Thunderbird/Development/Goals/2011

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Goal 1: Contributor Funnel for development

By the end of 2011 have in place a comprehensive set of web pages for a development funnel/introduction for contributors.

The funnel being a page where contributors can start (e.g. how to contribute to Thunderbird, here's all the information you need to know...).

Plan

Q1

• Basic development page(s) with pointers to existing documentation on developing Thunderbird, and contacts for where to get help.
• Analysis of what is missing from the existing pages, and initial skeleton pages for those missing.

Q2

• Re-organise and improve the skeleton providing a better more concise set of pages

Q3 & Q4

• Organise some sprints to refine and improve the pages to make them comprehensive to everyone.

Goal 2: Mentoring

Mentor students as part of the GSoC program, understand the good parts and the pain parts for both student and mentor.

Plan

Q1

• Review 2010 GSoC.
• Propose at least 10 projects for GSoC.
• Encourage new/recent contributors to take part.
• Find possible mentors. Determine basic selection criteria.

Q2 & Q3

• Mentor GSoC students.
• Hold a regular meeting for mentors to discuss progress, feedback, issues.
• Look at ways to bring students into the community to get feedback, and feel involved.

Q4

• Review the Mentoring process from both student and mentor perspectives, from start to end, look for and suggest improvements and goals for 2012.
• Encourage GSoC students to keep contributing.

Goal 3: Reviews

Improve review reaction times for Thunderbird and MailNews Core Products, to encourage more contributions by getting responses to patches quicker.

Subgoals

• Subgoal 3.1: By the end of Q1, reduce all outstanding MailNews Core reviews to no more than a month old.
• Subgoal 3.2: For the Thunderbird product, achieve an average review time of 2 weeks during 2011.
• Subgoal 3.3: For the MailNews Core product, achieve an average review time of 3 weeks during 2011.

(note: slightly longer time for MailNews Core, as I don't know how much we'll be able to get non-Mozilla Messaging folks on board with this).

Plan

Q1

• Implement / obtain sane metrics gathering system for review data. Achieve 3.1.

Q2

• Examine ways of improving the review system, including but not limited to distribution of reviews, initial response times, follow-up response times.

Q3 & Q4

• to be decided on the outcome of Q2.

Goal 4: Communication

Improve communication to Thunderbird developers and other interested parties.

Subgoal

• Subgoal 4.1: Post at least one Thunderbird specific (i.e. not experiments/labs) blog post each month by a team member.

Plan

Q1

• Analyse existing developer communication methods and propose two improvements.

Q2

• Implement one of the proposed improvements.
• Get feedback on it.
• Look at refining it.

Q3 & Q4

• To be defined depending on the outcome of Q1 & Q2