launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Matthew Revell <matthew.revell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

Thanks to everyone who sent me their congratulations and best wishes.
I'm excited to be taking on this role. Thanks also to Jono for his
work over the past two years in bringing us to this point.

So, where do I want to take Launchpad? I have four broad aims:

 * Win projects and mindshare: Launchpad should be the obvious choice
for hosting a free software project and people using Launchpad should
be enthused to talk about what a great experience it provides.
 * Make Launchpad a joy to use: all those usability issues we already
know about, they've no place in Launchpad. Similarly, the new features
we develop should be relentlessly focused on making life better for
the people who use them.
 * Get social: we should learn from social networks and build on those
ideas that can help people get more out of Launchpad.
 * Get commercial: I mean two things by this. First, we should give
the same care and level of polish to Launchpad as if we were producing
a software application that we were selling. My second meaning is
pretty straightforward: whether it's as part of one of Canonical's
partnerships or through our direct commercial subscriptions, we should
make it easier and more rewarding to use Launchpad commercially.

Why have I chosen to focus on these? I think they'll help us to
fulfill the ambitions we have for Launchpad, primarily:

 * to make it easy and fun for people to work on free software
 * to accelerate the development of software for Ubuntu
 * to help Canonical make software.

I want to get there by changing the way that we work and by
introducing new features to Launchpad.

For the things we choose to work on, it means:

 * We're going to make Launchpad the best place to host, review and
find code: our code review was ground-breaking when we launched it. We
can lead again. Other sites have in-line code commenting. Great, we
can have that but we can also make it so someone reviewing a branch
can click a button and fire up that branch in the cloud so they can
review it without even running it locally. Before any of that, though,
we need to make it trivially easy to get code into Launchpad.

 * We're going to improve our Git support: whether it's by directly
supporting Git hosting alongside our existing Bazaar provision or by
providing a seamless interface between Git and Bazaar on LP. Making it
easier to use Git with Launchpad will help us to bring more projects
to Launchpad and will aid our colleagues in Canonical.

 * We're going to integrate UbuntuPay and make commercial
subscriptions rock: buying and operating a commercial subscription to
Launchpad should be hands-off, from the Launchpad team's point of
view, and a joy from that of the customer. We'll introduce new payment
plans, with monthly payment options.

 * Glossaries and a re-thought UI for Translations: Launchpad
Translations is an amazing success story. However, there is work to
do. When Huw returns from leave, we'll work with different translation
teams to better understand their workflows and how Launchpad should
cater to them. We'll also look at glossaries and submitting
translations upstream.

 * One issue tracker to rule them all: we're going to merge the bug
and blueprint trackers, as we had planned, and also ask what should
happen to Answers. Should it be another face to our combined issue
tracker or do we even need an Answers tracker?

 * After the re-brand, the re-design: the Product team will be
cataloguing all the usability problems in Launchpad. We will then
propose fixes to those problems and, once we've moved our focus from
critical bugs, Huw and the maintenance squads will work together to
implement those fixes. Generally, we'll make it easier to get started
with Launchpad and we'll gear Launchpad around the goals that people
have. There's a lot of work here and some, such as the new code-hoster
story, will require Feature cards.

 * Derived distros for everyone: anyone should be able to create a
derived distribution, using PPAs to host packages peculiar to that new
distro.

For how we work, it means:

 * Interaction design happens before implementation begins: in the
weeks before a feature squad starts on a new feature, the Product team
will work with the squad lead to start work on designing the
interaction and UI for that feature. Once implementation begins, the
Product team will continue to work with those squad members who enjoy
UI work on designing whichever deliverable comes next.

 * We'll expand our user research: our Stakeholder board will stay
pretty much the same but I'm going to introduce a more formal route
for non-Stakeholder members to request features and give us other
types of feedback.

As you can see, what I'm proposing involves a lot of work and I'll
work with Francis to make sure we can get these things done as well as
fulfilling the various stakeholder requests that come to us.

Soon, I'll be recruiting someone who'll take over user research for
Launchpad and also look after many of the communications things I did
in my previous role.

We have an exciting and important role to play, not only in the
futures of Ubuntu and Canonical but also free software generally. I
look forward to your comments/questions/etc on what I'm proposing!

Thanks :)

-- 
Matthew Revell
Launchpad Product Manager
Canonical

https://launchpad.net/~matthew.revell