thinking ahead to 4.5: features or polish?

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On November 4, 2009, Sebastian Kügler wrote:
> Rather than a moratorium on new features, I'd like to have our culture more
>  geared towards higher quality.

while a good idea in general, this doesn't really address issues we currently 
have outstanding.

it also rather ignores the fact that no matter how much review we do, issues 
will creep in that we don't catch until later on. this is an opportunity to 
pause and mop up those issues.

>  polished. During Tokamak, we could do reviews of certain aspects of
>  Plasma, based on user's workflows (apparently we'll have a usability lab
>  available there), and come up with list of workflows we'd like to improve.

that would be good, yes.

> I think indeed that a moratorium on new features would kill off some
>  people's motivation and could cause tension.

that's a real possibility; are there ways to avoid that? and we aren't talking 
about random people, we're talking about ourselves.

	are _we_ able to do such a release without it killing _our_ motivation?

>  Also, creativity doesn't care
>  about this, so if I wake up in the middle of the night with the urge to
>  write the next killer app, that should be cool.

quite true; but it doesn't have to go into 4.5. it can be put elsewhere until 
4.6 opens up. and we can be flexible, but perhaps we also need some focus. 

>  If everybody sees the core
>  team polishing rather than working on fun new features, that'll surely
>  have effect on others as well.

yes; the question is what that effect will be, of course :)

>  (Hopefully not "ah, good, they polish so I don't have to.).

yes; it would be great if we could set an example others follow of their own 
choice.

> So how can we encourage this culture of polish:
> 
> - Keep compabitility between 4.4 and 4.5 as long as possible: makes
>  backports and testing easier

shouldn't be a problem, though backporting to 4.4  wouldn't be a greater 
priority than in past or current cycles i don't think.

> - Form small teams that concentrate on making one aspect work really well
>  (think of how Artur and Marco adopted plasma-mid, now plasma-netbook, I
>  think this worked well)

+1

> - Post status updates, stats to track our progress

yes, this will be vital to keeping it fun, i think. progress is a great 
motivator.

> - Discuss sore points (but don't give the peanut gallery a forum) and work
>  towards fixing them

+1
 
> That said, for communication around 4.5, we should go for "we concentrated
>  on polish" again:
> 
> - we'll need it seeing all the new exciting features going into 4.4, those
>  will surely take some time to settle and become really good
> - it communicates that we care about our (potential) users
> - it's beneficial for KDE (workspace, apps, platform) as a product

+1 again
 
> Maybe also a good opportunity to talk about our personal plans for
>  plasma-beyond-4.4, mine are, roughly:
> 
> - Make Lion Mail production quality, would be nice to have this in Plasma
>  when also Kontact-on-Akonadi arrives
> - Finally finish the networkmanager plasmoid

i don't really perceive these two things as being work on new features, per 
se. they are gaps in our user experience that need filling.

it is amazingly sad that we still don't have a connection manager plasmoid. 
it's a huge empty hole with something waiting to fill that whole sitting in 
playground in various states of immaturity for quite a while now. does it make 
any sense to be working on other things when that just sits there unfinished?

lion mail is something we're missing for netbook, and though it isn't such a 
fundamental component as a network manager it's an important bit of our vision 
for how people should use such devices (not to mention for plasma-mobile)

> I realise that this only partly fits into "polish, polish, polish", yet I
>  don't quite feel like dropping stuff. I'm surely intrigued by the idea of
>  making 4.5 really solid, but I think I need a mix of fixing and new
>  development to be a happy coder.

perhaps at issue here is defining what "polish, polish, polish" means. it's 
not just bug fixing, but finishing features that aren't complete, improving 
issues of consistency, smoothing out workflows as you mentioned and filling 
gaps we've just left sitting there as if they don't matter. some will require 
"new features" from the user perspective, but from our perspective it should 
all be about "making what's there right now work properly according to our 
desired definition of that".

iow, instead of  a selkie plasmoid, maybe we finish the networking plasmoid. 
the former is awesome, exciting, etc. but it's new and not filling a gap or 
fixing a problem we currently have. it's extending our boundaries. the 
networking plasmoid is needed fill a very real gap we have. it's completing 
what we've already started.

> Sorry for the long-ish email, I'll try to be briefer next time ;)

uhm. i would say something, except that would definitely be the pot calling 
the kettle black ;-P

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
humru othro a kohnu se
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43

KDE core developer sponsored by Qt Development Frameworks
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