History   View   Links to this page 2012 June 22 | 02:53 pm

3 June 2012: OSLC Steering Committee Meeting

Face-to-face meeting in Lake Buena Vista, FL.

Attendees

Steering Committee

  • Rainer Ersch, Senior Research Scientist at Siemens
  • Andreas Keis, Manager, Software Engineering at EADS Innovation Works UK
  • Mik Kersten, CEO of Tasktop
  • Bola Rotibi, Research Director at Creative Intellect
  • John Wiegand, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect for IBM Rational (StC Chairman)

Presenters

  • Kartik Kanakasabesan, IBM
  • Sean Kennedy, IBM
  • Steve Speicher, IBM

Observers

  • Steve Fitchett, IBM

Minutes

Agenda: Steering Committee Meeting agenda

1. Introductions (What do you hope to get out of the Steering Committee?)

[discussion]

  • John W.: looking to get past the perception that OSLC = IBM, willing to do less
  • Mik: looking to the StC to help push the spec to broad implementation, focus on getting other ALM vendors to implement specs
  • Rainer: StC is a first step toward OSLC become a more mature org. that really matters in the market, especially getting more vendors to buy in and overcome the “IBM getting more than others” perspective
  • Bola: wants to see the vision realized; expects to help with focus and industry perspective and feedback
  • Andreas: EADS is an OSLC end user, OSLC is a big opportunity to make all interop efforts (especially internal) more lasting success, especially reducing ongoing maintenance costs EADS has to deal with 50 year technology lifetimes

2. About the OSLC Steering Committee (StC)

  1. [review] Communication channels available today (presented by Steve Speicher)
    • For WGs (and StC) use: Public mailing list, minutes and documents on the wiki, teleconf as needed. Forums now available on the site.
    • Outbound: LinkedIn, Blog, Twitter
    • John W.: what level of transparency do we want to have as a StC?
      • Rainer: suggests it is decided on a case-by-case basis -> consensus
        • Items under discussion, especially when strategic in nature, may be best handled quietly until we’re ready to share
      • Mik: need some sort of “OSLC StC confidential” list -> consensus
      • Bola: allow people to comment on minutes after the fact instead of inviting them as observers > consensus
    • Action (Steve S./Sean K.): subscribe StC members to the existing public mailing list
    • Action (Steve S./Sean K.): provide the StC with tools for confidential collaboration
  2. [vote] What should be the frequency of StC meetings?
    • proposal: monthly teleconf (not written in stone, can adjust going forward as needed)
      • internal teleconf, minutes published after
      • Mik: suggest a quarterly update from the StC to the whole community
      • Agreement: monthly meetings, 1 hour, quarterly community update; all by phone
    • Rainer: what about meeting F2F?
      • Bylaws say we do it once a year, lets aim for twice a year
    • Future Topic: Where and when of our next F2F meeting.
  3. [review] For what kind of StC initiatives will the StC members take responsibility for executing?
    • The relationships between the StC existing workgroups, especially Core and Communications
    • The roles and responsibilities of the StC members
      • Kartik: reviews the OSLC StC details (see gov delta proposal) and responsibilities
        • One thing we’ve stated about OSLC is that we don’t want to become a SDO ourselves, but turn over mature specs to those orgs; StC makes a decision on that
        • Bola: how do we facilitate members who’ve worked on specs, but have no interest in joining the SDO where new work will be done? Or they’re not members will they have to pay to join the SDO?
          • Future Topic: is there a way we could “grease the skids” to help OSLC participants continue their work at the SDO.
            • Could be a reason to say “no” for moving a spec to an SDO
        • StC approves the guidance, but are not responsible i.e. protected from legal responsibility
        • Future Topic: what goes on with people signing the MA as an individual?
  4. [preview] Should future elections be staggered? (e.g. only 1/2 of positions up for election at a time)
    • Current proposal to have 2 year initial terms and then 1 year terms, elections all at once following the Eclipse model
    • Alternate proposal: 2 year terms, votes staggered half the position up every year
      • Remember: each Member gets one vote
    • Bola: keep it simple
    • Mik: problem at Eclipse is getting people to vote splitting it up will make it even harder

