Proposed Features for Launchpad Bugs 3.0 - call for help!

[Reinhard Tartler]

Christian Robottom Reis <kiko at canonical.com> writes:

> I've struggled with this over the past two years, and in less than a
> year we will be open sourced. I understand that existing end-users are
> very much affected by changes, but on the other hand, we need to change
> Launchpad in order to make it better. On top of that, when we do get
> feedback it is very varied -- some users really like the changes, but
> others, not that much. Additionally, if you've read `Don't Shoot the
> Dog', you'll understand me when I say that the negative feedback we do
> get doesn't encourage us to seek out more!
>
> I have been thinking about ways of getting better input into what's
> being changed in Launchpad. One thing that hurts us is that we do want
> to keep our rate of change high, and any process around making a change
> affects it.

And I think here we have a clash. Developers need to rely on their
tools. They need to have confidence that the software and infrastructure
behaves exactly as expected. A C Programmer will be very annoyed if a
program suddenly doesn't compile or even worse: works in subtle other
ways. In Ubuntu, we are pretty much dependent on launchpad for pretty
much everything. We have quite some contributors, that work on a high
volume set of tasks, and changes to their tools (which includes UI) is
something that disturbes their 'normal workflow'.

On the other hand, I can of course understand that the launchpad crew
wants to improve launchpad and that changes need to be done. The best we
can do is to listen to each others and talk about things that really
annoy us.

> Our milestone lists are very public and it is today possible
> to subscribe to a milestone and get notifications to bugs added and
> removed from it. So it would not be impossible to keep track of what's
> changing in Launchpad -- unfortunately, I think the traffic and level of
> detail may not be for everybody.

That's an excellent point! This enables us to be notified about upcoming
changes, which solves one part of the problem I'm talking about.

> A final note to MOTU specifically following upon the "varied feedback"
> point I made above. We really do want your feedback. However, it makes
> /my/ work much less effective when the feedback we do get is conflicting
> or negative.  Presenting balanced, consistent guidance to my team is the
> best way for you to ensure we do what you want -- I know it's hard, but
> it's really the right way to do it.

I can only support this. Please, fellow MOTUs, the launchpad guys
explicitly ask us for feedback so that they can plan their work. They do
want to work with us, so let's take this oppurtunity and talk
constructively to each other.

-- 
Gruesse/greetings,
Reinhard Tartler, KeyID 945348A4