May 2016 - Committers Survey

Introduction

This survey was designed to collect information and feedback from all Apache OFBiz Committers.It was sent out to all Committers, including non active and emeritus (a total of 38). The information gathered will be used to help understand if there are any areas where help and support is needed, and also to give Committers an opportunity to highlight any points they see as important that may not have yet come up for discussion on the mailing lists.

Survey Details:

• It was conducted over the period 19th - 25th May 2016. Details of the survey was posted on the mailing lists.
• A total of 24 responses were recorded and the details are recorded below.

Survey Catchment

Statistics were captured about the Committer status.

• The majority of respondents were active Committers
• Non of our emeritus Committers responded

Response Frequency

The survey was open for a total of 7 days (19th - 25th May 2016).

• The majority of responses were recorded during the first day
• Although the majority of responses were within the first 2 days, leaving the survey open for the additional days and sending out reminders did increase the total number of responses.
• If another survey is done, then it the default duration would be 7 days.

Survey Questions

Question 1: How long have you been an Apache OFBiz Committer?

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out the profile of the Committers participating in the survey
• The question was phrased specifically to identify newer Committers and more experienced ones.
• Only one response was allowed.

Conclusions :

• The project invites new Committers regularly so I would have expected that the numbers would be fairly balanced across each duration but this is not the case.
• This question has highlighted that we have a lot of new and experienced Committers but not many in between.
• This discrepancy could also have been caused by the fact we have missing data (14 out of the 38 Committers sent the survey did not respond)

Question 2: Are you a Committer on any other Apache projects?

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out if a Committer needed to share their time with another Apache project
• Only one response was allowed

Conclusions :

• The results show that only 1 of our respondents is a Committer on another Apache project and the majority are only Committers only on OFBiz
• With Groovy and Freemarker now Apache projects, I would have expected that some of the Committers would be shared across these two other Apache projects.
• Perhaps a future question could capture if Committers are contributors (rather than Committers) on another Apache project

Question 3: Which of the following best describes how you see yourself?

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out how Committers see their activity level
• Only one response was allowed
• It was phrased to cater for inactive or emeritus Committers but also gave an option for inactive Committers who wanted to become more active

Conclusions :

• The results show that the biggest group were the Committers that would like to contribute more frequently.
• One unexpected result was that there 3 Committers that see themselves as currently inactive that wanted to be more active. (Note: This included committers that are currently classed as active as well as inactive)
• A positive finding is that one of the inactive Committers would like to be more active. This means that even though Committers have not been involved in the project for a while, they may still want to be able to come back and contribute.
• The use of the 'None of the above' category shows that there was an answer choice missing so maybe this can be discovered in the discussions resulting from the survey.

Question 4: How often do you make commits to the Apache OFBiz repository?

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to get a measure of the commit activity for a Committer.
• Only one response was allowed

Conclusions :

• It is important to note that the response to this question is not a truly concrete measure because a Committer could still be contributing by testing, providing feedback and responses as part of another patch or commit. I've tried to capture this distinction in Question 5.
• The majority of Committers see themselves as not commiting often. This could be caused by the type of work being done (e.g a re-factoring task may take longer because of the additional testing and checking that needs to be done to ensure that nothing is broken due to the re-factor), also some patches that are being applied are older which means that they may need to be fixed before they can be committed
• The use of the 'None of the above' category shows that there was an answer choice missing so maybe this can be discovered in the discussions resulting from the survey.

Question 5: Which of the following best describes your commit activity?

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out what was the main source of a Committer's activity.
• Only one response was allowed
• It was phrased to cater for inactive Committers, as well as those who provided feedback and advice instead of doing regular commits

Conclusions :

• The majority of Committers focus on creating and applying their own patches which is something I would have expected.
• It was very interesting to see that there is a group of Committers that generally watch out for patches that contributors have uploaded and focus on testing and committing them. This is a very positive finding.
• There were 5 Committers that did not fit any of the answer categories which is significant. I hope this missing category can be found in post survey discussions.

Question 6:  Do you generally contribute to areas that are relevant to your work?

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out what if the Committers activity and / or contribution was related to their work.
• Only one response was allowed

Conclusions :

• The majority of Committers who responded (71%) contribute to areas related to their work
• It was also good to see that there were Committers that contribute to areas not related to their work. This could link in with the results of Committers committing patches for other contributors and also the general re-factoring / tidy up work currently in progress.

