[PROPOSAL] Survey to drive Maven 2.1 features and effort

[John Casey <ca...@gmail.com>]

Hi everyone,

I've been talking with quite a few people in back channels about putting
together a survey for the Maven user community, in order to see whether we
can find out what features they find important or in dire need of attention.
Then, we can (hopefully) use this information to help prioritize our work.
The idea is to get the community involved more deeply...instead of simply
using Maven, they can get involved with shaping its future in a very real
way.

To do this, I need all of your help. I've started a wiki page that explores
some of the concepts that have come from the various discussions I've had
with different developers over the past weeks:

http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Survey+for+Maven+2.1+requirements

If anyone is interested in reading and giving feedback, I'd really
appreciate it. At first, I'd like to focus on what types of information
(broadly speaking) we want to gather from the user community. Keep in mind
that we're trying to direct the effort that will go into Maven 2.1, so
prioritizing work according to the intensity of pain and proportion of users
feeling it is important.

Once we've pretty well nailed down the subject matter of the survey, we can
get into how to phrase individual questions in order to extract the most
effective, useful information. When we have a first draft of the questions,
I think it would be a great idea to let the users list see it and give
feedback, before their answers are tallied. That way, if there are glaring
omissions in the survey, users will have an opportunity to point them out.
At the end of all this, we (users and developers) can all take the survey
together - along with any non-users that we can attract via blogging, etc. -
and see what we can learn about Maven in the wild.

BTW, I mentioned giving this survey to non-users, and I believe this is
critical, particularly for those who thought about using Maven, and decided
against it. We need to know how Maven failed to meet their needs, in order
to make Maven a better tool, IMO.

Feel free to discuss here or on the wiki. I'll try to make sure the relevant
points made here are captured on the wiki.

Thanks,

-john

Re: [PROPOSAL] Survey to drive Maven 2.1 features and effort

[John Casey <ca...@gmail.com>]

I'm going to start drafting the language for survey questions based on this
list, so if you would like to review things at a topic level before we move
on, now is the time!

I'll post to the dev list in a separate thread when my draft of the language
is complete.

-john

On 8/10/06, Brett Porter <br...@apache.org> wrote:
>
> I commented on the wiki. Everything looked good to me, but I wanted more
> specifics on the dev and deployment platforms and jdks.
>
> - Brett
>
> On 5/08/2006 8:44 AM, John Casey wrote:
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > I've been talking with quite a few people in back channels about putting
> > together a survey for the Maven user community, in order to see whether
> we
> > can find out what features they find important or in dire need of
> > attention.
> > Then, we can (hopefully) use this information to help prioritize our
> work.
> > The idea is to get the community involved more deeply...instead of
> simply
> > using Maven, they can get involved with shaping its future in a very
> real
> > way.
> >
> > To do this, I need all of your help. I've started a wiki page that
> explores
> > some of the concepts that have come from the various discussions I've
> had
> > with different developers over the past weeks:
> >
> > http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Survey+for+Maven+2.1+requirements
> >
> > If anyone is interested in reading and giving feedback, I'd really
> > appreciate it. At first, I'd like to focus on what types of information
> > (broadly speaking) we want to gather from the user community. Keep in
> mind
> > that we're trying to direct the effort that will go into Maven 2.1, so
> > prioritizing work according to the intensity of pain and proportion of
> > users
> > feeling it is important.
> >
> > Once we've pretty well nailed down the subject matter of the survey, we
> can
> > get into how to phrase individual questions in order to extract the most
> > effective, useful information. When we have a first draft of the
> questions,
> > I think it would be a great idea to let the users list see it and give
> > feedback, before their answers are tallied. That way, if there are
> glaring
> > omissions in the survey, users will have an opportunity to point them
> out.
> > At the end of all this, we (users and developers) can all take the
> survey
> > together - along with any non-users that we can attract via blogging,
> > etc. -
> > and see what we can learn about Maven in the wild.
> >
> > BTW, I mentioned giving this survey to non-users, and I believe this is
> > critical, particularly for those who thought about using Maven, and
> decided
> > against it. We need to know how Maven failed to meet their needs, in
> order
> > to make Maven a better tool, IMO.
> >
> > Feel free to discuss here or on the wiki. I'll try to make sure the
> > relevant
> > points made here are captured on the wiki.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > -john
> >
>
>
> --
> Apache Maven - http://maven.apache.org/
> Better Builds with Maven - http://library.mergere.com/
>
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@maven.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@maven.apache.org
>
>

