Q to candidates: reporting frequency

[Stefano Zacchiroli]

Dear candidates, what do you think it's the appropriate frequency for
reporting back to the project about what the DPL is doing?

Certainly, reporting often is time consuming and divert time from
actually *doing* stuff, rather than documenting what has been done. But
OTOH reporting seldomly ends up giving the impression that the DPL isn't
doing much except to those that, for whatever reason, end up interacting
(privately) with him/her. Where do you think is the sweet spot in this
spectrum?

Cheers.

[Chris Lamb]

Dear Stefano,

Post by Stefano Zacchiroli
Dear candidates, what do you think it's the appropriate frequency for
reporting back to the project about what the DPL is doing?

To give a bit more background to my answer, I believe there are always at
least two audiences or "parts" for any report.

First, there's the obvious audience — ie. the DDs reading it to learn about
what has been happening.

The second part — and the more subtle one — is that the very act of writing
a regular report gives the *author* accountability to themselves and
subconciously ensures momentum is kept up on various longer-term projects.

I feel its worth trading off a little more reporting overhead for this
second factor to kick in — in my experience it results in More Stuff
Getting Done over a given period.

Whilst I can't speak from experience (and would value your input btw), I
can't think why monthly wouldn't be a good cadence to start off with;
predictable, easy to schedule/plan, and easy to spot when one hasn't done
it!


Best wishes,

[Mehdi Dogguy]

Post by Stefano Zacchiroli
Dear candidates, what do you think it's the appropriate frequency for
reporting back to the project about what the DPL is doing?
Certainly, reporting often is time consuming and divert time from
actually *doing* stuff, rather than documenting what has been done. But
OTOH reporting seldomly ends up giving the impression that the DPL isn't
doing much except to those that, for whatever reason, end up interacting
(privately) with him/her. Where do you think is the sweet spot in this
spectrum?

I have tried to do monthly reports about my activity as DPL. It is not an
easy task. Some subjects take a long time and it doesn't make sense (at
least to me) to report about its micro-progress (because its status might
be fragile or progress made is not significant enough). Some subjects are
easy (or turn out to be easier than one could imagine) and are resolved
quickly. My preference in the future would be to report about one subject
on a monthly basis, and in the form of a blog post (e.g. on bits.d.o so that
it is archived there). I believe this approach has two advantages:
- reaching out to more readers than debian developers only (and few others
subscribed to d-d-a)
- more efficient communication (one subject, not diluted in a long text).