Introduction

The goal of this section is to collaboratively draft ideas that can enhance U+1 performance as a team. Our main goals are:

• Recruit more members;
• Retain members;
• Getting members involved into team activities (technical, organisational);
• Improving our communication with other Ubuntu teams, groups and users;
• Improving our current resources (wiki, FAQ, forum, IRC, tools, Launchpad, etc);
• Improving our technical processes (testing methods: Procedures, tools, automation, etc);
• Improving our management processes;

Mostly any coherent idea fits one of these goals. Idealy, as ideas are added to this section, other users can edit and improve them, turning thoughts and ambitions into mature projects.

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Ideas

Short-Term (up to '''QQ''' Alpha 1)

Communicate immediate testing needs and opportunities

• Goal: Recruit testers for (or inform testers of) testing needs

• Description: Attempt to suport immediate QA needs and prepare for QQ testing

• Status: Ongoing (discuss here)

• Contact: Grahammechanical

Make testers wiki easy

• Goal: Making it easier for new members to understand technical concepts, retain members

• Description: Ventrical made a good point with this Idea. We should always review our work to make sure it can be used and understood by any team member and user. It might be impossible to make it accessible to all users (some have absolutely no skills, interest or will to read and learn, but we must focus on the people, no matter their skill level, that *are* interested.

• Status: Ongoing (discuss here)

• Contact: Ventrical

U+1 Tools

• Goal: Working smarter not harder

• Description: Take advantage of currently existing QATeam tools, develop and customise other tools aimed at performing boring tasks faster and automatically: From download / sync and burn of daily ISO, to Testing Automation. Pre-requisite: Identify members technical skills.

• Contact: Effenberg0x0

pad.ubuntu.com

• Goal: Make collaborating on content projects easier

• Description: Ubuntu Wiki does not allow for real-time collaboration. IRC is too distracting for content-oriented group work, with users joining, leaving, quiting, netsplits, lag, off-topic comments, etc. It holds up well for small sessions in invite-only or moderated channels. UbuntuForums is also not a good option: Users can't edit the orginal post. Tasks that spread through many days or weeks in which content formatting is relevant and must be preserved (such as code, documentation, etc) benefit from etherpad. It's not clear if teams in general can use pad.ubuntu.com to create a team pad and team projects' pads under it. It could be a great resource for testers.

• Contact: Effenberg0x0

Teaming / Mentoring

• Goal: Improve quality of testing / team efficiency / reduce workload

• Description: There seem two types of Ubuntu users: Those that have no or poor skills and those that, having more experience jump to development. It's becoming increasingly hard to find skilled users, or users that are willing to learn, and recruit them to testing. Even basic tasks, such as testing the OS install seem hard to new users. It makes no sense for the team to have many users if they can't really test and understand Ubuntu. In order for U+1 to grow as a differentiated team, the quality of our work and skills of our members must be superior to other teams. If we do not take the responsibility of raising the bar to us, this situation will hardly change. Therefore we have a responsibility with providing knowledge and mentoring. Summary: Create a Team Education Manager role. He will work with the the Team Recruitment Manager to evaluate member's skills and experience. Unexperienced members will be assigned to a mentor in groups of two or three at most. It's a opportunity for them to learn Linux/Ubuntu fast from a more experieced user. A free Linux crash course. Aside from that, create regular (weekly?) IRC sessions in which new members will have the opportunity to learn about Ubuntu and Testing from other team members and invitees. Not only testing-oriented: Create a set of topics, from what is an OS and a Kernel to more specific ones. Guitara is working in the same line, evaluate the best way to collaborate. I think the hardest workload will be on developing guidelines to content and getting people to participate as mentors. It's not hard to spot new users eager for knowledge in places such as UbuntuForums. Even He-Man had a Mentor (and he was a MOTU). New testers / members might use one.

• Edit by Ventrical: In the world of malware they have what are called malware removal bootcamps as I am sure you are well aware of. In fact there are many other types of metoring/bootcamps for several different softwares. So I would then propose an Ubuntu Boot Camp and see if that can narrow down several subject matters down to just a few topics.

• Contact: Effenberg0x0

Recruitment Manager (Headhunter)

• 'Goal: Reduce workload, improve team efficiency

• Description: We need to find someone for this role. UbuntuForums is a great place for recruitment. Just by browsing current threads in UF Ubuntu+1 (OO and PP cycles) and some other sections for 1 hour, I have created a list of more than 60 people I'd like to invite to the team. However, getting in touch with them (PMs, email, etc), setting up a talk on IRC, etc could be done by someone else. -- effenberg0x0 2012-03-31 15:25:08

• Contact: Effenberg0x0

You+1 Initiative

• Goal: Getting more people involved

• Description: Select one Ubuntu user that is not a current member but shows interest in technical aspects of Ubuntu (there are plenty of them on IRC, UbuntuForums, your university, etc). Invite them for an event in IRC in which current members will present the team, its activities, goals, relevance of the work, examples, etc. A portion of these users may potentially develop some interest in joining the team.

• Contact: Effenberg0x0

Inverting the game

• Goal: Get QA members to U+1

• Description: What if we invert the game completely and bring QA members to U+1? Can we provide them with a more friendly and motivating environment, thus obtaining valuable and experienced contributors? In the end, Ubuntu is benefited in the same way.

