2018-02-06 SIGAHR Inaugural Meeting notes

Date

06 Feb 2018

Attendees

• rsteans

• david.schober

• Collin Brittle
• Kevin Musiorski
• Steve Van Tuyl
• Jessica Hilt
• Brian McBride
• Michael Joseph Giarlo
• scossu
• Lynette Rayle
• Chris Colvard (Deactivated)

Goals

• Understanding of State of Hyrax Roadmap
• Identification of Possible roles/ outcomes
• Identification of Meeting schedule

Discussion items

Action items

• @

NOTES

Clear to a lot of people that it's a lot of work to tech lead and product own a roadmap as everyone's local needs hit up against community needs.  Steve is 20% PO and Mike is 20% as technical lead.  A good opportunity to call on the community to bolster this work.  We can do a better job of PO'ing and TL'ing in a way that makes sense. 

 Build a group of people who could bring a lot of different persepctives - all of whom want to see the roadmap completed.  

David - so Steve is still PO?  Or more of a vote structure?  Or is Steve making hard calls.  

SVT:  Still a PO and TL.  Time and scope limitations - this body of people can advise the hard calls.  SVT can be mouthpiece as we come together.  

And if it turns out that the committee doesn't work - if another structure could be better, we can go that way.  This structure makes sense for now.

Roadmap is split into 3 chunks - vision - adhering to vision that it can serve as an engine or primary underpinnings of a lot of repository types.  When we hit Hyrax 2, we got Hyrax to a place where it's good for documents and data sets, but needs more work ffor being a thing for large dig collections repos.

Product section of roadmap - in 2-3 map of hyrax.  Fill in gaps for those large dig collections.  Lynette has led large collections work.  Analytics and reporting - started reporting work on Monday. 

3rd thing - a lot of UI mock-ups that HyKu team has chipped away at to implement in HyKu - so changes in userface are being implemented in Hyrax (Collier and Justin Coyne).  

Those are the things in progress right now.  

Swappable back end elements - Valkyrie - also considered in progress.  2 efforts so far.  

Other things for this release series - a release that's almost entirely on accessibility - making modifications to UI for ADA.  Work that ND is leading on roles and permissions in Hyrax.  

Next two things:  Enhanced batch interface, bulk import/ export  

Bulk work, generally - something lots of folks need.

David:  when folks have taken the lead on things - it seems like a group at an institution with a deeply invested interest, or...?

SVT:  for bulk stuff, for example, had ideas how to structure that work.  Convo started on Smavera-Tech on Slack.  Spun out into a great convo on how bulk is happening locally.  Tom Johnson is looking at a group that will pull all of that disparate work into one place.  How it'll work - don't know, but a centralized effort is gonna happen.  

Lynette - when discussed in the past, a very focused effort - this is somewhat related.  Any plans for developer conferences like Penn State?  SOme topics that are "undefined" - no need, but there's probably a point for a gathering of developers.  LDCX is the closest time that could occur.  

SVT:  Don't have  - and may not want - no way to do community work on Hyrax.  No solid way.  Approach for Collection Extensions - really thoroughly describe the feature set, get design work done with lots of community feedback, and then kick off development work.   We've seen success with other approaches - Valkyrie - community effort, but a core focused group working on getting it done.  A great place to discuss this right here in this IG.  How do we want to build large features in Hyrax, and what works and what doesn't?

Stefano:  Do we have any documents we can link to for any of this points?  Design documents, etc... ?  

SVT:  Scattered right now - at home of whomever is working on it.  Collections Extension work is gettable.  Analytics.  Kind of scattered - could pull it together.  

Stefano:  Interested in vision - how do we see Hyrax handling workflows in general?  What is the role?  What kind of workflows?

See progress in managing workflows - how can Hyrax help me?

What role do we want Hyrax to play in an institutuion?

Lynette:  That can mean many things.  Can be inside or outside Hyrax - how do you develop resources into system.  Or workflows inside - review, publish, etc.. .those processes.  Larger workflows or what happens when you submit a work?

Stefano:  lifecycle of a work.  Wonder if pre-processing can be done in Hyrax or will it never be the right tool?

SVT:  could be done in a more comprehensive way - but struggling to get as a user what that would look like.  This is an example of a place in Hyrax where functionality in Hyrax is okay, but as people use it we'll learn we naeed to make improvements.  

We can help coordinate that kind of enhancement development.  

Lynette:  could maybe make it work now, but complex or confusing.  We can improve it.  That's work we can take on.  

SVT:  Makes me think about PCDM - tracking and administrative documents related to the item, how are docs related to the painting or picture.  

David:  a section of the document about what Hyrax is not and will never be.  Something to block stuff that doesn't make sense or is out of scope.  

SVT:  yes.  What do we want it to be, but what can be an external feature that gets plugged-in.

SVT:  A bit of text at end of product roadmap about timing.  We can relate to a calendar of releases, but that's not very useful about how we do our work.  Deadlines are less important than feature goals.  Have it both ways by talking about what's in progress - that aren't part of the 2.x - 3.x  series.  

