Rethinking UDS

[Thierry Carrez]

Bryce Harrington wrote:
> On Thu, May 27, 2010 at 02:50:20PM +0100, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
>> == Problems with the status quo ==
>>
>> 1. UDS is big and complex.  Creating and maintaining the schedule is a lot
>> of work in itself, and this large format requires a large venue, which in
>> turn requires more planning and logistical work (not to mention cost).  This
>> is only worthwhile if we get proportionally more benefit out of the event
>> itself.
> 
> It seems that UDS includes two distinct activities:
> 
>   a. Gather ideas
>   b. Plan implementation work

Yes, most of the dilution Matt has been mentioning comes from the fact
that we use UDS for something between planning and design. IMHO it
directly comes from the lack of time between last release and UDS. If
you are involved in release management, you're "free" to think about the
next cycle late on release day, and UDS is just one week away. You end
up using UDS to experiment potential ideas rather than to discuss
implementation details on features you know you'll be doing, and play
the spec/planning game the weeks after UDS.

> It makes me wonder if by doing both in parallel leads to some of this
> complexity, and if so whether it might make sense to split the 2 UDS's a
> year into 3 events:  One big yearly idea gathering event, and two
> more focused and intimate technical planning events.

In the server team, we used to have a pre-UDS "strategy sprint", about
one month before UDS, with a subset of our team. That didn't prevent
some session creep, but that certainly helped to focus UDS on
implementation discussions (we already knew we would work on that
feature, so it wasn't about validation).

If we want to have leaner, more implementation-focused UDS, one way to
do it is to move it to the third or fourth week after release (rather
than the second one), leaving time for strategy sprints, planning and
basic technical investigation to occur before.

Then you could probably have, as Bryce proposed, a 4-day UDS or a
special day for creative brainstorming.

-- 
Thierry Carrez
Technical lead, Ubuntu server team || Canonical Ltd.