Program Management for Open Source Projects

Define the Question

Problem: What’s being decided is unclear.

The first step in making good decisions is to know what you’re deciding. This sounds obvious—and it is!—but it gets overlooked far too often. How many times have you been in conversation with someone only to discover that you’re not talking about the same thing? Most consequential decisions in an open source community are made by a group, which means the group has to have a shared understanding.

Identify the Problem

To develop a shared understanding, identify the problem. Why do you need to make a decision in the first place? Is the release at risk of being delayed? Are you trying to improve the security of your code repository? Do you have a thousand t-shirts sitting in boxes waiting ...