Category Archives: Product Management

OpenStack Vancouver six observations: partners, metal, tents, defore, brands & breakage

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As always, OpenStack conferences/summits are packed with talks and discussions.  Any one of these six points could be a full post; however, I would rather post now and start discussions.  Let me know what you think!

1. Partnering Everywhere – it’s froth, not milk

Everyone is partnering with everyone! It’s a good way to appear to cover more around and appear more open. Right now, I believe these partnerships are for show and very shallow. There will be blood when money is flowing and both partners want the lion’s share.

2. Metal is Hot! attention on Ironic & MaaS

Metal is very hot topic. No surprise, but I do not think that either MaaS or Ironic have the right architecture to deal with the real complexity of automating metal in a generalized way. The consequence is that they are limited and hard to operate.

Container talks were also very hot and I believe are ultimately disruptive.  The very fact that all the container talks were overflowing is an indication of the challenges facing virtualization.

3. DefCore – Just in the Nick of Time

I think that the press and analysts were ready to proclaim that OpenStack was fragmenting and being unable to deliver the “one cloud, multiple vendors” vision. DefCore (presented as Interopability by Jonathan Bryce, DefCore shout out!) came in on the buzzer to buy us more time.

4. Big Tent Concerns – what is ecosystem & release?

Big Tent is shorthand for project governance changes that make it easier for new projects to become OpenStack projects and removes the concept of integrated releases.  The exact definition is still a work in progress.

The top concerns I have are:

  1. We cannot tell difference between community & ecosystem. We’re back to anointed projects because we’re now telling projects they have to join OpenStack to work with OpenStack.
  2. We’re changing the definition of the release but have not defined how it will change. I acknowledge that continuous release is ideal but we’re confusing people again.

5. Brands are battling – will they destroy the city?

OpenStack is hard for startups – read the full post here.  The short version is that big companies are taking up all the air.

While some are leading, others they are learning how to collaborate.  Those new to open source are slow to trust and uncertain about where to invest.  Unfortunately, we’ve created a visible contributions economy that does not reward doing the scut work so it’s no surprise that there are concerns that some of the bigger companies are free riding.

6. OpenStack is broken talks – could we reboot?  no.

It’s a sign of OpenStack’s age that Bias, Termie and others suggested we need clean slate.  Frankly, I think that OpenStack would be irrelevant by the time a rewrite was completed and it not helpful to suggest it.

What would I suggest?  I’d promote a strong core (doing!), ensure big companies collaborate on roadmap (doing!) and stop having a single node install as gate and dev reference (I’d happily help use OCB for this with partners)

PS: Apparently Neutron is not broken.

I’m very excited about the “just give me a network” work to make Neutron duplicate Nova-Net functionality.  Finally.

All About That Loop. Lessons from the OpenStack Product Mid-Cycle

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OpenStack loves to track developer counts and committers, but velocity without A Feedback loop to set direction is unlikely to get us anywhere sustainable.

LoopLast week, I attended the first day of the OpenStack Product Working Group meeting.   My modest expectations (I just wanted them talking) were far exceeded.  The group managed to cover both strategic and tactical items including drafting a charter and discussing pending changes to the incubation process.

OpenStack needs a strong feedback loop from users and operators back to developers and vendors – statement made during the PM meeting.

The most critical wins from last week what the desire for the PM group to work more closely with the OpenStack technical leadership.  I’m excited to see the community continue to expand the scope of collaboration.

Why is this important?  Because developers and product managers need mutual respect to be effective.

The members of the Product team are leaders within their own organization responsible for talking to users and operators.  We rely on them to close the communication loop by both collecting feedback and explaining direction.  To accomplish this difficult job, the Product team must own articulating a vision for the future.

For OpenStack to succeed, we need to be listening intently to feedback about both how we are doing and if we are headed in the right direction.  Both are required to create a feedback loop.

After seeing this group in action, I’m excited to see what’s next.

Want to read more?

Get involved!  Join the discussion on the OpenStack Product mailing list!

To thrive, OpenStack must better balance dev, ops and business needs.

