Improve Mentor Review Process

jakartaee / specification-committee

Documentation base for Specification Committee guides and process to be published at jakarta.ee via Hugo and git submodules

Eclipse Public License 2.0

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Improve Mentor Review Process #80

Open ivargrimstad opened 2 months ago

ivargrimstad commented 2 months ago

We should evaluate and reassess how we can do this better.

As it is today, too many specifications marked as ready for review are lingering in a limbo state for too long
It is frustrating for the projects when nothing is happening
Milestone releases are delayed because of this
It takes more energy constantly to push mentors and follow up than to do the actual work

Some things to consider solving:

Be ready when the flow of specifications for review comes
Be more proactive with the reviews to enable projects to fix things early
Start and close ballots in a timely manner
When asking for changes, react faster when changes are made

Should we form a subgroup of the spec committee to facilitate the ballots?

keilw commented 2 months ago

In case of my two specs, the project leads themselves also need to juggle between multiple specs, often at the same time, so (just in my case, I guess there are a few others) the delay wasn't just because I have a major client (actually a fellow Spec Committee member company, but in a different, much more regulated and politically pressurized industry) with delivery pressure of their own which contractors often have to handle...

I cannot say, how to best handle the situation of project leads with too many specs at the same time, but if someone like me had an unforseen time constraint by a customer, or say somebody got sick, could swapping specs between mentors be an option, so that the person with limited time in a certain period reviews another spec in a later wave?

tjwatson commented 1 month ago

Some of the delay may also be the one doing the work on the PR to respond to a review. What can we do to improve responses to review comments? If something comes up then we need communication to the committee to look for others to help.

paulbuck commented 3 weeks ago

As a committee we need to act quicker to re-assign mentor if for what-ever reason a mentor is unable to find the time to progress a PR to ballot. This is in the control of the Specification Committee. The mentor needs to be promptly assigned when the spec project creates a PR, and the mentor needs to engage to review and start commenting. Specificaton projects are also encouraged to keep the specification committee updated on their release plans ahead of creating a PR to initiate the ballot process. The protocol to be adopted for upcoming ballots is that after 2 weeks, if the mentor has not engaged, the PR will be re-assigned. This protocol will be noted in the minutes and the ballot tracking spreadsheet.