• Contact: Effenberg0x0

Develop alliances with other testing teams

• Goal: Increase user-base, learn from other testing communities

• Description: It sounds beneficial to U+1 and other testing-teams to meet, compare methods, results, share each other's environment, partner on projects, etc. It would prepare and empower testing groups to upcoming changes in the QA structure.

• Contact: Effenberg0x0

Medium-Term (up to '''QQ''' Beta 1)

New Role - Marketing and Communication Manager

• Goal: Publicise the team; Getting more people involved

• Description: A member will email blogs, forums managers and admins, groups of users, publicising the U+1 Team and the easy procedures for joining it.

• Contact: Effenberg0x0

Invite developers to talk about what they like to see in bug reports, how we can help them better

• Goal: Improve team efficiency

• Description: We can learn a lot from them, decrease the time bugs take to get fixed. We can publish a set of guidelines and add to our wiki. Potential New Role: Team Developers Ambassador

• Contact: Effenberg0x0

Sikuli Automation

• Goal: Train U+1 members to develop Sikuli-based automated tests

• Description: Check out The Sikuli Project and watch this 6min. video demo. We can use Sikuli to automate a lot of things in testing: From Ubuntu install to application test-cases, thus reducing the work load on testers and using our team intellectual capital in more advanced/complex and less repetitive tasks. Any person can create a Sikuli script: It requires no skills and there's no programming language syntax to learn. We can try to get devs from The Sikuli Project to join us on a live (IRC) session for basic instructions. We can work collectively on some first trials.

• Contact: Effenberg0x0

Long-Term (likely '''RR''' cycle)

Open / publicize this wiki area ("ideas") also for non-members and the larger Ubuntu community

• Goal: Improve members commitment; Recruit new members; Assign Ideas development to members

• Description: People like to brainstorm, have ideas, discuss their point of views, feel as a part of it. Let's use our current resources (Forum, IRC) to ask them to come here and insert their own Ideas. Problem: a large volume of non-sense or disorganised content may be inserted. We might need to assign someone to read through it, delete garbage and fix disorganised content.

• Edit by grahammechanical: This is a good idea but, anyone can post in Ubuntu Forums or in irc but there is a restriction on those who have Ubuntu wiki editing privileges. And it is right that this should be the case. Let me give some more thought to this idea.

• Contact: Effenberg0x0

Hardware Samples / donation, Lending. Hardware testing, certification

• Goal: Increase Ubuntu "out-of-the-box" quality by providing testers access to as much hardware as possible.

• Description: Hardware manufacturers must have some interest in using Ubuntu testing community to test their products, report bugs to proper channels, have developers fix them. This goes from chipset manufacturers to PC OEMs. While this sounds impossible for individuals, can we, as a team and with Ubuntu endorsement, request hardware samples, donations, lend equipment from manufacturers for testing? If so, how do we organize processes to handle this? Should this be done via Canonical, Ubuntu or the team? What are the legal requirements? Who would pay for equipments shipment to testers in different geographical regions?

• Contact: Effenberg0x0

Sudo Code Quick Grabber

• Goal: To have a quick sudo code grabber reference.

• Description: Insert description here

• Contact: Ventrical

Testers Wiki Interactive Ebook

• Goal: Make testing easier by making Testers Wiki into a kind of interactive book.

• Description: Let the Testers wiki be an interactive book that takes the reader down the path of testing, from simple to more involved testing of the Ubuntu development release. The layout and the format should make it possible to read page by page, tutorial by tutorial but with links that will allow the reader return to earlier sections or to move forward to more advanced sections according to the reader's level of knowledge.

Suggestions for tutorials

Please add any suggestions you have for tutorials. We need to explain testing the development branch from all perspectives. These are some that I have thought of out of my limited experience. Share your experience through a tutorial.

• Getting a Launchpad account
• Getting and locating a hardware profile of your machine
• Signing the Code of Conduct
• Converting a stable release Ubuntu into a development branch Ubuntu
• Partitioning a single hard disk machine for serious testing
• Different types of ISO image testing
• Obtaining ISO images for testing and keeping the image up to date with a minimum of data download
• Reporting ISO testing to the Quality and Assurance team (QA)
• Understanding QA test cases and using them in ISO testing.
• Developing a routine of ISO testing
• Understanding other (non-ISO) QA test cases.
• Running Checkbox type test cases
• Testing the Development branch as an ordinary user and making a good job of it
• The basics of a useful bug report
• What to do when things break
• Using existing utilities and files to understand what is broken
• How to break the OS

• Contact: grahammechanical

Wiki Collaboration

• Goal: Collaboration in writing the wiki

• Description: As a self-managed team each U+1 team member has the authority to edit the team wiki. As polite people we want to collaborate in writing the wiki.

• I have page where I draft my wiki articles and test my skill in wiki markup. Everyone is invited to visit this page to see what I am working on and I welcome advice and suggestions. Graham's page

• I would like others who share in creating the wiki to also use a similiar drafting page.
• I would like us to have a special wiki page that we can use as a whiteboard to share ideas. This page should have a "signing-in" section where we can record any editing that we intend to do so that others will get advance notice of the changes we wish to make.

• Contact: grahammechanical

Enter Idea Name Here #2

• Goal: Make testing easier

• Description: Enter idea description

• Contact: Effenberg0x0

Enter Idea Name Here #3

• Goal: Make testing easier

• Description: Enter idea description

• Contact: Effenberg0x0