I have been thinking about updating/redesigning the Fedora Org Chart for a while, and I finally have a bit of time/energy to make that happen It was last updated in March of 2021, so it definitely needs it!
I am looking for feedback and input from the community on:
What’s missing
What’s outdated (teams or projects that are retired or inactive for the foreseeable future, and should be removed)
Any updates on naming (teams, variants, etc)
Readability (is it easy to understand/navigate? how could that be improved?)
Color scheme/format/composition (Refresh to match our updated brand and make it feel more “fedorable”)
From a reporting standpoint, I’m not sure what the state of CommOps is. It’s useful to see as a category on the org chart as a way of separating certain Mindshare related fields from others, but I assume that each node in the chart should be an actual team. As of now it feels like Marketing just reports directly to Mindshare, so take that for what it’s worth?
Add in more gradients, generally. Try a mesh gradient in the background (with all the Fedora colors??)
Website design mockups for Fedora CoreOS & Fedora Workstation are a good source for inspiration (located on Fedora Design penpot)
Suggestion to try Fedora blues for the background, try a dark background with white bubbles
The general flow is nice, but when you aren’t zoomed in, the small text is hard to read. Could make the bubbles and text bigger to improve readability.
We’re renaming “Objectives” to “Initiatives”.
I don’t mind having the specific current ones on the chart, but clearly we haven’t been good about updating it when we should. How can we do that better?
I’d like “Strategy 2028” to be its own bubble off of Council. That will eventually have various programs, projects, and initiatives branching off.
Poor, poor Program Management. The idea of launching that as a team did not really work — should it be a bubble still?
The idea of putting CommOps as a collective group for the things we have under it did not really work. @jflory7 has plans to revitalize that team — it should probably just be its own bubble?
Two things we don’t have formal teams for but should: Matrix ops/moderators and Discourse mods. (Some overlap with Ask Fedora, now, but different.) Should this go under DEI?
Oh yeah D&I should be DEI
On the engineering side: spins come and go — do we want to try and list them all? I’m okay with that, but we need a mechanism for keeping up…
“Cloud Based Image” should have been “Cloud Base Image”, but anyway doesn’t matter because it’s Cloud Edition now
CoreOS no longer under “emerging”.
I think we should connect Silverblue off of Workstation. But also some connection to other “Atomic” spins?
Under “packaging”, I think the “stewardship” group is effectively inactive?
Infrastructure and Rel/Eng should be closer/linked.
also, we should probably drop MIPS? Does not appear to have been touched since Fedora Linux 24, and the links are dead. Maybe that’s a FESCo thing?
Plenty of active SIGs are not represented, while other groups like Big Data and Machine Learning are dormant. (The former is probably obsolete, but I’m working to revive the latter as AI/ML.)
Not sure how to solve this in the chart — or in general, because it’s part of our larger problem of keeping track of SIGs — having no barriers to creation is great, but we end up with a lot of empty storefronts. (We have a focus area in Strategy 2028 around this…)
I think the main problem here is that we have favour look over maintainability. If this chart can be done in a mind map software or something similar that could be easily updated it can improve that.
Proposal
Do it with vym (View Your Mind). Even when the file format (.vym files) is binary (hard to maintain in a git forge), it can be exported as html applying a CSS (both easily maintainable in a git forge). And here is where I see the potential, applying our own formatted CSS we could accomplish the look we want and vym is easy to use. The resulting HTML could be imported anywhere, practically.
I’m intrigued by the idea. It seems like it might be a lot of steps, though — and honestly, I think the main problem might be that we haven’t got “oh yeah, update the org chart” anywhere as something to be done. If the design team has capacity to do updates on request, it might just be a matter of standardizing “file a ticket” as part of launching a team.
(Still doesn’t solve the when-to-remove issue, though.)
With regards to creating an alternate method to creating an Org Chart- I am open to it! In fact, iirc, @thunderbirdtr and @t0xic0der were working on creating an interactive version of the chart. The idea was that you could hover over the different teams/editions/etc and get active links for chats, pagure repos, and documentation. Not sure how far that went. I can’t remember what we called the experiment and I can’t seem to find it quickly can one of you drop a link if there is something to look at?
Though, I think in the end, we will have the same issue with some kind of automated/mind mapped software based option. Who is maintaining it, how often will it get attention, how do we know exactly which groups are active at any given time, and how do we make it Fedora branded? If someone were to step up to develop/maintain an automated solution that is Fedora branded, I’d be happy to assist.
Looking back on the ticket regarding the first version of the Org Chart I created, we were addressing similar questions. I think we settled on the idea that this would be a “snapshot” and that it will naturally not be entirely accurate after some time has passed from the latest version. This is meant to give an overview of Fedora, how the project is organized, how far spread the work we do is, and a way for newcomers to get an idea of that scope. It has been in the “How to Join Fedora” deck for years now, and has been useful in achieving those goals.
In fact the page where this lives states “don’t take the chart as written in stone”. I totally understand the urge for it to be accurate at all times- but unless we have someone constantly polling the community and making updates, it just won’t be (no matter how its created). Ideally, I’d like to see the Org Chart updated once a year.
