#360 Review of updated Fedora Project Organizational Chart
Closed: resolved 3 years ago by riecatnor. Opened 3 years ago by riecatnor.

Hi folks! One of the first things I wanted to make getting started as FCAIC was an organizational chart. And then COVID happened. It's still happening, but I have continually heard questions like "what teams are active in Fedora?" "where can people get involved?" "do you have an overview of everything going on in Fedora?" -- which brought me to conclude that I definitely needed to pick this back up and asap. I have updated the org chart found on the general Fedora docs page[1] and it was actually already in progress with the Mindshare Committee.

Since we are trying to capture an accurate picture of Fedora's organization, I would like the Council to review this for accuracy. Especially those folks who are reps, @dcantrell @siddharthvipul1 and those recently retired reps as well please :) @x3mboy @jflory7

Please advise any edits/changes that need to be made, specifically focusing on content over design(not entirely adverse to that, but this is more geared towards accuracy of activity within the project). Once the content is defined and agreed upon, then we can look at the design via a design ticket.

Attaching the image files in a comment - they don't want to load here for some reason.

[1] https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/orgchart/
[2] https://pagure.io/mindshare/issue/135


Metadata Update from @riecatnor:
- Issue assigned to riecatnor

3 years ago

That looks lovely! Kudos @riecatnor !

I like it! Since it's an SVG, is the long-term plan to have it in a repo where updates can be done via pull request?

SVG files generated by inkscape do not lend themselves well to being manipulated as text files, even though of course they technically are. What I'd really love to see is a tool which can generate a file with this basic design programmatically from a much more simple (like good old dot, or some simple markup language). That way, we wouldn't need to have a designer manually update every time we add or drop a group.

The thing at https://apps.fedoraproject.org/ is conceptually similar, although not quite as complex or pretty. That uses this YAML file as input. Maybe the Web & Apps team could help.

Hiya, this looks really great, kind-of reminds me of a mind-map in terms of how it's really just a set of nested lists. Using mind-map software to generate might lose design quality, but it might be able to more easily generate from a plain text file.

EDITED: Actually, the design is a big part of what makes this so accessible, how things are balanced and considered draws the eye in to look around. This may be a case where design is way more important than ease of updates, since the goal is to help the interested new contributor. Also, how often do we change around the elements of the org chart? So I'm reversing what I just said above, I think.

A wee small nit, I notice localization and internationalization are given their (english?) techie abbrevs of "l10n" and "i18n", it might be more accessible to spell those ones out too. Just a small concern that people interested in and knowledgeable about those things might not know the abbreviation?

This is amazing.

The "Translations" bubble should be "Globalization (G11n)." Historically, both activities (Internationalization and Localization) happen underneath the Globalization umbrella. For a time, there was going to be a Globalization Steering Committee, but not sure where the conversation fell off.

If you want to future-proof this a bit, you could add "Websites & Apps Community Revamp" to the Objectives bubble, even though it is not yet proposed or reviewed by the Council.

Is "Mentored Projects" underneath "Diversity & Inclusion"? The D&I Team (and the folks who crossover into other teams) have contributed, but it feels odd for D&I to "own" this work. To me, it makes more sense for Mindshare because it requires coordinating with multiple stakeholders that will pull from Fedora's people-resources during Mentored Project rounds.

Having "Ambassador" and "Advocate" next to each other is confusing. My understanding is that there was always supposed to be one or the other, not both. This might not be something to fix in this ticket, might need a wider discussion elsewhere.

Community Blog… under "Program Management" bubble? Has @bcotton considered that? :grinning:

These are my first impressions! Seriously love this work and so happy to see updates happen. Arguably this is one of the most important pieces of documentation we can produce as a project!

@mattdm wrote…
That way, we wouldn't need to have a designer manually update every time we add or drop a group.

Sometimes, it is hard to automate away a human touch. Fedora is lucky to have a community of designers who work in our project, so this could be a recurring type of task to empower new contributions to the Design Team.

I feel odd to make an anti-automation argument in a community that helped make automation go mainstream. The only thing that could convince me that this should be automated is if we are getting a team of at least one senior software engineer, a DevOps engineer, and a product owner to drive this work for a period of one to two Fedora release cycles. (And if that is something we can have, well, I have a lot of other ideas and requests to share too. :wink: )

Community Blog… under "Program Management" bubble? Has @bcotton considered that? :grinning:

The fact that it currently is in practice is a failure on my part. :-) I didn't mean to suck all of the oxygen out of the room and hope to reoxygenate that team at some point in the near future.

Edit: although with the PgM team starting and CommOps in a state of flux, I would be open to explicitly making the CommBlog a PgM team function, but with the approval of CommOps and/or Mindshare. Something to discuss not-in-this-ticket. :-)

Thanks to all for the kind words, and thanks for the positive & helpful feedback.

I like it! Since it's an SVG, is the long-term plan to have it in a repo where updates can be done via pull request?

I think this specific artifact should be updated by a real life person :) I also think it would be great to see this concept grow into a webapp. The idea would an interactive org chart, and when you click on each team bubble, a popup comes up and shows info & links such as a short description, team mailing list, communication channels, wiki, pagure, etc. That is also not-in-this-ticket but an idea that would be pretty rad to pursue.

