Stalled progress

Solution(s)

• More publicity
• SIGs leading initiatives
• Outreach programs to facilitate roadmap
• Ask for help
• Removing things is okay

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Image source: https://eu.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2019/02/22/hamtramck-pothole-car-stuck/2948865002/

Challenge:

Roadmap Bloat

Solution(s)

• Categories
• Filters
• Policy on number of items per category

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Image source: https://www.thrillist.com/cars/nation/the-worst-interstate-systems-in-america-washington-dc-new-orleans-houston

Challenge:

Roadmap Bloat

Solution(s)

• Categories
• Filters
• Policy on number of items per category

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Challenge:

Off-roadmap initiatives

Solution(s)

• Embrace initiatives
• Include to the roadmap when possible
• Invite initiatives to join SIGs and sub-projects

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Source: https://www.amazon.com/Russian-Truck-Offroad-Jeep-Simulator/dp/B08VDLP9M9

What could have we done better

in 2023?

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What could one do in 2023?

• Bring the roadmap right into the issue tracker
• E.g.: GitHub Projects (see later)
• Or Jira…
• Make issues the roadmap content
• Avoid duplication
• WYSIWIG roadmap management
• K.I.S.S.

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Source: knowyourmeme.com/photos/ 2401265-wholesome-memes

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The Octocat in a Room

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github.com/orgs/open-feature/projects/1

GitHub Projects

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Projects

Beta

1.0

GitHub Projects 2.0+

Default solution for GitHub ecosystem

• Solves many issues by direct integration with GitHub
• Good UX for small projects
• Publicly visible w/o GitHub auth
• GitHub Automation Capabilities

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Projects

Example: CDF Roadmap

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github.com/orgs/cdfoundation/projects/2/views/1

Limitations of GitHub Projects

• Bad UX beyond 5 columns
• No Mobile mode
• Gets cluttered by labels & Co
• GitHub QL does not support complex expressions

​

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GitHub Projects 2.0+

Limitations of GitHub Projects

• Tied to a single organization, no support for multiple orgs
• No support for migrating repositories between orgs
• “Roadmap View” is tied to dates and not advised for open source
• [Even more lock-in]?

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GitHub Projects 2.0+

NEW: GitHub “Roadmap View”

Beta in January: github.blog/changelog/2023-01-31-roadmap-in-projects-public-beta

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Dates or Iterations,

but still time “commitments”

Summary

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What we learned

• Roadmaps coordinate effort
• Roadmaps share vision
• Roadmaps != schedules

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Takeaways

• Your community needs a public roadmap
• Be conscious and explicit about what you commit to
• Keep it simple
• Ensure sustainability of your community… and the roadmap

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Open Source

It’s a great time to contribute ;)

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QUESTIONS?

Credits

• All Jenkins contributors
• Mark Waite, CloudBees
• For the original version we did together at cdCon 2021
• OpenMoji project
• https://openmoji.org/
• Online comics, all of them

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> whoami

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• Manager, CloudBees
• Jenkins Core maintainer
• Jenkins Documentation Officer
• Git plugin maintainer