[TYPO3-dev] TER troubles again

[Elmar Hinz]

Michael Scharkow wrote:
> To stay in your metaphor: Given you want to organise a great music
> festival, and you have a limited number of musicians, is it better to say
> a) we want to have X bands who each need at least N members, a practice
> room, a set list and play songs from a fixed genre, risking that a lot
> of the bands can never recruit a drummer or decide over the setlist
> 
> b) we want to have N songs from X genres, and we don't care whether
> you're a solo singer or form a big-band as long as you get your song(s)
> right. Of course, you risk that the festival is chaotic, but on the
> other hand, less energy is wasted if you leave more freedom to the
> musicians and bands.
> 
> I don't say one is better than the other, I'm just thinking aloud about
> the possibilities.

That's easy. In this  case of alternatives b) is the only way we can go. a)
a could only work within an army and is surly not the most effective way.
Nobody proposes a).

> 
> Elmar, what you propose is exactly a bottom-up approach where
> individuals take responsibility and teams grow around them, not the
> other way around. Of course, Kasper is right when he says that the hard

Bottom-up is the only direction the power can flow in a project of
voluntaries. The source of the power lies in the projects. But a top-down
structure from the other direction opens ways to let the power flow where
it is needed.

There has been a lot of project power in the past that didn't go where it
should have gone. A lot of the power ended in a fast growing rubbish dump
called TER. Everything has been done 10 times because of a missing top-down
structure.

> part lies in figuring out *how* to split the tasks.
> 

That's the ultimative key to wisdom.


> Greetings,
> Michael
> 
> PS: I still maintain that the core team (=CVS committers) could easily
> integrate more people. We have a steady growth and no obvious
> coordination overhead, so I perceive it.

If you like to call the amount of bugfix committers a team. I would rather
call this type of collaboration group a brigade. I think it misses some
typical characteristics of a team. However if the term team is motivating,
or helpful to structure the collaboration, it's a reason to use it.


Regards


Elmar