Description
Instructions
- Define the problem or opportunity (WHAT).
- Outline the importance of addressing the problem or opportunity (WHY).
WHAT?
Write your problem statement using layperson's terminology.
In one sentence, what is the problem or opportunity?
Netflix Problem Statement Example: Going to the video store requires fighting traffic, wandering the aisles, and waiting in long lines just to get a single movie.
- Code in an unmaintained or deprecated state creates technical debt, equity, confidentiality, availability and integrity issues and in general sets a bad example for how to contributors and WMF staff engage and interact with our projects.
- There is an opportunity here to create a basic policy and apply a governance model to our code base and for contributions.
What does the future look like if this is achieved?
- an equitable and empowering way for WMF and community contributors to engage with our projects
- a predictable path to production & a lifecycle for our and contributed code
- a repeatable process to ensures critical and non-critical code are maintained.
What happens if we do nothing?
- We will continue to accumulate tech debt
- We will continue to support code that we know breaks production
- We will continue to divert our efforts from producing new features to responding to incidents in old ones.
- We will eventually be compromised
WHY?
Identify the value(s) this problem/opportunity provides. Add links to relevant OKRs.
Rank values in order of importance and be explicit about who this benefits and where the value is.
User Value/Organization Value AND Objective it supports and How
- Basic set of criteria guides users on how to interact and contribute in a repeatable way/lowers the barrier to entry
- Creates process to remove problematic code from production
- Informs contributors and WMF staff on best practice
- Allows us to prioritize efforts
Why are you bringing this decision to the Technical Forum?
What about the scope of this problem led you and your team to seek input across departments/organizations?
- This should be surfaced as a policy and needs governance and for that policy to be equitable, effective and actionable it requires input from around the organization
- This concept needs to be broadly socialized to understand who the stakeholders are -
Related Objects
Event Timeline
We already have a code stewardship policy and the associated code stewardship reviews process.
I don't know how well they are functioning, and I do know that ungoverned code is still a huge problem. However, we should still focus on improving these existing institutions, instead of restarting from zero (just as, 95% of the time, we should focus on improving existing code, instead of rewriting it from scratch 😊).
I suggest reframing this problem statement to better identify what needs to be improved with the code stewardship policy and process (clearer processes? more executive buy-in? better adherence to the policy?).
@Jrbranaa might be able to elaborate on the code stewardship policy and process mentioned in the previous comment.
Thanks @Aklapper, I believe that the Code Governance Policy being proposed is trying to address the same core problems as the Code Stewardship initiative. Perhaps the appetite for solving this problem has changed, but unless it has, I believe that this policy will also encounter the same hurdles. The Code Stewardship initiative has definitely encountered challenges as of late, but I still believe that the approach is sound.
As @nshahquinn-wmf mentioned above, I think it would make sense to combine efforts vs start something new. I am concerned that starting a parallel effort will result in confusion. There have been several people involved in the Code Stewardship work and I'd hate to see their efforts and learnings go to waste. I'd be happy to have a discussion about how we can move forward collectively.