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From: Jukka Zitting <jukka.zitting@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 6 Mar 2012 00:29:01 +0100
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Subject: Thoughts on Incubator board reports
To: general <general@incubator.apache.org>
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Hi,

During the February board meeting there was a discussion about what
the directors would like to see in Incubator reports. The feedback we
got on this ranged from providing just an "executive summary" of all
Incubator activity to doing that *and* including all the podling
reports. While there was no clear single message, the overall
impression I got was that the board expects the Incubator PMC to
provide better and more active oversight on podlings. At the same time
many directors also wanted to hear directly from the podlings
themselves.

After thinking about this for a while, here's what I think we should do:

First of all I think we should keep including the individual podling
reports in the Incubator board report. The main reason for doing this
is that I think we should get the podlings up to the habit of
reporting to the board instead of just to the IPMC right from the
beginning. The IPMC will provide extra review and feedback to help the
podlings, but ultimately all the reports are addressed to the ASF
board. This approach should also be in line with the ideas of scaling
back the the Incubator and making podlings more autonomous.

Second, to address concerns about oversight within the Incubator as a
whole and to provide enough information to directors who may not be
interested in all the details of individual podling reports, the IPMC
should also provide a report summary along the lines of what we did
last month. In addition to basic classification of podlings based on
their progress, we should also highlight any notable issues or other
topics the board may want to focus on.

Finally, and crucially since the above isn't too different from what
we've been doing all along, we'll take some time to discuss the
podling reports that need some clarification or for which some other
kind of feedback should be given. As you've seen, I've already started
doing some of that and I'm hoping to set an example for others to
follow. Iterate for a few months, and I believe the result should be a
notable increase in report quality, graduation focus and more
generally the awareness within the IPMC of how the podlings are doing.

BR,

Jukka Zitting

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