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OpenStack has grown dramatically in many ways but we have failed to integrate development, operations and business communities in a balanced way.

My most urgent observation from Paris is that these three critical parts of the community are having vastly different dialogs about OpenStack.

Clouds DownAt the Conference, business people were talking were about core, stability and utility while the developers were talking about features, reorganizing and expanding projects. The operators, unfortunately segregated in a different location, were trying to figure out how to share best practices and tools.

Much of this structural divergence was intentional and should be (re)evaluated as we grow.

OpenStack events are split into distinct focus areas: the conference for business people, the summit for developers and specialized days for operators. While this design serves a purpose, the community needs to be taking extra steps to ensure communication. Without that communication, corporate sponsors and users may find it easier to solve problems inside their walls than outside in the community.

The risk is clear: vendors may find it easier to work on a fork where they have business and operational control than work within the community.

Inside the community, we are working to help resolve this challenge with several parallel efforts. As a community member, I challenge you to get involved in these efforts to ensure the project balances dev, biz and ops priorities.  As a board member, I feel it’s a leadership challenge to make sure these efforts converge and that’s one of the reasons I’ve been working on several of these efforts:

  • OpenStack Project Managers (was Hidden Influencers) across companies in the ecosystem are getting organized into their own team. Since these managers effectively direct the majority of OpenStack developers, this group will allow
  • DefCore Committee works to define a smaller subset of the overall OpenStack Project that will be required for vendors using the OpenStack trademark and logo. This helps the business community focus on interoperability and stability.
  • Technical leadership (TC) lead “Big Tent” concept aligns with DefCore work and attempts to create a stable base platform while making it easier for new projects to enter the ecosystem. I’ve got a lot to say about this, but frankly, without safeguards, this scares people in the ops and business communities.
  • An operations “ready state” baseline keeps the community from being able to share best practices – this has become a pressing need.  I’d like to suggest as OpenCrowbar an outside of OpenStack a way to help provide an ops neutral common starting point. Having the OpenStack developer community attempting to create an installer using OpenStack has proven a significant distraction and only further distances operators from the community.

We need to get past seeing the project primarily as a technology platform.  Infrastructure software has to deliver value as an operational tool for enterprises.  For OpenStack to thrive, we must make sure the needs of all constituents (Dev, Biz, Ops) are being addressed.

Self-Exposure: Hidden Influencers become OpenStack Product Working Group

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Warning to OpenStack PMs: If you are not actively involved in this effort then you (and your teams) will be left behind!

ManagersThe Hidden Influencers (now called “OpenStack Product Working Group”) had a GREAT and PRODUCTIVE session at the OpenStack (full notes):

  1. Named the group!  OpenStack Product Working Group (now, that’s clarity in marketing) [note: I was incorrect saying “Product Managers” earlier].
  2. Agreed to use the mailing list for communication.
  3. Committed to a face-to-face mid-cycle meetup (likely in South Bay)
  4. Output from the meetup will be STRATEGIC DIRECTION doc to board (similar but broader than “Win the Enterprise”)
  5. Regular meeting schedule – like developers but likely voice interactive instead of IRC.  Stefano Maffulli is leading.

PMs starting this group already direct the work for a super majority (>66%) of active contributors.

The primary mission for the group is to collaborate and communicate around development priorities so that we can ensure that project commitments get met.

It was recognized that the project technical leads are already strapped coordinating release and technical objectives.  Further, the product managers are already but independently engaged in setting strategic direction, we cannot rely on existing OpenStack technical leadership to have the bandwidth.

This effort will succeed to the extent that we can help the broader community tied in and focus development effort back to dollars for the people paying for those developers.  In my book, that’s what product managers are supposed to do.  Hopefully, getting this group organized will help surface that discussion.

This is a big challenge considering that these product managers have to balance corporate, shared project and individual developers’ requirements.  Overall, I think Allison Randall summarized our objectives best: “we’re herding cats in the same direction.”

