Signal Noise RFCs

👉 Public site where all approved RFCs are visible.

Many aspects of the way we do things at Signal Noise merit being standardised. By documenting workflows, techniques and tools that we as a technology team decide to adopt, we save time when facing similar challenges from project to project, making more time to focus on the interesting and/or difficult aspects of our work.

The "RFC" (request for comments) process is intended to provide a consistent and controlled path for new decisions in any of the areas that could loosely be described as "the way we do things".

Table of Contents

• When you need to follow this process
• Before creating an RFC
• What the process is
• The RFC life-cycle
• Reviewing RFCs
• Help this is all too informal!
• License

When you need to follow this process

You need to follow this process if you intend to make a change to the way Signal Noise goes about making things, in any reusable way. Specific examples of things that merit going through this process would be the addition of, or change to the existing process for any of the following:

• Any aspect of the standard workflow we use, including approach to git branches, etc.
• Guidelines for how to structure and write our code, including advice on e.g. methods for reuse.
• Approaches and tooling that we use in general across project, including rules and enforcement tooling for linting, for example.
• Guidance on tooling to use for common functionality or operations, such as -- for example -- analytics, monitoring, state management and even charting etc.

This is not intended to be used for project learnings or specific pieces of advice, unless they are in a generalisable form that will be of benefit as a way to go about a new and different project. Some changes do not require an RFC:

• Aspects of our processes that affect people not in the technology dept - for example team meeting content, structure or output.
• Learnings from specific projects that are not in a general form; e.g. when working with a specific individual it's best to communicate in person.

Before creating an RFC

A hastily-proposed RFC can hurt its chances of acceptance. Low quality proposals, proposals for previously-rejected changes or those that don't fit into the criteria for an RFC may be quickly rejected, which can be demotivating for the unprepared contributor. Laying some groundwork ahead of the RFC can make the process smoother.

Although there is no single way to prepare for submitting an RFC, it is generally a good idea to pursue feedback from other project developers beforehand, to ascertain that the RFC may be desirable; having a consistent impact the way we do things requires concerted effort toward consensus-building.

The most common preparations for writing and submitting an RFC include talking the idea over on the #development channel on Slack. You may file issues on this repo for discussion, but these are not actively looked at by the team.

As a rule of thumb, receiving encouraging feedback from senior developers is a good indication that the RFC is worth pursuing.

What the process is

In short, to change the way Signal Noise does something, one must first get the RFC merged into the RFC repository as a markdown file. At that point the RFC is "active".

• Fork the RFC repo [RFC repository]
• Copy 0000-template.md to text/1234-my-feature.md (where "my-feature" is descriptive. Assign an RFC number as the next available sequential number and use that in the filename).
• Fill in the RFC. Put care into the details: RFCs that do not present convincing motivation, demonstrate lack of understanding of the proposal's impact, or are disingenuous about the drawbacks or alternatives tend to be poorly-received.
• Submit a pull request. As a pull request the RFC will receive feedback from the larger community, and the author should be prepared to revise it in response.
• Build consensus and integrate feedback. RFCs that have broad support are much more likely to make progress than those that don't receive any comments. Feel free to reach out to the RFC assignee in particular to get help identifying stakeholders and obstacles.
• The team will discuss the RFC pull request, as much as possible in the comment thread of the pull request itself. Offline discussion will be summarized on the pull request comment thread.
• RFCs rarely go through this process unchanged, especially as alternatives and drawbacks are shown. You can make edits, big and small, to the RFC to clarify or change the design, but make changes as new commits to the pull request, and leave a comment on the pull request explaining your changes. Specifically, do not squash or rebase commits after they are visible on the pull request.
• At some point, a tech lead will propose a "motion for final comment period" (FCP), along with a disposition for the RFC (merge or close).
  • This step is taken when enough of the tradeoffs have been discussed that the team is in a position to make a decision. That does not require consensus amongst all participants in the RFC thread (which is usually impossible). However, the argument supporting the disposition on the RFC needs to have already been clearly articulated, and there should not be a strong consensus against that position. Teamvmembers use their best judgment in taking this step, and the FCP itself ensures there is ample time and notification for stakeholders to push back if it is made prematurely.
  • For RFCs with lengthy discussion, the motion to FCP is usually preceded by a summary comment trying to lay out the current state of the discussion and major tradeoffs/points of disagreement.
• The FCP usually lasts ten calendar days, so that it is open for at least 5 business days. It is also advertised on the development Slack channel. This way all stakeholders have a chance to lodge any final objections before a decision is reached.
• In most cases, the FCP period is quiet, and the RFC is either merged or closed. However, sometimes substantial new arguments or ideas are raised, the FCP is canceled, and the RFC goes back into development mode.

The RFC life-cycle

Once an RFC becomes "active" then it is an official part of "the Signal Noise approach" and all developers should abide by it wherever possible. In common with the "defaults, not rules" core approach it will is permissable to run a project against the mandate of one or more specific RFCs but the rationale for ignoring each RFC must be documented in the project's decision log.

Modifications to "active" RFCs can be done in follow-up pull requests. We strive to write each RFC in a manner that it will reflect the final design of

In general, once accepted, RFCs should not be substantially changed. Only very minor changes should be submitted as amendments. More substantial changes should be new RFCs, with a note added to the original RFC. Exactly what counts as a "very minor change" is up to the team to decide on an ad hoc basis.

Reviewing RFCs

While the RFC pull request is up, the team may want to discuss the issues in greater detail, usually at the Dev Roundup. A summary from the meeting will be posted back to the RFC pull request.

The team makes final decisions about RFCs after the benefits and drawbacks are well understood. If the reasoning for the decision is not clear from the discussion in thread, a senior team member will add a comment describing the rationale for the decision.

Help this is all too informal!

The process is intended to be as lightweight as reasonable for the present circumstances. As usual, we are trying to let the process be driven by consensus and community norms, not impose more structure than necessary.

License

This repository is licensed under the MIT license (LICENSE or http://opensource.org/licenses/MIT)

*With thanks to the RFCs process used by React and Rust.