Re: [PROPOSAL] Survey to drive Maven 2.1 features and effort

[Brett Porter <br...@apache.org>]

I commented on the wiki. Everything looked good to me, but I wanted more 
specifics on the dev and deployment platforms and jdks.

- Brett

On 5/08/2006 8:44 AM, John Casey wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I've been talking with quite a few people in back channels about putting
> together a survey for the Maven user community, in order to see whether we
> can find out what features they find important or in dire need of 
> attention.
> Then, we can (hopefully) use this information to help prioritize our work.
> The idea is to get the community involved more deeply...instead of simply
> using Maven, they can get involved with shaping its future in a very real
> way.
> 
> To do this, I need all of your help. I've started a wiki page that explores
> some of the concepts that have come from the various discussions I've had
> with different developers over the past weeks:
> 
> http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Survey+for+Maven+2.1+requirements
> 
> If anyone is interested in reading and giving feedback, I'd really
> appreciate it. At first, I'd like to focus on what types of information
> (broadly speaking) we want to gather from the user community. Keep in mind
> that we're trying to direct the effort that will go into Maven 2.1, so
> prioritizing work according to the intensity of pain and proportion of 
> users
> feeling it is important.
> 
> Once we've pretty well nailed down the subject matter of the survey, we can
> get into how to phrase individual questions in order to extract the most
> effective, useful information. When we have a first draft of the questions,
> I think it would be a great idea to let the users list see it and give
> feedback, before their answers are tallied. That way, if there are glaring
> omissions in the survey, users will have an opportunity to point them out.
> At the end of all this, we (users and developers) can all take the survey
> together - along with any non-users that we can attract via blogging, 
> etc. -
> and see what we can learn about Maven in the wild.
> 
> BTW, I mentioned giving this survey to non-users, and I believe this is
> critical, particularly for those who thought about using Maven, and decided
> against it. We need to know how Maven failed to meet their needs, in order
> to make Maven a better tool, IMO.
> 
> Feel free to discuss here or on the wiki. I'll try to make sure the 
> relevant
> points made here are captured on the wiki.
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -john
> 


-- 
Apache Maven - http://maven.apache.org/
Better Builds with Maven - http://library.mergere.com/

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Re: [PROPOSAL] Survey to drive Maven 2.1 features and effort

[John Casey <ca...@gmail.com>]

I agree, but we need to be very careful to provide some inkling into what
the various categories really are. In some cases (looking at jira here), the
components/categories in there don't really capture mid-level details like
whether or not transitive dependency resolution is a PITA...while the rest
of artifact resolution might work really well. I'd like to see how the more
fine-grained categories test out, personally. Talking at the level of
whether or not artifact resolution as a whole is good or bad is a bit too
broad to help us focus our efforts, IMO.

Where shall the canonical category reference be, then?

