Fwd: Board Report Expectations

[Hasan <ha...@apache.org>]

dear clerezza dev

sharing with you...
expectations from the board regarding reporting

regards
hasan

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jim Jagielski <ji...@apache.org>
Date: Fri, Feb 27, 2015 at 12:14 AM
Subject: Board Report Expectations
To: Apache Board <bo...@apache.org>


Hello!

This email is going out to all PMC chairs, but feel free to share it
with all members of your PMC.

First of all, speaking for the board, we greatly appreciate the
time and effort that many of your put into your quarterly reports.
What is clear is that you don't consider them burdensome, nor
a waste of time, but sincerely wish to give the board a deep view
into the health of the PMC, the project and the community, and
for that we are grateful!

This email is actually mostly directed to those handful of PMCs
that submit uninformative reports, or even miss reports several
times in a row. Now I understand that we are all volunteers, and
sometimes time gets away from us. Believe me. And I also know
that Marvin, our report-reminder-bot has been acting up lately,
and has not been consistently sending reminders. But Marvin is
really a "failsafe" (ironic that the failsafe has failed, but none-
the-less); PMCs should know their reporting schedule and not
need reminders. With that said, I'm working w/ infra to fix Marvin.

There is also a concern with some reports that they really don't
provide the board with the kind of insight into the project that
they should. We have avoided the idea of having PMCs fill in a
template, because that lacks the "human voice" that we want
in these reports; sure we want some dry data (more about that
below), but we also want some personal info regarding how the
project is doing... use your reports to talk to us about it.

Now about that dry data I referenced: some data missing from some
reports are things like "when was the last time someone was given
commit?" and "when was the last time a new PMC member was voted in?".
This is important because  it provides information regarding the growth
of the PMC and project: If someone hasn't been given commit since 2012,
for example, that could mean a bunch of different things and encourages
you to work w/ the PMC to figure out why, and if it's a problem or
not. So please be sure to note on your reports the month and date of
these items. Dates of releases are also important, so don't forget
them either.

It's been said quite a few times that as PMC chairs, you serve as
the "eyes and ears of the board", and that is true; but our sight
into the PMC, and our hearing related to the PMC are ONLY as good as
your reports are to us.

Cheers!