Question 7:  What would make you more active as an Apache OFBiz Committer?

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out what, if anything was stopping Committers from being more active
• Only one response was allowed

Conclusions :

• The majority of Committers chose having more spare time as the key to being more active. This in fact ties in with question 3 where the majority of Committers said that they didn't contribute as often as they would like to.
• One surprising result was that no-one selected that having a defined workload would help them become more active. This implies that the Committers already have an idea of what areas they want or would like to work on and the type of work they'd like to do.
• It was also interesting to see that being able to work as part of a team was also selected. Perhaps more integrated Community Day work could help with this.
• The use of the 'None of the above' category shows that there was an answer choice missing so maybe this can be discovered in the discussions resulting from the survey.

Question 8: Please respond the following statements

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to give the Committers a range of statements and ask for their views on them
• Five responses were allowed (one for each statement)
• Based on the responses a weighted average was calculated

Conclusions :

• One of the significant things showing here is that 63% of Committers surveyed think that it would be good if newer Committers were mentored by a more experienced one. This could be related to the fact that we have a lot of newer Committers and a lot of experienced Committers but not many in between.This could be a discussion point.
• 63% of Committers surveyed disagreed with the statement that Committers are only expected to be active on a project for a fixed time. This seems to indicate that they think that Committers stay with a project  long term.
• Another significant this is that 58% of Committers surveyed disagreed with the comment that the community expected that Committers fix reported problems immediately. This seems to indicate that the Committers see that the community understands that Committers cannot be available straight away to fix things and will pick them up and progress them when they have time.
• One surprising result is that 46% of Committers surveyed thought that Committers are sometimes unsure of which area to focus on. This is strange because a previous question asked about Committers having a defined workplan yet this had zero response.
• One area that came out fairly balanced was the statement about being a Committer is difficult because you can only work on it in your spare time. This could also be because of the work relevance to OFBiz work. (e.g.If a Committer works on OFBiz as part of their job then they are not only working in their spare time.)

Question 9: What do you think would help improve the project? Please rank these in order of importance

Comments :

• The objective of this question was to find out what each Committer thought was the most important out of the selections
• 6 responses were allowed (one for each ranking)
• The question was a ranking one, where the most important was ranked as '1' and the least at '6'.
• Weighting Calculation = Total Weighting / Total
  
  • A weight of 6 was put on anything ranked 1
  • A weight of 5 was put on anything ranked 2
  • A weight of 4 was put on anything ranked 3
  • A weight of 3 was put on anything ranked 4
  • A weight of 2 was put on anything ranked 5
  • A weight of 1 was put on anything ranked 6
    
    

Conclusions:

• Although Improving quality by tidying up the existing codebase was ranked first the most, it shared first position with Better documentation because of the averaging calculation. Better documentation was ranked second the most.
• It's interesting to see that having a more structured workplan is in second position because in a question 7 Committers  responded that having a define workplan would not make them more active. The response here seems to indicate that the visibility wanted may not be individual but at a project level so that people have a clearer view of what is happening and how it is all linked together.
• Keeping up to date with trends and technology is in third position. This seems to indicate that as the project progresses, the respondents think that we need to be aware of what is happening technologically and incorporate what we can to keep OFBiz up to date.
• Separating the framework into a distinct product is in fourth position. The community has previously discussed this option and it's interesting to see that some respondents think that it could be a good improvement for the project. With the current effort in re-factoring the framework, this idea could become more and more popular.
• Having more Committers is in the lowest position. This is an interesting result because normally if there is a problem of workload, the simple answer is to allocate more people to work on it which seems to indicate that the main improvements that respondents see are to do with how we are working (what our focus is and how we plan and manage doing what we do) rather than the amount of work that needs to be done.

Question 10: Would you be willing to participate in future OFBiz Committer surveys?

Comments:

• The objective of this question was to find out what the Committers would be willing to take part in future surveys.
• Only one response was allowed

Conclusions:

• Normally this type of question gives only 2 options (Yes / No). I added the additional option to give more choice, especially if a non active or emeritus Committers
• The majority of Committers are happy to participate in future surveys.

Final Comments

Please note that participation in this survey was completely voluntary. None of our Committers were under any obligation to respond to the survey. I'm happy that a majority of them did and that we were able to capture this valuable information.

Thank you to everyone who completed the survey that enabled me to provide these results and details. I hope that these are useful to the community now and into the future as we continue to look and survey our community base.

Please feel to leave any comments or observations.