experimental project goal program for 2024 H2

[nikomatsakis]

This RFC proposes to run an experimental goal program during the second half of 2024 with nikomatsakis as owner/organizer. This program is a first step towards an ongoing Rust roadmap. The proposed outcomes for 2024 are (1) select an initial slate of goals using an experimental process; (2) track progress over the year; (3) drawing on the lessons from that, propose a durable process in the form of an RFC to be accepted by the leadership council.

Rendered

[eholk]

@rfcbot merge

Assuming I can work rfcbot correctly, I'm going to go ahead and add checkboxes so we can get the ball rolling. It looks like there's a fairly tight timeline on this, so the sooner we can get this signed off on, the better.

[rfcbot]

Team member @eholk has proposed to merge this. The next step is review by the rest of the tagged team members:

• [x] @Mark-Simulacrum
• [x] @carols10cents
• [x] @eholk
• [x] @ehuss
• [x] @jackh726
• [x] @jonathanpallant
• [x] @m-ou-se
• [x] @technetos

No concerns currently listed.

Once a majority of reviewers approve (and at most 2 approvals are outstanding), this will enter its final comment period. If you spot a major issue that hasn't been raised at any point in this process, please speak up!

See this document for info about what commands tagged team members can give me.

[rfcbot]

:bell: This is now entering its final comment period, as per the review above. :bell:

[ehuss]

Can you clarify, what is the relationship of a goal to a timeline? IIUC, the goal does not need to be completed in 6 months, but the team will re-evaluate what their goals are at that time. Can a team say, "this goal isn't working out, we're going to drop it" at 6 months?

Should goals have some level of scope to them, like "this is a 1-month goal" versus "this is a 3-year goal"? If something is expected to take more than 6 months, must its scope be reduced?

Similarly, I suggest making time expectations explicit when developing goals. If an owner comes in, says they want to do "goal X", and are expecting to spend 20-40 hours a week on it, but the team is expecting to spend 1 hour per month supporting them, that creates a misunderstanding of the commitment on both sides (the owner gets frustrated because their work isn't getting reviewed, and the reviewers get frustrated because they are getting flooded). I think both the owner and the teams need to agree on how they will balance that.

[nikomatsakis]

@ehuss My intention was that the goal identifies a particular step that will get done in <6 months ("the next few steps"). Often these will be part of a longer story ("the shiny future"). Based on how this step goes, the team can decide whether to continue taking further steps in the future. The (draft) async Rust goal demonstrates the idea -- we will try to finish a few steps this year, but it's part of a larger plan.

As for the owner vs team, I think that kind of time estimation and so forth is exactly the sort of thing we should try to be clear about in the goal, yes.

[rfcbot]

The final comment period, with a disposition to merge, as per the review above, is now complete.

As the automated representative of the governance process, I would like to thank the author for their work and everyone else who contributed.

This will be merged soon.

[ehuss]

Thanks @nikomatsakis! The Leadership Council has decided to accept this RFC. The next steps will be up to you, which I presume will be creating a repository to track your work.