OpenStack Goldilocks’ Syndrome: three questions to help us find our bearings

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Goldilocks Atlas

Action: Please join Stefano. Allison, Sean and me in Paris on Monday, November 3rd, in the afternoon (schedule link)

If wishes were fishes, OpenStack’s rapid developer and user rise would include graceful process and commercial transitions too.  As a Foundation board member, it’s my responsibility to help ensure that we’re building a sustainable ecosystem for the project.  That’s a Goldilock’s challenge because adding either too much or too little controls and process will harm the project.

In discussions with the community, that challenge seems to breaks down into three key questions:

After last summit, a few of us started a dialog around Hidden Influencers that helps to frame these questions in an actionable way.  Now, it’s time for us to come together and talk in Paris in the hallways and specifically on Monday, November 3rd, in the afternoon (schedule link).   From there, we’ll figure out about next steps using these three questions as a baseline.

If you’ve got opinions about these questions, don’t wait for Paris!  I’d love to start the discussion here in the comments, on twitter (@zehicle), by phone, with email or via carrier pidgins.

Your baby is ugly! Picking which code is required for Commercial Core.

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babyThere’s no point in sugar-coating this: selecting API and code sections for core requires making hard choices and saying no.  DefCore makes this fair by 1) defining principles for selection, 2) going slooooowly to limit surprises and 3) being transparent in operation.  When you’re telling someone who their baby is not handsome enough you’d better be able to explain why.

The truth is that from DefCore’s perspective, all babies are ugly.  If we are seeking stability and interoperability, then we’re looking for adults not babies or adolescents.

Explaining why is exactly what DefCore does by defining criteria and principles for our decisions.  When we do it right, it also drives a positive feedback loop in the community because the purpose of designated sections is to give clear guidance to commercial contributors where we expect them to be contributing upstream.  By making this code required for Core, we are incenting OpenStack vendors to collaborate on the features and quality of these sections.

This does not lessen the undesignated sections!  Contributions in those areas are vital to innovation; however, they are, by design, more dynamic, specialized or single vendor than the designated areas.

Designated SectionsThe seven principles of designated sections (see my post with TC member Michael Still) as defined by the Technical Committee are:

Should be DESIGNATED:

  1. code provides the project external REST API, or
  2. code is shared and provides common functionality for all options, or
  3. code implements logic that is critical for cross-platform operation

Should NOT be DESIGNATED:

  1. code interfaces to vendor-specific functions, or
  2. project design explicitly intended this section to be replaceable, or
  3. code extends the project external REST API in a new or different way, or
  4. code is being deprecated

While the seven principles inform our choices, DefCore needs some clarifications to ensure we can complete the work in a timely, fair and practical way.  Here are our additions:

8.     UNdesignated by Default

  • Unless code is designated, it is assumed to be undesignated.
  • This aligns with the Apache license.
  • We have a preference for smaller core.

9.      Designated by Consensus

  • If the community cannot reach a consensus about designation then it is considered undesignated.
  • Time to reach consensus will be short: days, not months
  • Except obvious trolling, this prevents endless wrangling.
  • If there’s a difference of opinion then the safe choice is undesignated.

10.      Designated is Guidance

  • Loose descriptions of designated sections are acceptable.
  • The goal is guidance on where we want upstream contributions not a code inspection police state.
  • Guidance will be revised per release as part of the DefCore process.

In my next DefCore post, I’ll review how these 10 principles are applied to the Havana release that is going through community review before Board approval.

The Upstream Imperative: paving the way for content creators is required for platform success

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Since content is king, platform companies (like Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook and Amazon) win by attracting developers to build on their services.  Open source tooling and frameworks are the critical interfaces for these adopters; consequently, they must invest in building communities around those platforms even if it means open sourcing previously internal only tools.

This post expands on one of my OSCON observations: companies who write lots of code have discovered an imperative to upstream their internal projects.   For background, review my thoughts about open source and supply chain management.

Huh?  What is an “upstream imperative?”  It sounds like what salmon do during spawning then read the post-script!

