[Ongoing] Teams new way of working for more transparency - OFFICIAL NEWS

Teams new way of working for more transparency

As Ryzom Teams manager, I'm currently working on a new Ryzom Teams organization (tools, communication and way of working) to improve our general communication inside each team, and especially between the teams (between Ryzom Teams, Ryzom Core and Ryzom Forge), but also with the players.

For this purpose, are changing some of our internal tools, starting with our internal chat and our team task management tool, opening them ultimately to the other teams and even partly to players.

Chat: RocketChat

We'll move soon from Slack to RocketChat (Open source tool, will be hosted by Ryzom).

Things that will change:

Ryzom Team, Ryzom Core and Ryzom Forge will not be in separate chats anymore: there will be only 1 chat for the three of them, with some private channels for Ryzom Team under NDA, and also with public channels for all of us.
Players will also have access to a public channel (according to Ulukyn, it should be possible to access it from ingame, like it was the case with the old CeB).

Things that will not change:

Possibility to have public and private channels.
A bot will permit talks between IRC users and RocketChat’s ones.

Team tasks management: Kanboard

We’ll replace our old task management tool, Asana, by a new tool, Kanboard, that is Open source and hosted by Ryzom.

Access

I want to offer all Ryzom Teams (NDA, Ryzom Core and Ryzom Forge) an overview of all the projects (ideas, scheduled projects and ongoing ones).I also want to involve the players as much as possible, and to show them the most possible of what we are working on internally (not too much spoiling events of course).

That’s why some of the boards will have public access (in read-only mode) and will be used as a Public Roadmap. The limitations of access will be done on the work documents themselves attached to the boards (wikis, pads, forums...)

When you’ll look at the screens below, please keep in mind that I’ve not finished my work on Kanboard at all, about 50% is missing and the other parts still need to be improved. But it should be enough to see how it will look.

1-Reserve

http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=499544reserve.jpg

(Note: I’ve collapsed the tasks in this board to have all of them inside it, but it’s possible to expand them.)

This board in progress lists the proposals made by players (cf Ideas for Ryzom topic) and by volunteers.

They will be semi-prioritized (not done yet), but not putting the big ones first and the small ones later (would mean never work on the small ones).

15 proposals at maximum can be put in each column of each line. The other proposals will wait in a “Reserve of Reserve” that will be a new “Ideas for Ryzom” forum topic.

Indeed, I will move the current “Ideas for Ryzom" forum on WebIG to read-only mode and will open a new one, asking the players to explain their proposals differently :

As "rank (player, Ranger player, Linux player, etc)"

I'd like "feature"

for "reason".

It should be possible to give each player account xx points to dispatch between their favorite proposals. So we could easily see the players favorite ideas and move these proposals with the more of points in 1-Reserve, each time there will have a free place in it.

As soon as possible (so when there is a free place on it, I'll move 1 task of this board on a 2nd board: "Waiting Room".

2-Waiting Room

http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=129830waitingroom.jpg

This board in progress shows the next projects to be worked on. These projects are prioritized.

5 proposals at maximum can be put in each column.

As soon as possible (so when there is a free place on it, I'll move the 1st task of this board to the "Ongoing project" board.

3- Ongoing projects

http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=759870ongoingprojects.jp g

This board lists the projects we are currently working on.

It will soon mix Ryzom Team, Ryzom Forge and Ryzom Core projects. It will be possible to have mixed RT/RC/RF work teams.

There is a maximum of projects that can be added to a column, so we must finish some of them before starting other ones.

Each ongoing project card is linked to its specific board.

“Scenographic Editor” project, for example, has its own board (screened in collapsed tasks view): http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=526691scenographiceditor .jpg

(Note: I’ve collapsed the tasks in this board to have all of them inside it, but it’s possible to expand them.)

To summarize

Ideas for Ryzom ==> Reserve ==> Waiting Room ==> Ongoing projects.
(Of course, not all the ideas will have been validated!)

http://www.hostingpics.net/viewer.php?id=772610variousstatus.jpg

Ryzom Team, Ryzom Core, Ryzom Forge and the players will access the main boards (but with some edit/read-only limitations according to the groups). These boards will be used as public Roadmaps.

Ideas from the players will be studied. If validated they will be added in the “Reserve” part and then move along the various status. We’ll limit the number of projects in parallel in the various status so that we must finish some projects before starting the next ones.

Moving ideas into the “Reserve” will depend on the number of votes given by the players to the various ideas: this part is yet to be implemented.

Please comment, ask questions, share your proposals etc there.