Drafting a new Roadmap

[sgibson91]

TL;DR

We aim to begin drafting a new org-level roadmap. Please provide your input and feedback in this hackmd: https://hackmd.io/@sgibson91/jupyterhub-roadmapping

Context

• Suggested reading: https://docs.oscollective.org/guides/marketing-publicity-roadmaps-and-comms

Roadmaps are useful tools for projects to align on the direction they'll be taking, what work will be tackled, and on what timeline. This can help guide maintainers and contributors on where to prioritise their effort in terms of the work they choose to tackle or where to focus their review efforts. It can also signal to incoming contributors where effort is being focussed and which areas of work they are most likely to receive quick feedback on. Ours is out of date, so in the recent Collaboration Cafe #676 I suggested we start drafting a new version.

Notes from the Collab Cafe

Below is a suggested template for organising a roadmap - it's not the sole correct way to think about this! It's just here as a starting point :)

Let's think about the release of the z2jh helm chart, and any packages that could be included, as our "unit" here.

#### The next release...
- **Theme:**
- **Theme:**

#### The release after that...
- **Theme:** Security? Have we had any feedback from the security bounty scheme that we could act on?
- **Theme:** Metrics? https://blog.jupyter.org/accurately-counting-daily-weekly-monthly-active-users-on-jupyterhub-6fbec6c6ce2f was a good start. Can we build within the JupyterHub ecosystem that doesn't rely on third-party software such as grafana/kube-metric/prometheus? Can we build something into the Admin panel for better discoverability?
- **Theme:**

#### Later on...
- **Theme:**
- **Theme:**

Discussion

• Question: what level to roadmap? Org-level? Per-repo? How many repos get one?
• Org-wide roadmap item could be e.g. triage, organizational maintenance, not tied to releases
• Roadmap might include things we want to do, but might not get to
• Stating long-term things we aren't working on is still useful, and can motivate contributors or funding
• Separate roadmaps for aspirational (funding), practical (what we have capacity to do short-term)
• Roadmap - long term items:
  • supporting multiple replicas of jupyterhub
  • moving away from CHP
  • repo2docker reproducibility
• Roadmap - short term item nominations:
  • establish maintenance expectations on projects in jupyterhub gh org
  • reporting/metrics (jupyterhub-grafana)
  • e.g. "focus on releasing z2jh 4"
• Org-level, at least, maybe tying to releases is not a good fit. Instead more time-based "short-term/long-term"
• Roadmaps don't let us tell volunteer contributors what to spend their time on (but they also kind of do!)

Notable decisions from the discussion

• Preference to think of about an org-wide roadmap to start with (as opposed to repo-level or distribution-level)
  • This is likely to result in a more prose-like roadmap that focuses more on broad themes rather than fine details (or a work schedule that could be captured in a project board)
• Preference to think about time-based objectives, as opposed to a release cycle
  • This also allows for non-technical/community work to be included in the roadmap as well

Practices we may want to bring back

Previously, the project has used GitHub milestones to track progress of roadmap items and specifically had a "not planned" or "not yet" milestone. All the items attached to this milestone were regularly reviewed (monthly or quarterly) and either promoted to a milestone on the roadmap or some other action was taken.

Note that GitHub's project management capabilities have improved considerably in the last few years, so should be much less toil to collect issues into project boards/milestones at the org level if we choose to do so.

Action Point

I have put together a draft roadmap document here: https://hackmd.io/@sgibson91/jupyterhub-roadmapping

Please could all those interested in doing so add themes/items to the roadmap, give feedback on other items, and even feel free to play with the format as necessary.

Thank you! 🚀