Discussion - The future of CHAOSS Metrics and Models Working Group

[klumb]

From the community meeting on April 29th and April 22nd
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PMDWc6xMe0fNE7shxTK5_HE_ykRBG5w55_Zx5hvzsEY/edit?tab=t.0

The Metrics and Models Work Group (now one group) has seen a decrease in participation

Questions:

• Is Metric and Model work still important - would anyone like to lead this working group?
• Should the group adopt different meeting processes or modalities?
• Is the meeting time is confusing? (10 am US Central every other Thursday)
• Is it at an inconvenient time?
• Is the scope not clear?

Highlighted Comments From the Notes:

• Metrics and Metrics Models meetings are very lightly attended --
• Bi-weekly cadence isn’t currently serving the purpose.
• Context WGs are trying to bring the metrics we have already defined forward in meaningful ways; this is where the interest seems to lie now
• With this group, there seems to be a blocker with people actually doing the work and getting them written. We don’t seem to have the larger foundation of people who can work on this.
• Earlier scope: we reviewed metrics that were in progress to finalize wording, we had active working sessions to create new metrics -- All this is contingent on someone with the time and drive to work on these
• If the people with the ideas are not able to work on the metric, it creates an odd dynamic and adds to the list of work for others to do -- We really need that person to drive the work on the metric
• Some metrics can be written in one session, with one session for review
• Whoever is driving the metric could be the facilitator; if there is nothing to work on maybe there isn’t a meeting more ad hoc with a singular purpose. But this would be a little more legwork for that person
• We talked about listening to what the new metric ideas are and encouraging folks to lead their development (liaisons)-- Maybe liaisons can listen and when a new metric is identified, we have a set of community members interested in defining that can work on it at an ad hoc meeting, invite the people who need the metric -- Probably a lot of people who identify a metric that needs to happen because of the work they’re doing in another working group
• Let’s put these metrics on the agenda at the working group meetings, show the template, begin the work within that working group and be more deliberate about putting it on the agenda -- The metrics development group then becomes facilitators for helping the working groups create the metrics when needed (and we can’t provide coverage for all working groups right from the beginning).
• Maybe the working group chooses a metric liaison to also drive the metric development and help balance the work for the facilitators
• If we do move to an alternate modality, Lack of participation in the working group might still be a problem. We could still keep meeting to check in and share what we’re working on

[divya-mohan0209]

@klumb Thanks for facilitating this discussion and for capturing the outline of issues we're facing currently.

My two cents on the matter:

• We should continue hosting these calls at a more staggered cadence (once per month, perhaps?).
• Since we have a dearth of contributors working on creating and writing new metrics, I propose we cater to the current interest area i.e. Context WGs bringing forth metrics in meaningful ways, by adding it as a recurring agenda item.
• Wrt the blocker of facilitation, having a dedicated facilitator + pre-decided cadence for follow-ups/closure would be beneficial.
• Wrt the foundational blocker of not having too many folks to write/propose new metrics, I believe it's critical to engage more folks who work in these roles where these metrics matter {OSPO folks, Community Managers etc}. Toward this, I had proposed a formalised Birds-of-feather framework idea to @ElizabethN earlier last month, borrowing from the OSPOlogy BoF framework from the TODO group. This now exists in the form of a draft BoF PR to the CHAOSS Asia repository to help streamline semi-structured discussions about OSS Community and project health, spread awareness, and capture feedback about our metrics. It also includes an asynchronous reporting component, via which we hope to engage attendees outside of the conference and have them contribute to our project. IMO, it'd be most relevantly placed as an initiative under this WG, since the aim is to help anyone within (or outside of) this project to host these discussions independently. @xiaoya-yaya has been doing some phenomenal work in this space and was the inspiring force behind this formalisation. This could be another recurring agenda item based on the conferences we present at and the feedback we get on our metrics.

[ElizabethN]

Hi everyone! I'd like to bring resolution to this issue if possible. We have not been hosting any working group meetings around CHAOSS metric development and both Slack channels have been quiet since June. While we will keep these channels open for anything that crops up, I'd like to go ahead and close this issue.

@divya-mohan0209 I see the draft PR linked above is still in PR format. I was wondering if there was any update to this from your end?