Last section of roadmap - not about Hyrax, but about community expressions around Hyrax - Community-level concerns, better job or process of.  Include them here. 

Things specific to Hyrax in this section - 

The testing and release testing process.  How to do QA on processes.  Some pain over last few months, but we can figure that out.  Julie Rudder has been doing a great job on QA.

A design library is also requested.  In UI of Hyrax - where can I go to look for design we should be using for consistency in design across the product.  Since Connect - discussions.

Governance and accountability in Hyrax - we're fulfilling that.

Quality standards - a community discussion we need to have - documentation and other fronts going at Samvera COmmunity level.  

Lynette - question about something I'm not seeing - are we developing a process for how to integrate that item into the roadmap - how do I get that on the map and gather people, etc... 

On Collection Extensions - how do you agther resources in order to begin that work?  Email out on Google Lists - tech lists?  A logistical thing about policies  about those questions.

Stefano - a separate track for technical debt removal?  

SVT:  How do I get things on roadmap:  is that part of 2.x  This group will figure out what that looks like so we have a better idea of how to do this.  Resourcing is very hard.  This group representing - may be a fulcrum for getting resources loosened up.  Higher level of discussion about resourcing ongoing.  Anything liek a centrally resourced group of developers is a ways away.  

Technical debt  - software maintenance subsection - out of conversations over last 6-12 months.  trey and Ben put together a group called Component Maintenance WG.  Try to understand the core components of the samvera products and how to idenifty POs for those core components.  Would address issues with those POs.  

Question of different resourcing - this group will help figure out how we do that.  SVT will not be benevolent dictator.  

Could this group be the one that captures and coalesces those issues..  Some cases where features get lost or dropped.  Not infrequent - to contribute your feature back to community is intimidating, may take resources locally.  Work with local institutions and see if they can hand it back.  Or work together to pull their feature back.  

Where do we need help now?

Lynette - Collections is wrapping up

Analytics core - working now 

Valkyrie - 2 cycles and is working on getting a 3rd cycle later in the year

Group and repsonsibility - LaRita is on that.

Tom Johnson - working on bulk stuff.  

This leaves 

Accessibility.  UX IG may want to take the lead.  

David:  Has anyone asked about Accessibility is critical for next phase?

SVT:  some have identified this as an issue.  PSU and DCE.  Good way to identify an issueor lead on coordinating work.  Getting resources together - will be a challenge - if you make the approach a "if you want a thing, you need to make it happen" - ask people to do work who can't - that resourcing approach means that people think they're being rejected.  Or few groups who actually participate and all work is on them.

David:  just knowing if an adoption plan hinges on a feature being adopted to adopt platform - 

SVT:  easier to do that locally but doesn't bridge back to community

David:  batch edit and bulk import export

Jess:  Is there a list somewhere that I'm missing where that's occurring?

Link to Roadmap document in the chat.  

Steve - maybe what this is - pulling things out of Google Doc of ongoing projects - a wiki page for each project and how it fits on roadmap.  

Lynette - is this group well set to faciliate this - policy regarding how you get things on the roadmap - self-identify what people want to do - 

Good outcome of this group for making it easier for the community.

Chris - Might want to set up processes so Pull Requests getting reviewed, issues being groomed.  Feels like a need for that sooner than later.  

Steve - Chipping away at labeling issues yesterday - time and experience-wise may want to spin off and take that on, would be helpful.  

Lynette - core committers can be on-deck for a few days at a time to do PR reviews and grooming.  Specified things they do - we may need a few people on deck at a time.  PR's may not be in someone's specific area.  

Steve - ties back to Core Components working group is having.  PR out related to Component - tap PO for that PR and see if we can build out that way.  

Lynette - wouldn't hurt to have a list of who knows what in specific areas.  Would be nice to know - who has worked with search builders (example)

Chris - Place to start may be reviewing and changing who is on the list of code reviewers on GitHub.  9 people listed, 4-5 are no longer involved.  Few who can take time to do the review.  

group review of PR's - maybe tag onto the Samvera Tech call - spend a few minutes going through reviews, PR's.  

STEVE:  A lot of things to do next - 

SLACK Group - Jess fire up a Slack group

Ryan schedule next meeting

Action Items:

• Collect all documents for the roadmap in one location (Steve)
• Good idea to include a section of the roadmap to identify what hyrax is NOT going to be - scope, what are we trying to get to (Group)
• What is the process for identifying work and proposing ideas? (Group)
• How does one gather resources for the work? (Group)
• Build a hyrax page for all the things on the roadmap (Steve)
• Subgroup for grooming labelling PRing etc. (Chris organize?)
• Lists of devs who are skilled in particular areas (related to Core Components WG stuff) - is core components working on building this? (Steve contact Ben Armintor)
• Review list of Hyrax code reviewers on GH… (maybe Chris and Lynette?)
• Hang on after samvera tech call for review and issue triage (Steve organize)