requirements management in open source

Requirements management in open sourceAlex Astapenka, GrowthGrind 1.0 - RequirementsMay 1, 2016

1 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com -- Level: 101

Alex Astapenka Intro1. several years of project/delivery management in EPAM Systems

and Oxagile 2. Caspowa.com - cloud service for websites performance

acceleration3. CTOcast.com - very popular Russian podcast about people and

processes in ITSubscribe: bit.ly/growthgrind


Global shift• Tehcnologies and innovation is a key for

success in all industries• Shift happened ~6 years ago (AWS,

GitHub)• Engineers are opinion leaders and

drivers of changes• Software development department is

now a buying center


OSS requirements who and how• single vendor open source projects

(MySQL by Oracle) VS development communities (Linux foundation)

• Who makes decision about features? (Responsible people, Community driven, End users driven)

• How decisions are made? (Consensus, Voiting, Democracy with Vetoes, Benevolent dictator, Upper class dictatorship)


My OSS expirience (Summary)• single vendor OSS (Mixed bazaar/

cathedral)• users: developers, merchants, merchant

buyers• how decisions are made: upper class

dictatorship


My OSS expirience (Roles)• Product manager is an advocate of merchants and merchants

buyers• Architecture council is an advocate of developers• Development team• PMO/Scrum master (facilitator)• Developers Community• Solution/technology/hosting partners


My OSS expirience (Artifacts)• High level design document• Epics/User stories (Definition of Ready)• Unified Definition of Done • Developer and merchant documentation• GitHub issues


OSS Survey resultsHow decisions are made?

Consensus 69%Upper class dictatorship 38%

Who makes decision about features?

Responsible people 90%Community driven 40%


How do you support end users?GitHub >80%Bug Tracking Systems >50% (in addition)

What type of issues have the highest priority?Functional Bugs >80%Security issues >70%


How do you discuss features?

Issues tracking tool 100%Messenger (IRC, Slack etc) 60%

What is an average length of your Roadmap?

No Roadmap 33% 10+ months 20%


Prioritization of features

"Impact on existing or potential customers"

"Number of users requesting the feature Development effort Strategic impact of the feature"

"Pick whatever feature I like - Whoever has time to implement"

"By I-can't-live-without-it level"

"The one I need"

"Noisier contributors get more attention"11 Facebook.com/astapenka --- CTOcast.com (bit.ly/growthgrind) -- Caspowa.com -- Level: 101

"Make it fun, deploy often, and give credit where due"

"Time is valuable. You don't have enough. Learn identifing good contributors from the bad ones. Only spent your time with the good ones."

"People will complain about anything."

"Say no to features more often, and build your separate features into plugins where possible."

"Be helpful, be open, be willing to take on new ideas."


Questions?Caspowa.comCTOcast.comTwitter: @aaliaksandrfacebook.com/astapenka

BR, Alex Astapenka


requirements management in open source

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