The GSoC guidelines for students writing a proposal [1] is to use the
guidelines or templates of the organization. It then states that certain
elements will improve chances of a proposal including in Deliverables:
"a brief, clear work breakdown structure with milestones and deadlines.
... start by producing some kind of white paper, or planning the project
in traditional Software Engineering style."
AFAIK there is no template we are adhering to under Commons GSoC. For
most of the GSoC projects I have seen on Commons it is apparent that the
targets are very flexible. Perhaps some sort of agile software
engineering style is suitable here. At least when I did SCRUM [1] the
idea was a daily 15 minutes stand-up to discuss issues and progress with
the aim of completing deliverable iterations within a week or fortnight.
I can certainly see an agile method as a way to work with a mentee when
the expected contributions to the codebase can be partitioned into
independent tasks.
The first iteration may involve getting familiar with the code, running
tests, building javadoc, etc. Basically understanding all the
deliverables that a release of a commons component outputs.
After that each iteration can be the development and test and PR of an
addition to the commons project. If the iteration is not quite an
encapsulated PR then some measurable state on a topic branch (such as a
tagged milestone). Being agile leaves the plan open to change and
flexible to adapt to the interest of the mentee.
As for the agile workflow, I am not sure how a remote stand-up would
work given time zones but one to think about. Perhaps an open Google
doc/spreadsheet where new items are added, discussed and resolved. This
would have to be checked daily by team members. Major issues can then be
promoted to an on-line discussion. (Any experience with working in a
geographically remote agile group would be useful to know.)
Opinions are welcome.
Alex
[1] https://google.github.io/gsocguides/student/writing-a-proposal
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum_(software_development)
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