[Dev] PyCon Sprints

[Ted Leung]

On Jan 4, 2006, at 10:25 PM, Philippe Bossut wrote:

> Considering the dead silence on this thread, I'm wondering if  
> others have the same questions as I have:

These are great (and totally reasonable) questions...

Here's some background links:

* The PyCon sprinting page - <http://us.pycon.org/TX2006/Sprinting>
* The term sprint comes from the Scrum agile methodology <http:// 
www.controlchaos.com/about/>, despite the bit about Extreme  
Programming in the sprinting page (pair programming is not required)

> - What are the rules for a qualifying "sprint" at PyCon?

* You need to being doing a development on some Python project,  
usually open source.
* The PyCon organizers provide free space for people to work in  
person since people are around for the conference anyway -- many of  
the Python open source projects (Python language, Twisted, Zope,  
docutils, etc) take advantage of these sprints to do higher bandwidth  
development.    A sprint also is a good way for new people to get  
involved in a project
* All we have to do is sign up for space and provide someone who will  
be the sprint "coach" -- that person will be me.
* If we want to, we can have a tutorial introduction for new people,  
depending on the topic for the sprint

Generally speaking, the organization is very loose.

> - What are we trying to get from a sprint?

* A bunch of us are going to be at PyCon for the conference, and in  
particular, many of us who are remote will be together, so a sprint  
is a good time for high bandwidth collaboration -- just like it is  
for the other projects
* Working in the sprint room(s) is a good chance to get more of a  
feel for how other open source projects work
* Working in the sprint room(s) is a good chance to interact directly  
with other open source projects -- in the past, this has let to  
collaboration with the Twisted people
* If there are people interested in getting involved with Chandler  
somehow, we will be giving them that opportunity -- last year's  
sprint was for like a focus group for the developer platform APIs as  
opposed to really drawing people into involvement with the project.
* This is a great time to develop personal relationships with people  
in the Python community.

> - What are we supposed to provide? (we may not have enough  
> resources anyway to organize several)

* A coach (or coaches)
* Some introduction/tutorial (if we want)
The assumption is that people are going to show up and work on  
something, regardless of whether new people show up or not.  If new  
peop[e do show up, that is a plus.

> - If it's too long, is it still a sprint? (OK, that one is a  
> joke... :) )

* A single sprint can last all four days ;-)

> Ideas (answers to here above questions might disqualified them as  
> relevant, sorry if it does):
> - Functional Tests sprint (CATS scripts)
> - CPIA Scripts (non parcels) sprint
> - Localization sprint

I think that any of these would be good candidates.  Also we can have  
one "main sprint" and pick from topics, or if we know we have enough  
interest from people we can have more than one.   As I said, the  
organization is very loose.  The whole point is really to make as  
much use of the free space and physical co-location to get work done.

>
> Cheers,
> - Philippe
>
> Ted Leung wrote:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> PyCon is getting closer and we're starting to think about plans  
>> for a  Chandler Sprint.   This year things are a little bit  
>> different  because the sprints are after the conference, which  
>> means that people  will have seen our presentations before coming  
>> to the sprints.     There are four days allocated for sprints.  My  
>> question is do people  want to do 4 days worth of sprints or less  
>> than that.  We can have  one sprint or several sprints (different  
>> topic areas), and durations  can vary.  It is pretty much up to us  
>> as to what we'd like to do.     If people have specific topics  
>> that they'd like to sprint on, please  reply to this note, so that  
>> we can get an idea of how long we want  our sprint(s) to run, and  
>> people can make airplane arrangements, etc.
>>
>> Here's a seed idea:
>>
>> * General parcel sprint
>>
>>