RE: [eclipse-dev] What's happening after 2.1?

["Jonathan Gossage" <jgossage@xxxxxxxx>]

See comments below

> -----Original Message-----
> From: eclipse-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:eclipse-dev-admin@xxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Kevin Haaland
> Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 4:10 PM
> To: eclipse-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [eclipse-dev] What's happening after 2.1?
>
>
> Late last year we posted an initial draft 2.2 plan which we were viewing
> as an incremental improvement over Eclipse 2.1. Now that we've started
> work on 2.2, we feel we should be setting even more ambitious goals for
> the next major release.
>
> We've put together a rough outline of what we'd like to tackle in this
> next release of Eclipse:
> http://dev.eclipse.org/viewcvs/index.cgi/%7Echeckout%7E/eclipse-pr
> oject-home/plans/eclipse_after_2_1.html
>
> We'd appreciate community feedback to help us in firming up the next
> revision of the development plan.
>
> Please send your comments to the eclipse-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx
> developer mailing
> list.
>

I would like to suggest that the Eclipse team consider a slightly more
formalized method for soliciting and dealing with community input to the
planning process for Eclipse releases. My suggestions are based on the
methodology that was used by the "Flexible Project" team during the 2.1
development phase.

Essentially community input was specifically requested at three points
during the planning and design process. The first stage was the preparation
of a document that defined the problem space and was made available to the
community for comment. The next stage was a document that defined the
solution space and was also made available for comment by the community.
Finally a focused high level design document was made available for comment.

This process seems to have worked well and gave ample opportunity for
community involvement without imposing a substantial additional burden on
the developers. If the Eclipse team were to follow this process for each of
the major line items that are being seriously considered for the next
release, I believe that both the Eclipse product and the community would
benefit.

I have an additional suggestion about managing the current high level
planning process in a visible manner. Why don't you create a Bugzilla
feature request for each of the line items in the plan? This would allow the
community to vote on the various proposals and if comments on each proposal
were entered as comments on the Bugzilla entry, the feedback on each item
would be consolidated in a more focused manner than can be provided by a
mailing list or newsgroup. As feature requests are created they should be
cross referenced directly in the master plan document. This approach would
allow the presentation of more ideas than could actually be implemented and
would provide useful feedback on which proposals were of most importance to
the community.

Regards

Jonathan Gossage