[Python-ideas] Iterative development

[anatoly techtonik]

On Thu, Jan 30, 2014 at 9:59 PM, Andrew Barnert <abarnert at yahoo.com> wrote:
> On Jan 30, 2014, at 5:25, anatoly techtonik <techtonik at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It may happen that resistance to change for open source projects may
>> be bigger than in organizations. I just want to make sure that people
>> aware that applying agile methodology to open source development is
>> possible and I am inclined that it brings more positive improvements for
>> the Python itself than de-facto development processes.
>
> Do you have any examples of an open source project (and not a company-driven one) that applied agile methodology and gained any benefits? Showing something concrete like that would make a far better argument than just rambling about what might be possible.

Yes. A lot of if you read "agile methodology" as "flexible set of
practices to organize a team work".

SCons before migration from tigris.org [1] implemented a weekly bug
triaging [2] and sync / planning sessions on IRC [3]. UFO:AI
implemented roadmapping [4,5] and monthly progress reports on the
front page [6]. Mercurial uses time-based release practice for
"improving planning process" [7]. Subversion roadmap + status
visibility [8].

1. http://scons.tigris.org/issues/reports.cgi?state=Open+issues&x=Assigned+to&y=Milestone
2. http://scons.org/wiki/BugParty
3. http://scons.org/wiki/BugParty/IrcLog2011-04-10
4. http://ufoai.org/wiki/TODO/Roadmap
5. http://ufoai.org/wiki/TODO
6. http://ufoai.org/wiki/News
7. http://mercurial.selenic.com/wiki/TimeBasedReleasePlan
8. https://subversion.apache.org/roadmap.html

Trac can be seen as managed by Edgewall, but many projects that use
Trac implicitly implement roadmapping and iterations too
http://trac.edgewall.org/roadmap

These only those project that I had my own hands on experience with
and sent code to, so I am certain that there are even more of these
practices in other open source projects that combined make these even
be better.


Addressing your fear about that agile processes can not be sustained
outside of company environment. I think that agile is meant to solve
boredom and stress problems, to be flexible and to help people learn
tools and methodologies to have fun from joint work. As a children we
all enjoy playing games with interesting rules and challenges. This
doesn't change with age. What changes is that other people and
companies want to control the people and adopt otherwise good things
in their awkward and unsuitable business environments. Imagine
children play in business suits, and for me it is ridiculous and it
doesn't change with age of those children. I think that open source
communities are free from all this corporate bullsh*t and can do
better at supporting fun, chaotic and decentralized team work. They
just never tried to focus on this process.