Brainstorming

Revision 27 as of 2012-03-23 15:01:56

Clear message

Contents

  1. Introduction
    1. Ideas
      1. The U+1 "You+1" Project
      2. New Role - Marketing and Communication Manager
      3. U+1 Tools
      4. Map members hardware profiles and testing preferences
      5. Ask members what we can do to trigger their motivation to get involved. Evaluate this regularly
      6. Invite developers to talk about what they like to see in bug reports, how we can help them better
      7. Open / publicise this wiki area ("ideas") also for non-members and the larger Ubuntu community
      8. Make testers wiki easy
      9. Hardware Samples / donation, Lending. Hardware testing, certification
      10. Sikuli Automation
      11. Inverting the game
      12. Develop alliances with other testing teams
      13. Sudo Code Quick Grabber
      14. Automate diff between daily builds
      15. Investigate "Problems Lifecycle" by cprofitt
      16. Community Building Specs
      17. Improve U+1 Wiki Landing Page
      18. Enter Idea Name Here #2
      19. Enter Idea Name Here #3
      20. Enter Idea Name Here #4
      21. Enter Idea Name Here #5
      22. Enter Idea Name Here #6

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.

Ideas

The U+1 "You+1" Project

  • 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

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

U+1 Tools

  • Goal: Making work of team members easier

  • 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

Map members hardware profiles and testing preferences

  • Goal: Assess our infrastructure and define our testing capacity

  • Description: Create table on wiki where registered members can fill in the hardware specs they will make available for testing. Not all members will accept to do all types of tests (i.e. Ubuntu Flavors). Identify what members are willing to test, their preferences and interest.

  • Contact: Effenberg0x0

Ask members what we can do to trigger their motivation to get involved. Evaluate this regularly

  • Goal: Improve members commitment

  • Description: Communities fail for lack of interest and involvement of their members. But they also never ask what are these users needs, problems, expectations, frustrations, what triggers them, what they love to do, what they hate to do. New Role: Team Staff Manager

  • 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

Open / publicise 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 ay be inserted. We might need to assign someone to read through it, delete garbage and fix disorganised content.

  • Contact: Effenberg0x0

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.

  • Contact: Ventrical

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 organise 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

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

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

Sudo Code Quick Grabber

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

  • Description: Insert description here

  • Contact: Ventrical

Automate diff between daily builds

  • Goal: Make testing easier

  • Description: If we automate diff on Daily Build t=0 & t=t-1 (and that is ridiculously easy), add the changelog (if any provided), and auto-post that to a page in our Wiki via script+editmoin (pretty much doable), it will be clear for our testers what they should give priority (test/stress-test). New bugs reported at the forum will potentially related to last updates and we will be able to associate bug to update easier. Bug reports would also be easier (package/update would be easier to detect).

  • Why not just use the changelog?: BY diffing ISOs, we will be able to see all changes in detail, including those to the content of config files, for example.

  • Contact: Effenberg0x0

Investigate "Problems Lifecycle" by cprofitt

Community Building Specs

  • Goal: Convert our experience with U+1, the problems, challenges, results, feedback, etc into a detailed specification

  • Description: There has been growing interest in Community Building, but there's no proper / complete set of guiding docs, specs, etc. Can we try to create some generic specification, that can be improved / replicated by other projects? Also formalize the "inter-media" Ubuntu idea as a Community Integration / empowering tool.

  • Contact: Effenberg0x0

Improve U+1 Wiki Landing Page

  • Goal: Communicate recent changes, important notices, events better

  • Description: Implement 3 "boxes" at the landing page, autofilled by MoinMoin macros (RecentUpdates): Agenda, News, Activities. Link to proper section onClick.

  • Contact: Effenberg0x0

Enter Idea Name Here #2

  • Goal: Make testing easier

  • Description: Enter idea description

  • Contact: YourLaunchPadName

Enter Idea Name Here #3

  • Goal: Make testing easier

  • Description: Enter idea description

  • Contact: YourLaunchPadName

Enter Idea Name Here #4

  • Goal: Make testing easier

  • Description: Enter idea description

  • Contact: YourLaunchPadName

Enter Idea Name Here #5

  • Goal: Make testing easier

  • Description: Enter idea description

  • Contact: YourLaunchPadName

Enter Idea Name Here #6

  • Goal: Make testing easier

  • Description: Enter idea description

  • Contact: YourLaunchPadName