Fedora Org Clarity Attempt

[John Poelstra]

Jeff Spaleta said the following on 05/29/2008 12:52 PM Pacific Time:
> 2008/5/29 John Poelstra <poelstra at redhat.com>:
>> I'm sure some out there will think I'm getting to "corporate", however I've
>> often found that creating picture of things helps to simplify things in ways
>> that thousands of words can't.
> 
> Yeah, I've tried to suggest a new meme via my Role based SIG proposal.
> Which by the way is infinitely better than yours because I used
> inkscape and generated
> an SVG...with rainbow colors and gradients.
> 
> More seriously....
> let me suggest that if we are going to think in terms of an
> organizational chart as you have proposed...that we do it in a way
> that stresses three key factors with regard to relationships among
> Fedora subproject units.  For this discussion I'm still assuming that
> SIGs will be using the role-based concept and thus have a more
> complicated structure best illustrated with my super awesome rainbow
> svg.  And as such they sit somewhat outside a standard organizational
> chart because of their highly collaborative nature.
> 
> Factor 1:  Dispute Resolution
> Who do you go to when a subproject can't reach agreement and needs arbitration?
> 
> Factor 2: Intra-Project Communication
> Which group do you expect a subproject to receive important information from and
> to send important information to, to insure communication to other sub-projects.
> 
> Factor 3: Oversight
> Which other group sets and updates policy boundaries which a
> subproject is explicitly constrained by.
> 
> 
> In a corporate entity, all of this would be thought of as
> accountability... who do you report to.. and the answer would usually
> be the same entity for all 3 factors. I'm not sure that is the case
> for Fedora, as a volunteer staffed organization.

I think your three factors are great! With the flattening of many 
organizations reporting lines are not as linear as they used to be so I 
would disagree that all three factors would be met by one entity.

I think accountability definitely applies to Fedora.  Aren't we 
accountable to each other as a project to do what we say we will do on a 
given task?  And if we don't do what we've committed to, the project 
suffers?

I don't think accountability only applies to situations where you can be 
fired.  In my experience, when accountability is crafted well it leads 
to be better results, not more bureaucracy.

John