The thing at https://apps.fedoraproject.org/ is conceptually similar, although not quite as complex or pretty. That uses this YAML file as input. Maybe the Web & Apps team could help.

+1

A wee small nit, I notice localization and internationalization are given their (english?) techie abbrevs of "l10n" and "i18n", it might be more accessible to spell those ones out too. Just a small concern that people interested in and knowledgeable about those things might not know the abbreviation?

Noted, I will adjust this part based on yours & @jflory7 comment below.

The "Translations" bubble should be "Globalization (G11n)." Historically, both activities (Internationalization and Localization) happen underneath the Globalization umbrella. For a time, there was going to be a Globalization Steering Committee, but not sure where the conversation fell off.

Cool, I will adjust :)

If you want to future-proof this a bit, you could add "Websites & Apps Community Revamp" to the Objectives bubble, even though it is not yet proposed or reviewed by the Council.

I think it's fine to add it in now!

Is "Mentored Projects" underneath "Diversity & Inclusion"? The D&I Team (and the folks who crossover into other teams) have contributed, but it feels odd for D&I to "own" this work. To me, it makes more sense for Mindshare because it requires coordinating with multiple stakeholders that will pull from Fedora's people-resources during Mentored Project rounds.

I was debating on this a bunch, actually. In one sense, I see mentored projects as a huge way Fedora promotes diversity in our community. From first hand experience coordinating Outreachy for Fedora I can say that I provide updates to the Mindshare Committee, and they are not that involved in the organization. So in my mind, they don't own the work either and it doesn't necessarily need to be tied to Mindshare. Seeing as we have a mentored projects rep to Mindshare, I see the existing connection and am fine moving it over to the Mindshare side. It will leave the D&I section looking a little lean tho.

Having "Ambassador" and "Advocate" next to each other is confusing. My understanding is that there was always supposed to be one or the other, not both. This might not be something to fix in this ticket, might need a wider discussion elsewhere.

Advocates was something that happened as the Ambassador Program declined. The idea was to remove all gate-keeping from organizing and getting support for events. It didn't negate the Ambassador program. The Community Outreach Revamp Objective includes both the Ambassador Program and Advocates moving forward as we feel folks should have a process for getting event support without being a full on Ambassador. What I can do here is just move them in the design so they aren't right next to each other.

This is giving me a secondary idea. When we publish & promote this, also provide a list of info on all the current places these things are happening? Not sure if that is a blog post, a wiki page, docs page?

I will incorporate these changes and provide a revised version. Thanks!

Hey folks, last call for comments here! I would like to get this up on our docs site shortly :)

Thanks!

@riecatnor wrote…
Hey folks, last call for comments here! I would like to get this up on our docs site shortly :)

+1, happy to see this get published ASAP.

@riecatnor wrote…
I was debating on this a bunch, actually. […] It will leave the D&I section looking a little lean tho.

This happens a lot with diversity, equity, and inclusion work. Usually it fits into existing places in the community and getting more of these bubbles "crossing" together, if that makes sense. But it ends up making the diversity sub-bubbles look few. I think it is OK though. It took us a long time to get those other three sub-bubbles still there. :)

@riecatnor wrote…
The Community Outreach Revamp Objective includes both the Ambassador Program and Advocates moving forward as we feel folks should have a process for getting event support without being a full on Ambassador.

With this context, including both makes sense in the graphic.

@riecatnor wrote…
This is giving me a secondary idea. When we publish & promote this, also provide a list of info on all the current places these things are happening? Not sure if that is a blog post, a wiki page, docs page?

Not sure I am following. Could you please expand further?

@riecatnor wrote…
This is giving me a secondary idea. When we publish & promote this, also provide a list of info on all the current places these things are happening? Not sure if that is a blog post, a wiki page, docs page?

Not sure I am following. Could you please expand further?

Sure! Once we push this to the docs page, I would like to do a couple things to promote it for visibility. I am going to write up a post for the CommBlog, which I will tweet and share in popular fedora channels.

For each bubble on the map I was thinking I could gather some info, for example, communication channel, mailing list & pagure repo (to keep it simple). This info could be included in the aforementioned blog post or on a wiki page as an "info snapshot" to go along with this version of the org chart.

So that when people see the chart and say "hey, that group/sig/activity seems like a cool thing!" they at least have a place to start. Does that make more sense?

@riecatnor Makes sense and I think it is a good idea! My only concern is making sure we don't lose track of the content over time; we have a tendency to sprawl after a few months or a year of building out content and documentation. (We have a lot of it in Fedora.) This could be a good idea for the CommOps docs as part of the Outreach revamp, but I digress. :)

@bt0dotninja pushed this to https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/project/orgchart/ for us, thank you!!

@jflory7 I think I would create the list with a disclaimer that it will not be updated. That is what I mean by "snapshot" versus something to maintain.. I see how it could be problematic, and since I don't have a ton of capacity for a project like that rn, I will just write up a short post for the commblog highlighting the new org chart in the docs.

Closing as complete, thanks for all the input!

Metadata Update from @riecatnor:
- Issue close_status updated to: resolved
- Issue status updated to: Closed (was: Open)

3 years ago

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