-j

On 8/4/06, Jason van Zyl <ja...@maven.org> wrote:
>
> Hey John,
>
> When talking about the specific feature questions I think that these
> should align with the component in JIRA and the taxonomy we started
> working on (that I never finished). But I think we're starting to
> collect too many separate lists and we should create that list, and
> flesh it out and base the questions on that. From feedback if the
> features/categories/components change that's cool but I think we
> should align them all if we're going to ask questions about them.
>
> I sent the link to the survey to a few people and when we have a
> first draft we can show it to everyone.
>
> Jason.
>
> On 4 Aug 06, at 6:44 PM 4 Aug 06, John Casey wrote:
>
> > Hi everyone,
> >
> > I've been talking with quite a few people in back channels about
> > putting
> > together a survey for the Maven user community, in order to see
> > whether we
> > can find out what features they find important or in dire need of
> > attention.
> > Then, we can (hopefully) use this information to help prioritize
> > our work.
> > The idea is to get the community involved more deeply...instead of
> > simply
> > using Maven, they can get involved with shaping its future in a
> > very real
> > way.
> >
> > To do this, I need all of your help. I've started a wiki page that
> > explores
> > some of the concepts that have come from the various discussions
> > I've had
> > with different developers over the past weeks:
> >
> > http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Survey+for+Maven+2.1
> > +requirements
> >
> > If anyone is interested in reading and giving feedback, I'd really
> > appreciate it. At first, I'd like to focus on what types of
> > information
> > (broadly speaking) we want to gather from the user community. Keep
> > in mind
> > that we're trying to direct the effort that will go into Maven 2.1, so
> > prioritizing work according to the intensity of pain and proportion
> > of users
> > feeling it is important.
> >
> > Once we've pretty well nailed down the subject matter of the
> > survey, we can
> > get into how to phrase individual questions in order to extract the
> > most
> > effective, useful information. When we have a first draft of the
> > questions,
> > I think it would be a great idea to let the users list see it and give
> > feedback, before their answers are tallied. That way, if there are
> > glaring
> > omissions in the survey, users will have an opportunity to point
> > them out.
> > At the end of all this, we (users and developers) can all take the
> > survey
> > together - along with any non-users that we can attract via
> > blogging, etc. -
> > and see what we can learn about Maven in the wild.
> >
> > BTW, I mentioned giving this survey to non-users, and I believe
> > this is
> > critical, particularly for those who thought about using Maven, and
> > decided
> > against it. We need to know how Maven failed to meet their needs,
> > in order
> > to make Maven a better tool, IMO.
> >
> > Feel free to discuss here or on the wiki. I'll try to make sure the
> > relevant
> > points made here are captured on the wiki.
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > -john
>
> Jason van Zyl
> jason@maven.org
>
>
>
>
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> To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe@maven.apache.org
> For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help@maven.apache.org
>
>

Re: [PROPOSAL] Survey to drive Maven 2.1 features and effort

[Jason van Zyl <ja...@maven.org>]

Hey John,

When talking about the specific feature questions I think that these  
should align with the component in JIRA and the taxonomy we started  
working on (that I never finished). But I think we're starting to  
collect too many separate lists and we should create that list, and  
flesh it out and base the questions on that. From feedback if the  
features/categories/components change that's cool but I think we  
should align them all if we're going to ask questions about them.

I sent the link to the survey to a few people and when we have a  
first draft we can show it to everyone.

Jason.

On 4 Aug 06, at 6:44 PM 4 Aug 06, John Casey wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I've been talking with quite a few people in back channels about  
> putting
> together a survey for the Maven user community, in order to see  
> whether we
> can find out what features they find important or in dire need of  
> attention.
> Then, we can (hopefully) use this information to help prioritize  
> our work.
> The idea is to get the community involved more deeply...instead of  
> simply
> using Maven, they can get involved with shaping its future in a  
> very real
> way.
>
> To do this, I need all of your help. I've started a wiki page that  
> explores
> some of the concepts that have come from the various discussions  
> I've had
> with different developers over the past weeks:
>
> http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Survey+for+Maven+2.1 
> +requirements
>
> If anyone is interested in reading and giving feedback, I'd really
> appreciate it. At first, I'd like to focus on what types of  
> information
> (broadly speaking) we want to gather from the user community. Keep  
> in mind
> that we're trying to direct the effort that will go into Maven 2.1, so
> prioritizing work according to the intensity of pain and proportion  
> of users
> feeling it is important.
>
> Once we've pretty well nailed down the subject matter of the  
> survey, we can
> get into how to phrase individual questions in order to extract the  
> most
> effective, useful information. When we have a first draft of the  
> questions,
> I think it would be a great idea to let the users list see it and give
> feedback, before their answers are tallied. That way, if there are  
> glaring
> omissions in the survey, users will have an opportunity to point  
> them out.
> At the end of all this, we (users and developers) can all take the  
> survey
> together - along with any non-users that we can attract via  
> blogging, etc. -
> and see what we can learn about Maven in the wild.
>
> BTW, I mentioned giving this survey to non-users, and I believe  
> this is
> critical, particularly for those who thought about using Maven, and  
> decided
> against it. We need to know how Maven failed to meet their needs,  
> in order
> to make Maven a better tool, IMO.
>
> Feel free to discuss here or on the wiki. I'll try to make sure the  
> relevant
> points made here are captured on the wiki.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -john

