QA/Community/Growth/Q42007Strategy
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Contents
Q4 2007 Mozilla QA Community Strategy
I. Community Outreach
Although we now have millions of Firefox users, a very small fraction of them contribute to the Mozilla project. Helping people make the connection between what Firefox is and the people that make it possible is a critical piece in maintaining a healthy Mozilla project and continuing our mission.
QA is the easiest entry point for volunteers to get involved in the Mozilla community. We need to find new channels to explore and help educate potential community leaders and enable volunteers to contribute in any way they can. Leveraging the community for QA tasks will help us get better testing coverage, provide the Mozilla QA team a support system as they focus on short-term goals, and allow us to take on new projects and initiatives that will help us accomplish our long-term goals.
A. Identify leaders in emerging markets
In order to better understand cultural differences, local economies, and our users in new regions, we need to find leaders that can be advisors to, and liaisons between, the Mozilla QA team and those communities. We have opportunities in a few countries right now:
- India (Goal: Start dialog with 1 person about building the tester community)
- FOSS.IN project day (Dec 2007) - COMPLETED
- Collected over 10 interested contacts, sent out introduction emails and waiting to hear back to better direct their energy and interests (most likely split between testing and campus reps).
- FOSS.IN project day (Dec 2007) - COMPLETED
- China (Goal: Understand Mozilla China and how they can help us reach out to the Chinese community)
- Get involved with Li's Mozilla China organization - IN PROGRESS
- Learning from their Mozilla Ambassador program; will try to gauge QA interest by contacting them.
- Get involved with Li's Mozilla China organization - IN PROGRESS
- South America (Brazil)
- Work with Marcio and Alix to expand our network into Brazil through universities.
- List of contacts being compiled at http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=ah9939kdfvkd_11z255n9g5&hl=en
- Work with Marcio and Alix to expand our network into Brazil through universities.
B. Improve QA communities in existing markets
Developer and marketing/evangelism communities seem to be doing well in Europe and Japan, but it's been a challenge to engage QA contributors. We need to find out how we can better work with our affiliates to improve communication and processes that will allow for more collaboration on QA related activities.
- Mozilla Japan
- Litmus and QMO translation (Goal: Localized ja content for both) - COMPLETED
- Mozilla Japan localized key pages on QMO and started creating testcases in Litmus
- Bug Day and Test Day "training" or collaboration (Goal: Gather information about how they work, and build out plan to address their needs) - Q108
- Litmus and QMO translation (Goal: Localized ja content for both) - COMPLETED
- Mozilla Europe
- Find Bugzilla contributors and/or localizers that are willing to become community leads for their locales. (Goal: Sign up 2 contributors to be regular Test/Bug Day representatives for the region/time-zone; Aleksej + 1 other) - IN PROGRESS
- Aleksej has become "regular" community lead during Europe sessions, we have a couple of candidates for a second lead.
- Find Bugzilla contributors and/or localizers that are willing to become community leads for their locales. (Goal: Sign up 2 contributors to be regular Test/Bug Day representatives for the region/time-zone; Aleksej + 1 other) - IN PROGRESS
C. Campus recruiting and Mozilla University
Many of our interns and new contributors have come straight out of school, but we don't actively "recruit" enough. Seneca College has been a great example of what can happen if Mozilla invests some resources to help educate and inspire students and faculty to learn more about open source and get involved with the Mozilla project.
With some knowledge sharing and support, we can build a strong Mozilla presence at other schools... and bring in new interns and contributors (and hopefully a few new hires).
- Campus Reps
- "Stay Ahead of the Curve" flyers for recruiting students/faculty and promoting Mozilla University. (Goal: COMPLETED)
- Identify Campus Reps that are interested in starting a Mozilla Club. (Goal: 2 students committed to starting a club) - Q108
- Work with them to get their organization established and help them integrate into the QMO work flow.
- Mozilla University
- Website live at https://www.mozilla.com/en-US/university/ (Goal: Completed)
- Track site traffic and gather user feedback (COMPLETED)
- Add new relevant content as needed/requested by the Mozilla community - Q108 (Add items for Mozilla Labs and International)
- Localize site for target markets/locales and promote at international universities (Goal: Translate page for 2 locales) - IN PROGRESS
- Looking for localizer in Brazil and Germany
II. Building the Nightly Tester Community
Most of our nightly testers are long time Mozilla contributors that are fairly active in Bugzilla... but we need to find ways to grow that community. Although the QA team gets a few new people to help out during our Bug/Test Days, we have not been successful in converting those volunteers into regular nightly testers. We need to reach a larger audience and make it easy for them to join the nightly tester community.
A. Create better participation channels
By promoting nightly builds and finding innovative ways to gather user feedback and test results, we should be able to attract more contributors.
- Release and promote QA extension
- Create QA Extension product page on QMO (in-progress)
- Integrate into nightly builds
- Improve Minefield/Gran Paradiso pages (Goal: Create better product page for nightly builds; promote developer/nightly builds as "beta" for Firefox 3)
B. Centralize important QA documentation at QMO
Too much information has become lost or outdated in the pages of mozilla.org. Some of it is no longer relevant, but there are some nice documents that the community can benefit from. We should identify pages that need a refresh, and find ways to reintroduce them to the community.
- Update well organized pages on mozilla.org and link to them from QMO (Goal: 2 pages)
- Migrate orphan pages from mozilla.org to QMO (Goal: 2 pages)
- Redirect mozillaZine blog to QMO (in-progress)
III. QA Projects
Each of the QA teams (execution, tools/automation, community) have a number of projects they are working on or would like to work on. By better organizing some of those projects and leveraging the community, we can all get more done.
It will require some upfront costs and planning, but once we get the infrastructure and processes in place, I believe the QA team and community will be able to work better together and operate more efficiently.
A. Develop QMO "beta" with focus on "activity flows"
Current QMO "alpha" site has been a successful experiment in understanding the needs of the QA team and community. We know what works and what we can do better, so it's time to start implementing those changes as we take QMO to "beta".
- Redesign QMO front page (Goal: Have the QMO redesign mockup completed and Drupal developers working on the site by end of Q407 or ealry Q108)
- Work with John Slater and the design firm to update the look and feel of QMO to better suit the needs of the Mozilla QA Community
- Identify 3-4 types of contributors (testers, buggers, automators, analyzers)
- Integrate highly visible sections on front page for each type
- Create "activity flow" for each type to guide people through setup, learning, and execution of tasks in their area.
B. Convert QA "wish-lists" into community projects
Instead of letting ideas sit on wiki pages or be forgotten, we need to figure out a system to queue up projects so the community has a chance to pick them up and get started.
- Collect QA team "wish-lists" and generate project pages on QMO that the community can contribute to. (Goal: 2 projects each for test execution, tools/automation, and community)
- Help QA team formalize their ideas into project plans/pages with descriptions, tasks for the taking, and goals for each project.
- Recruit community members to sign up for projects and work with QA team "mentor" (Goal: 1 volunteer working on any project from the list)
