OEPs: Would you like to help overhaul, review, and refine them?

Development Architecture
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Hey everyone!

It’s been a while (at least 2 years!) since we took a hard look at our OEPs, the OEP process, and their outcomes.

I would like to invite anyone who has an interest in improving the state and usability of our OEPs to join us in an OEP working and design session.

See these notes on an initial brainstorming session for ideas on the types of problems to tackle. While we’re at it, we may also bring a long-time previous effort on creating an Open edX Tech Radar over the line.

If you’re interested in joining me, @feanil, @robrap, and @djoy in this effort, please let me know by EOD Tues, May 12th. We’d like to get moving this week.

Thanks,
OEP Working Group

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BTW: OEP stands for Open edX Proposals. They are architectural and process decisions that affect broad swaths of the Open edX technology. You can see the current OEPs here: https://open-edx-proposals.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

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Oh right! Thanks for adding that context @nedbat.

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@nimisha I’m interested! The deadline has passed though, not sure if it’s still time for this. It was a bit short for me, would it be possible to give at least a week to read/answer forum threads?

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@antoviaque We would love to have your input in this. (And also if anyone else is interested in joining.)

We have not yet had a deeper session on redesigning what we need for OEPs - but have had a preliminary. We kept our notes at OEP Review Planning. We’d be happy to bring anyone up to speed on where we are since we’re just scratching the surface of addressing our OEP issues.

For the time being, we are choosing to address 2 low-hanging fruits that we’ve been wanting to do for OEPs for a while: (1) write TLDR sections in each OEP as a brief summary of what it entails, (2) create an edX Tech Radar to provide a high-level overview and clarity on where we stand with each decision.

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I’m looking at June 2nd as a possible day for us to have a discussion on overhauling OEPs.
@antoviaque Will June 2nd work for you? Anyone else interested?

Current wide-open thoughts on the table:

  • Gather input from others on the usefulness of OEPs and the concerns/issues with OEPs.
  • Keep OEPs as a process for gathering wide-input, but not for all arch decisions that need wide-inform but not wide-input.
  • Instead, see if we can find better ways of communicating technical best practices and decisions. For example: handbook, radar, course.

Nimisha

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@nimisha Yup, anything in the morning EST time that day should work for me :+1: Thanks!