The PatternFly audit results are in
As Flyers, we never get too comfortable in our work. While we make sure to celebrate wins, we also pour a lot of energy into continuous growth and development, especially in areas where we have potential to improve. That’s why we’re eager to share the results of a recent PatternFly audit by the Open Source Program Office (OSPO) at Red Hat.
The OSPO audits various Red Hat communities every year, making sure they’re all running smoothly and contributing positively to the open source community. This audit looks at multiple areas of PatternFly so that our team can continue leaning into what’s working and addressing what can be better.
Without further ado, let’s take a look at where we stand today.
Results at a glance
There’s a lot to see on PatternFly. While the audit may not be able to analyze every detail closely, it examines some key areas. Here is a quick overview of the results:
- Resources: To date, PatternFly is doing well at delivering the right resources, in the right context, at the right time.
- Releases: We have an efficient release management system so that Flyers have easy access to release updates.
- Documentation: Our documentation is in great shape. But we’re still leaning into various content improvements throughout the year.
- Community involvement: Contribution and issue metrics have significantly improved. That’s not stopping us from pushing ourselves even further though. We’re continuing to focus on encouraging an open, inclusive community where everyone feels welcome to contribute.
- Outreach: While we have the right content here, we need to work on delivering it to Flyers in a more intuitive and seamless way.
- License: We’re compliant with all open source licensing requirements. Woohoo!
Now let’s take a closer look at the results for each area.
Resources
Do we have the information someone needs to learn more about PatternFly? Use PatternFly? Contribute to PatternFly?
Yes, we do! The OSPO sums it up nicely:
“To date, PatternFly has done well making all of the high-level onboarding aspects very clear and well-detailed. In fact, in many cases, it has gone above and beyond bare minimum needs…”
This area is really important to us. Flyers — especially newcomers — rely on accurate, detailed, and helpful resources so that they’re able to create the very best product experiences for their users.
Releases
PatternFly has a lot of repos, and we do the best we can to make our releases easy to find and access. So we were thrilled that the audit gave us a thumbs up in this area.
The OSPO praised our release management system, citing its quality and efficient automation:
“PatternFly’s release plan is very well executed. Releases are easy to find, even with all of the different repositories that can be found in the project.”
Documentation
This area looks at how well our documentation not only helps users, but also enables our contributors.
PatternFly relies on community engagement and contribution to truly thrive. So when we read this part in the audit, we were all pretty excited:
“PatternFly excels at documentation, in many ways going above and beyond the bare minimum requirements.”
Excels?! Wow. We’ve been pouring a lot of energy into improving in this area, and it has clearly paid off.
We’re not planning on settling anytime soon. Our GitHub README file documentation improvements were just the beginning. Plenty of Flyers have been updating documentation and creating new resources. We have a lot more in store as we conquer content in 2020.
Community involvement
The OSPO describes PatternFly as “a growing and vibrant community.” While we can prove this with qualitative data like community engagement and project development, it’s also nice to have some metrics handy from the audit. These numbers compare where we were 12 months ago to where we are today.
Contributors
The number of contributors and the number of contributions have increased considerably. Our number of PR contributors has gone from 223 to 374, which is a 40.4% increase. And our number of contributions has gone from 1,422 to 1,797, which is a 26.4% increase.
Issues
The number of contributor issues has gone from 117 to 179, which is a 53% increase. As a community, we’re getting more and more efficient at handling these issues. The average time to close an issue decreased by 30.8%. Also, we’re getting eyes on issues faster. The average time to give an issue first attention decreased by 39.1%.
These numbers may be fun to look at, but they’re telling a larger story: PatternFly is built on a foundation of enthusiastic community members who are eager to contribute and eager to action issues for a better PatternFly. We’re continuing to focus heavily on fostering transparency and collaboration so that our community never loses this energy.
Outreach
Community connection is what PatternFly is all about, so outreach is critical. While we have some great outreach efforts, we need to do a better job of sharing those efforts with Flyers.
The OSPO pointed out two key areas where we can improve:
- Blog: PatternFly moved from a WordPress blog to a Medium blog a few months ago. To inform the community of this change, we sent out an email, wrote an announcement article, and replaced the blog link with the Medium link on the site. However, the WordPress blog, while not active, is still live. It’s also still surfaced by Google. Understandably, this can cause confusion. So the OSPO recommends we clarify where the blog lives and make it more prominent on the site.
- YouTube: PatternFly’s YouTube channel is filled with fun video recordings of our monthly PatternFly Community meetings. But all that great content is a bit hidden from the community — there isn’t an easy way to access the meeting and recording information right from the PatternFly site. To improve this, we’re considering posting an event schedule for Flyers. This way, everyone can see upcoming meetings and access the recordings.
License
Nothing too exciting here, but it’s good to know that the OSPO confirmed that PatternFly is compliant with all open source licensing requirements.
Where do we go from here?
All in all, the OSPO gave PatternFly a glowing review:
“PatternFly continues to be a strong example of how a community should be run.”
Way to go, Flyers! So with that great news, what do we do now?
First of all, we’ll be addressing the outreach feedback and making sure our content is reaching the community seamlessly.
But we’re not stopping there.
A Flyer’s work is never done. We’ll continue reaching new heights with accessibility, visual design, the designer and developer experience, and website improvements. Check out our 2020 roadmap for all the details. Let’s continue flying high together.