Historically, companies with a lot of internal development tools had no inventive to open those projects.  In fact, the “collaboration tax” of open source discouraged companies from sharing code for essential operations.   Historically, open source was considered less featured and slower than commercial or internal projects; however, this perception has been totally shattered.  So companies are faced with a balance between the overhead of supporting external needs (aka collaboration) and the innovation those users bring into the effort.

Until recently, this balance usually tipped towards opening a project but under-investing in the community to keep the collaboration costs low.  The change I saw at OSCON is that companies understand that making open projects successful bring communities closer to their products and services.

That’s a huge boon to the overall technology community.

Being able to leverage and extend tools that have been proven by these internal teams strengthens and accelerates everyone. These communities act as free laboratories that breed new platforms and build deep relationships with critical influencers.  The upstream savvy companies see returns from both innovation around their tools and more content that’s well matched to their platforms.

Oh, and companies that fail to upstream will find it increasingly hard to attract critical mind share.  Thinking the alternatives gives us a Windows into how open source impacts past incumbents.

That leads to a future post about how XaaS dog fooding and “pure-play” aaS projects like OpenStack and CloudFoundry.

Post Script about Upstreaming:

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Who’s in charge here anyway? We need to start uncovering OpenStack’s Hidden Influencers

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After the summit (#afterstack), a few of us compared notes and found a common theme in an under served but critical part of the OpenStack community.  Sean Roberts (HIS POST), Allison Randal (her post), and I committed to expand our discussion to the broader community.

PortholesLack of Product Management¹ was a common theme at the Atlanta OpenStack summit.  That effectively adds fuel to the smoldering “lacking a benevolent dictator” commentary that lingers like smog at summits.  While I’ve come think this criticism has merit, I think that it’s a dramatic oversimplification of the leadership dynamic.  We have plenty of leaders in OpenStack but we don’t do enough to coordinate them because they are hidden.

One reason to reject “missing product management” as a description is that there are LOTS of PMs in OpenStack.  It’s simply that they all work for competing companies.  While we spend a lot of time coordinating developers from competing companies, we have minimal integration between their direct engineering managers or product managers.

We spend a lot of time getting engineering talking together, but we do not formally engage discussion between their product or line managers.  In fact, they likely encourage them to send their engineers instead of attending summits themselves; consequently, we may not even know those influencers!

When the managers are omitted then the commitments made by engineers to projects are empty promises.

At best, this results in a discrepancy between expected and actual velocity.  At worst, work may be waiting on deliveries that have been silently deprioritized by managers who do not directly participate or simply felt excluded the technical discussion.

We need to recognize that OpenStack work is largely corporate sponsored.  These managers directly control the engineers’ priorities so they have a huge influence on what features really get delivered.

To make matters worse (yes, they get worse), these influencers are often invisible.  Our tracking systems focus on code committers and completely miss the managers who direct those contributors.  Even if they had the needed leverage to set priorities, OpenStack technical and governance leaders may not know who contact to resolve conflicts.

We’ve each been working with these “hidden influencers” at our own companies and they aren’t a shadowy spy-v-spy lot, they’re just human beings.  They are every bit as enthusiastic about OpenStack as the developers, users and operators!  They are frequently the loudest voices saying “Could you please get us just one or two more headcount for the team, we want X and Y to be able to spend full-time on upstream contribution, but we’re stretched too thin to spare them at the moment”.

So it’s not intent but an omission in the OpenStack project to engage managers as a class of contributors. We have clear avenues for developers to participate, but pretty much entirely ignore the managers. We say that with a note of caution, because we don’t want to bring the managers in to “manage OpenStack”.

We should provide avenues for collaboration so that as they’re managing their team of devs at their company, they are also communicating with the managers of similar teams at other companies.

This is potentially beneficial for developers, managers and their companies: they can gain access to resources across company lines. Instead of being solely responsible for some initiative to work on a feature for OpenStack, they can share initiatives across teams at multiple companies. This does happen now, but the coordination for it is quite limited.

We don’t think OpenStack needs more management; instead, I think we need to connect the hidden influencers.   Transparency and dialog will resolve these concerns more directly than adding additional process or controls.

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