Jason van Zyl
jason@maven.org




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Re: [PROPOSAL] Survey to drive Maven 2.1 features and effort

[Jason van Zyl <ja...@maven.org>]

On 4 Aug 06, at 6:44 PM 4 Aug 06, John Casey wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I've been talking with quite a few people in back channels about  
> putting
> together a survey for the Maven user community, in order to see  
> whether we
> can find out what features they find important or in dire need of  
> attention.
> Then, we can (hopefully) use this information to help prioritize  
> our work.
> The idea is to get the community involved more deeply...instead of  
> simply
> using Maven, they can get involved with shaping its future in a  
> very real
> way.
>
> To do this, I need all of your help. I've started a wiki page that  
> explores
> some of the concepts that have come from the various discussions  
> I've had
> with different developers over the past weeks:
>
> http://docs.codehaus.org/display/MAVEN/Survey+for+Maven+2.1 
> +requirements
>

As you've mentioned in the Wiki you are trying to capture information  
from current users to drive the direction of Maven 2.1, but also  
trying to find non-users decided against using Maven. Maybe it is  
best to break this down into two separate surveys. I'm transferring  
your questions into our SurveyMonkey account so that we can keep the  
actual survey up-to-date. We might also want to have a couple dry  
runs to find out what options we're missing. For example you can  
provide the standard "other" response which if used frequently in  
trial runs might indicate standard responses we're missing. Jesse  
might know more about developing surveys before final release, but I  
would imagine dry runs would be valuable. Just using SurveyMonkey  
seriously for the first time but I'll provide a link to survey. The  
info about the SurveyMonkey account is in the maven account @  
maven.org so anyone with access there tweak the survey.

> If anyone is interested in reading and giving feedback, I'd really
> appreciate it. At first, I'd like to focus on what types of  
> information
> (broadly speaking) we want to gather from the user community. Keep  
> in mind
> that we're trying to direct the effort that will go into Maven 2.1, so
> prioritizing work according to the intensity of pain and proportion  
> of users
> feeling it is important.
>

Sure, I'm going over the questions now and definitely have some  
things to add after doing presentations and training all last month.

> Once we've pretty well nailed down the subject matter of the  
> survey, we can
> get into how to phrase individual questions in order to extract the  
> most
> effective, useful information. When we have a first draft of the  
> questions,
> I think it would be a great idea to let the users list see it and give
> feedback, before their answers are tallied. That way, if there are  
> glaring
> omissions in the survey, users will have an opportunity to point  
> them out.
> At the end of all this, we (users and developers) can all take the  
> survey
> together - along with any non-users that we can attract via  
> blogging, etc. -
> and see what we can learn about Maven in the wild.

Definitely letting the users shape the questions would be good and  
dry runs of the survey to help bolster weak points.

>
> BTW, I mentioned giving this survey to non-users, and I believe  
> this is
> critical, particularly for those who thought about using Maven, and  
> decided
> against it. We need to know how Maven failed to meet their needs,  
> in order
> to make Maven a better tool, IMO.
>

Right, as mentioned above I think this might indicate a couple  
separate surveys.

> Feel free to discuss here or on the wiki. I'll try to make sure the  
> relevant
> points made here are captured on the wiki.
>

Will do, thanks for collecting the first set of questions. It will  
certainly help us with our direction and I'd be curious to see how  
many other OSS projects have actually something like this.

> Thanks,
>
> -john

Jason van Zyl
jason@maven.org




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