---
title: New initiative workflow
tags: Fedora, Infra, CPE
---

New initiative workflow
=======================
[toc]

This document documents a proposed workflow to get new initiatives onto the CPE backlog.

# The different steps

The process to bring something to the attention of the CPE team is composed from different steps:

* Propose a new initiative; this proposal gives the what and why of the work asked.
* Based on the proposal the team then decides if it fits its mission statement and thus if it is worth pursuing, or if it would land on someone else to work on.
* The CPE team together with the submitter work on figuring out the best approach to answer the demand.
* Based on the estimated amount of work, the initiatives currently in progress, priorities, and return on investment, the CPE team decides whether they can commit to this initiative, and if so a rough timeline for it.

## Write down a requirement document

The CPE team has [prepared a template](https://hackmd.io/@pingou/rJd0HaipV) for you to use to write down your requirement document.

This document is divided into two parts, the first part is yours to fill. It is basically the what and why of your request:
- What do you want the CPE team to work on
- Why do you think it is worth for the CPE team to work on it
The second part will be filled out later by you and the CPE team once your proposal has been accepted based on its what and why.

## Proposing a new initiative

Once you have written down your requirement document, submit it to the CPE team for review.
To do this, simply open a ticket on the [fedora-infrastructure issue tracker](https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/).

You will be asked in this ticket a few things:
- a link to your requirement document
- potential dependencies for this initiative (dependencies on people or other initiatives)
- potential deadlines that could impact the initiative

## First decision point: is this initiative for the CPE team?

Based on these information the CPE team will decide if this initiative is in the scope of the CPE team (ie: does it fit its [mission statement]()?) but also if there is a clear benefit for the communities the CPE team is involved in.

If your initiative doesn't fit for the CPE team, it does not mean your challenge is not worth pursuing but the CPE team has limited resources and needs to be careful on how they are spent.

Every two weeks, the CPE will meet to go over the initiative proposed. At this point, the CPE team will decide on accepting or not your initiative or if needed appoint someone to work with you to polish this document, improve the user-story, discuss with you what is in scope and what is out of scope.

## Figuring the technical solution

If your proposal is validate for the CPE team, you will be asked to collaborate with some CPE team representative to figure out the best technical solution to answer the use-case and users stories set in your requirements document.

This step may involve calling for feedback the communities affected by this change.

The part II of the requirement document should be kept up to date to reflect the technical solution of choice and possibly the solutions considered with why they were rejected (this could also be stored in a different document linked to).

## Final decision and prioritization

Finally, once the two parts of the requirement document have been filled, the CPE team and its stakeholder will be consulted to decide if the initiative is worth doing and what its priority status should be on the backlog of the team.

If the initiative is approved, the ticket will be closed as accepted and an epic will be created in the [CPE taiga board](https://teams.fedoraproject.org/project/pingou-cpe-dev-1/epics). It will then be up to the team working on this epic to track their work in taiga or anywhere else, granted they document in the epic where they are tracking it.

If the initiative is not accepted by the CPE team, the ticket will be closed as rejected with some explanations as to why.

Every quarter, the CPE team will meet to plan their work for the coming quarter. During this meeting, the team will go over the proposed and accepted initiatives, weight them against each other, prioritize them and pick the ones that will be worked on.

# Conclusions

This new workflow will be a change from how the CPE team has worked up until now. Its core idea is to maximize the output of the team to the community. We are not able to accept everything and anything and we want to make sure what we accept is properly limited in scoped and time.
Hopefully this will allow us to work on more initiative and bring more beneficent changes to our communities.