3. OSLC’s openness

  1. Driving to the vision
    1. [review] The current vision and present state Kartik Kanakasabesan
      • Delivering the “slides” embedded in the agenda
        • Given that, what are we going to focus on today? Do we have the right long-term focus?
          • Bola: focus directed by “where the pain is most”
          • Rainer: look at what are the common denominators across all domains
            1. Bola: there is a risk that we get too broad, at the present state, we do need to focus our energies targeting those who will get the most benefit from them
            2. Rainer: not just vendors, but other orgs
        • Mik: missing the role of reference impls. and Lyo
    2. [review] OSLC Community Survey results Sean Kennedy
      • Run another survey in 2013. Be sure to ask about their thoughts on the StC.
    3. [discussion] Given the vision, what is the next milestone to get OSLC closer to it?
      • E.g.: Increasing implementations, Increasing adoption into PLM and DevOps
      • Mik: we need to establish a vision and mission statement
        • The site has some of this now
      • Mik: make our next step measureable
        • E.g. number of spec implementations, number of users of a spec
      • Mik: need to demonstrate that OSLC has broad appeal
      • John W.: seems that the topic is too broad, need to refine and return to this discussion later
        • Action for John W.: develop a more focused topic for a future meeting
        • Future Topic: more focused version of “Given the vision, what is the next milestone to get OSLC closer to it?”
      • Steve S.: step to help drive more implementations: OSLC business case publically available for users to convince vendors, and of course for the vendors themselves
        • Bola: often uses John W.’s paper, maybe need to be refreshed, and made shorter a 1-pager
        • Steve S.: get others not from IBM involved in issuing that update
        • Action for <someone(s), possibly the Comms WG>: use John W.’s whitepaper as a starting point, take input from other community members and provide updated resources (another whitepaper, plus a 1-page highlight/summary)
    4. [discussion] Should we launch an “OSLC assessment” study in order to analyze the current performance of OSLC? Andreas Keis
      • Andreas: by default, you need to know what you are steering
      • Did a bit of research on who is actually participating in WG meetings active participants are much less than the numbers given
      • Not just participation, but also the specs themselves, what is their quality, what is their current progress is
      • Need to be very honest with knowing where we are at
        • Rainer: agree with the idea, still need to figure out what we want to investigate
        • Andreas: yes, that may be more difficult to figure out this is where we need to focus
        • John W.: how do we give the right guidance for people to collect the info?
        • Andreas: figures the next step is to determine what to measure, may take 3-4 months of discussion from the StC to come to this
        • John W.: is that probably b/c it’s not our day jobs if we could sit down together for a day, we’d be able to figure it out
        • Mik: starting point right from the website membership, participation, implementation, usage
        • Andreas: still worth having time to let people think about it, there isn’t a rush to have this done
        • Bola: suggest this go for future, ongoing, discussion
        • John W.: thinks we’ve got great questions already and wants to get answers ASAP; maybe we can get something
        • Agree: put it on the agenda for the next meeting, with some preliminary results
        • Action for Sean K.: develop a preliminary assessment of the current state of OSLC, use the website as a starting point (membership, participation, implementation, usage)
        • Future Topic: [review] the initial report, continue the [discussion] about an “OSLC assessment”
    5. [discussion] Should the StC issue a statement asserting support of an open and transparent process and the path towards specification standardization at appropriate standard bodies? Rainer
      • Actually a bigger topic: What can we do raise the awareness of OSLC in the industry
      • Should look at what PROSTEP just published
      • Need to do a better job at marketing that will make our job easier recruiting vendors (and having users convince their vendors too)
        • John W.: the broader topic sounds like a common theme that we’ll need to think about regularly
        • John W.: what’s the request? To brainstorm and prioritize to develop a regular drum beat
        • Andreas: is this going to be something that the CommsWG handles?
        • Rainer: could delegate to the CommsWG
        • John W. they [CommsWG] are an execution engine for the directions that we set here
        • Steve F.: need to create the narrative so that people start asking about OSLC so we’re not always “telling”
        • Action for the CommsWG: to work on this item, and bring back some thoughts to the StC
          • Adapt, potentially re-charter, the CommsWG handle this item regularly