Some benefits of the Design Team/a designer creating the Org Chart is that we can:
Align it to Fedora’s evolving brand
Create something visually balanced (by human eye, not automated balance), and strikingly “Fedorable”
Organize a call for updates (like this thread), and to incorporate them accurately
Apply skilled and experienced creative thinkers with control over all aspects of the design
Take requests for updates and incorporate them in an aesthetically pleasing and balanced manner
All that being said, unless someone jumps in with a passion to build something automated and Fedora branded, I am going to start working on these updates in the next month or so and I will post the next draft for feedback
Personally, I feel like we should not list any Community Initiatives by name in the chart. Instead, we could put a footnote in the bubble that links or references the Fedora Docs page where all Community Initiatives are listed. What do you think?
-1. I feel like the strategy work should plug into existing places in the community, and branching it off as an independent bubble is confusing to me. The purpose of the org chart is to visualize the places the community is working. The strategy feels like a wider “web” that should encompass all parts of the org chart, instead of something that sits off independently all on its own. The messaging is confusing to me.
Oh wow. Did I sign up for that?
In either case, CommOps should remain as the connecting hub for Ambassadors and Advocates, because that is the policy we have documented today and that is how the structure exists, even if it is not functioning the way it should.
However, Marketing and the Join SIG should be moved off into their own, because these teams do not “report up” into CommOps and are functionally independent of CommOps.
-1. We should get consent of the DEI Team for this first anyways before just doing it (and whose #dei tag remains difficult to find in the existing Discourse drop-down list).
Pinning a team of volunteers with moderation duties of platforms they might not even be using fully themselves feels like a recipe for burnout and confusion.
A proof-of-concept would be helpful to wrap my head around.
Given there is a group already working on this and happy to maintain it, I don’t mind keeping this as a Fedora Design Team responsibility, if the Design Team also consents that this is something they have capacity to own and periodically update.
Maybe we could formalize this as a regular process, maybe a revisit for every release? Is that too much?
Yeah, I can get behind that — less to worry about updating.
And your point about Strategy 2028 makes sense too.
Doesn’t necessarily mean that the DEI team does moderation, just that moderation is a DEI activity. DEI team could help with moderation guidelines, and be somewhere to go when a platform isn’t seeing adequate moderation.
I think this would be a great idea. It wouldn’t need to be a full redesign every six months, just a check for updates.
If I’m not too late, the biggest feedback I have is that the Program Management Team no longer exists.
I’m generally on the side of “let’s not explicitly list ObjectivesInitiatives”, just from a update burden perspective. I’d feel the same way about various deliverables, too, but the smaller Spis/Labs/etc probably appreciate the validation. So as long we assume the org chart is always an approximation of reality, then I don’t think we need any sweeping changes in that regard.
Thanks for all the feedback. I did my best to incorporate everything on the thread. A couple notes:
I left “Strategy 2028” in, as I personally feel it is important to recognize that work is happening. I’ve seen all the posts and discussions, and to me it looks like the planning effort is a significant piece of work on its own. It will eventually be implemented in various ways across the community, but for the time being, it seems like the Council owns the building of the strategy. I can be convinced to remove it tho
The design isn’t 100% complete, as in, I worked to make sense of the content changes and general placement before refining each and every element in the design. Mostly because I expect and welcome more requests for changes! Feel free to point out any blaring design concerns, but let’s make sure the the content is correct before I refine it to perfection
I made significant look & feel changes based on a couple of Fedora Design team meetings I attended and received feedback. Previously it had a light background and used the range of Fedora colors. This design has a dark background and features variations of blue to denote hierarchy and grouped teams/efforts. Please provide feedback: do you feel the updated designs looks good/okay/bad, and how “readable” is it overall?
I wonder if all the Spins listed are currently active? And also, should “Gaming” be under Spins or is it it’s own team doing a variety of work?
Should the “Alternative Architectures” branch be split out into “Primary” and “Alternative”? The last Org Chart grouped them all, but maybe the differentiation is worth notating in the design?
I like it! I do feel like some amount of color-coding made it easier for me to read, but it looks nice this way too.
One thing to maybe adjust… the the “trunk” or “stem” where lines converge varies in brightness depending on the number of “leaf” circles. The bright spots by Spins and to the left of FESCo and right of Mindshare particularly drew my attention — maybe more than they should. (And for some reason, this effect seems stronger on my phone than on computer … not sure if that’s just the size or difference in screens or what…)
Hiya Thanks to everyone here for the feedback! I also visited the Fedora Design Team meeting this past Monday where I got some additional feedback.
I made several changes:
Gave everything a bunch more space to breath
Since there weren’t too many significant content changes, I took the time to clean things up. If I missed something, please point that out!
I tapered the lines where they meet other lines. I think this was pretty effective in reducing those “bright spots”. The Spins “trunk” is now creating some kind of illusion but it is following the design “rules” used across the chart… is it just me or do other people see that too? Suggestions welcome on how to solve that!
I condensed Ask & Discussion under Moderation → Discourse
I debated on adding the items from the Apps page. After checking it out I think that some things there are already represented here, that others might no longer be maintained, or are upstreams. If I add all of them, it might be sort of redundant and/or focused heavily on the websites and apps section. If there are a handful that should be highlighted here and are under active development/maintenance, I’d be happy to add 'em in!
It was last updated in March of 2021, so it definitely needs it!
can one of you drop a link if there is something to look at?
Thanks to everyone here for the feedback! I also visited the Fedora Design Team meeting this past Monday where I got some additional feedback.