4. OSLC Community business

  1. [preview] Re-chartering of SCM to be Configuration Management - review, prior to decision Steve Speicher
    • SCM spec has been around for a while, but hasn’t been widely implemented
    • Concepts in SCM are more general, so the “S” is a bit too limiting
    • To cover the new broader perspective, the spec should look different
    • Given this, the idea is to re-charter, and re-purpose the WG to work on the broader example
      • Rainer: what is the process for getting us the correct info to the StC
        • Core WG should do the technical analysis and make a recommendation
      • John W.: any other areas of input that we ought to consider?
      • Rainer: we can just start with the Core WG and technical analysis for now
      • John W.: have experience that there has been a need for another perspective, but it’s not grounded now,
      • By the next StC meeting: Core WG will have reviewed the proposal and made a recommendation; will be enough time for StC to ask questions or make comments before
      • Action for the Core WG: review the SCM re-chartering proposal and provide a recommendation to the StC
      • Future Topic: [review] the recommendation from the Core WG and [vote] on SCM re-chartering
      • Action for StC: refine the process of how we take up the responsibility of approving
  2. [preview] Driving scenarios into domain workgroups and helping close the loop between finalized specifications and the scenarios they solve Sean Kennedy
    • was not covered as time was running out

5. Open discussion and future agenda topics

  • Pretty good for a first meeting
  • Suggest limiting the things to talk about (1 or 2 items) and dig in
  • Use a conferencing software for people to show they want to speak like webex, w3c uses IRC
    • Mik: internally they have required video for all calls, it gives good non-verbal feedback and helps encourage staying engaged
    • Useful for all WGs

Agreements and Consensus in this meeting

  1. Transparency for StC meetings:
    1. Some things will not be made public while under discussion
    2. Decisions will be made on a case-by-case basis, unless stated otherwise, assume it is open
    3. The whole community is invited to provide feedback on the minutes
  2. StC meeting monthly by phone for 1 hour
  3. Quarterly community update by phone from StC to public
  4. Run another OSLC Community Survey in 2013, be sure to ask about the StC and governance updates.
  5. The StC should not be in the business of evaluating the technical merits of a proposal (e.g. SCM re-chartering). The Core WG should provide a recommendation, from a technical perspective, before the StC reviews and decides.

Action Items from this meeting

  1. Steve S./Sean K.: subscribe StC members to the existing public mailing list
  2. Steve S./Sean K.: provide the StC with tools for confidential collaboration
  3. John W.: develop a more focused agenda item on “Given the vision, what is the next milestone to get OSLC closer to it?”
  4. Sean K.: develop a preliminary assessment of the current state of OSLC, use the website as a starting point (membership, participation, implementation, usage)
  5. Communications WG: work on a prioritized backlog of initiatives to raise the profile of OSLC; bring back some thoughts to the StC
  6. Communications WG: consider adapting (potentially through a re-charter) to handle execution and management of those initiatives - also consider formalizing the relationship with the StC
  7. someone(s), possibly the Comms WG: use John W.’s whitepaper as a starting point, take input from other community members and provide updated resources (another whitepaper, plus a 1-page highlight/summary)
  8. Core WG: review the SCM re-chartering proposal and provide a recommendation to the StC
  9. StC: refine the process of how we take up the responsibility of approving

Future Agenda Topics from this meeting

  1. Where and when of our next F2F meeting.
  2. Is there a way we could “grease the skids” to help OSLC participants continue their work at the SDO?
  3. What are the details of the process for someone to sign the Members Agreement as an individual (e.g. not representing an organization)?
  4. Decide on how future StC elections will take place.
  5. More focused version of “Given the vision, what is the next milestone to get OSLC closer to it?”
  6. [review] the initial report, continue the [discussion] about an “OSLC assessment”
  7. [review] the recommendation from the Core WG and [vote] on SCM re-chartering

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