Steve Burge - It's Time for Joomla to Become Professional

[UPDATE] I was nervous before posting this but want to thank everyone for the big response. I’ve heard from a lot of people today and the great thing is many of them agree: we need to raise our game. The future can be bright. There are a lot of opportunities out there for Joomla. We just sometimes need to be reminded to go and grab them.

Sorry, Disqus is being a real pain and comments are sometimes missing on this thread after a server move.

Instead of commenting, go and do something positive. You’ll feel much better, I promise. Help move us forward. Here’s one place to start.

[/UPDATE]

It’s time for the Joomla community to professionalize.

I mean that in two senses:

1) Hire professional support staff

In some regards, Joomla has actually done a remarkable job in just maintaining it’s position over the last few years.

Automattic has raised $30 million to support the growth of WordPress and Acquia has raised over $40 million in Drupal. Both of those projects have benefited hugely from those investments.

Joomla doesn’t have an equivilent corporate parent and was close to running out of money three years ago. It now has only $250,000 in the bank. The Drupal Association (correct me if I’m wrong) now has annual budget over $2 million.

Yet, on a shoestring, Joomla still runs about as much of the web as it did three years ago.

In general, open source projects have been careful not to hire professional coders. Much of the work on WordPress and Drupal is done by Matt and Dries’ employees, but they’re not hired by the projects directly. Joomla’s experience of paid development didn’t work out.

Instead, Joomla needs to follow the path of the Drupal Association (DA) and professionalize important parts of Open Source Matters (OSM).

The DA has slowly grown over the years until it now has eleven staff members. That’s the same size as OSM now.

In my experience, the DA is not perfect but almost everything we’ve done in Drupal has been easier and more professional if the DA has been involved.

When I joined the board of OSM there was some controversy about the decision to hire a professional PR company for Joomla. It’s been one of the best decisions they ever made. Plenty of criseses have been averted because they were on hand.

With some money in the bank, large events such as the Joomla World Conference coming up and plenty of opportunities, it is time for OSM to start hiring professional staff.

The first hire should be a head of sponsorship. This is a well trodden-path for open source projects. The first staff member raises the money to hire more.

2) End the curse of volunteerism

People talking about open source often confuse “free” as in freedom with “free” as in no cost.

There’s a similar confusion often made about the word “volunteer”.

A lot of people seem to think that volunteers should be praised for simply stepping forward, regardless of their performance. I’ll call that idea “volunteerism” and it’s nonsense.

Volunteers needs professionalism.

People suffering from volunteerism are not bad people. The vast majority of people suffering from volunteerism are good, well-meaning people who are:

just in the wrong position
have been in the position too long, or
are sometimes just not very competent

Professionalism means putting in your very best effort for as long as you can, and then handing over to someone else.

Volunteerism is easy. You can coast for years on volunteerism. I’ve met a number of people in open source who have been in leadership positions for over two years. A few of those people actually run the project and can’t quit. A few are extraordinary people. The vast majority are suffering from volunteerism.

Volunteerism manifests itself in quotes like this:

“I can’t quit. I’ve been doing this for four years, but can’t find anyone to replace me.”
“That person is failing in their position but they are a volunteer and they are trying hard …”

Volunteerism is hanging on no matter how lame your efforts and how many obstacles you’re putting in the way of others.

Professionalism is going as hard as you can and letting someone else take over as soon as you need a break.

Its not even a question of whether people actually are professionals. Some of the very best volunteers I’ve met are students and retired people. It’s just a question of doing your job right and politely refusing to accept volunteerism in others.

Some Closing Thoughts

The solutions to these two problems are actually interconnected.

By professionalizing Joomla’s support staff, we make it easier for companies and professionally run organizations to enter the ecosystem.

By setting professional standards at the top of community, it encourages everyone else to raise their game. “A” quality people want to work with “A” quality people.

Let me close by saying that are plenty of people in Joomla who embrace professionalism. It just needs to become the ethos of the whole ecosystem. These two recommendations will help.

http://brian.teeman.net Brian Teeman
You make many good points especially about people being in leadership roles staying for too long but I dont agree that employing people to perform those same roles would resolve anything. All that would end up would either be those same people now being employed (no change) or new people being employed (annoyed and angry volunteers).
Paying people to perform a task doesn’t necessarily result in that task being performed better or more professionally. As anyone who has employed a large number of people will tell you paying people might make it easier to “sack” them if they don’t perform but you still need great leaders and managers with the “balls” to carry it out. If we had those people they could resolve the “been there too long” volunteer issue anyway.
Either everything is run by a company with 100% full time employees or its all volunteer run. imho
When you try to create a mix it rarely works. Sure the grass can look greener but it rarely is. In the last few months I too have had to have dealings with DA and I can tell you that my experience was no less frustrating, political or confusing than with my dealings with OSM.
Finally I think you only have to look at the recent events with umbraco to see that mixing corporate and volunteer community doesn’t come without its own problems
- http://steveburge.com/ steve
  Thanks Brian. I figured you’d come down on that side. Yes, the mixing of corporate and volunteer communities is hard. You find quite a few people making the opposite argument in Drupal now … things are too corporate.
  It takes a lot of hard work and communication to manage a corporate / volunteer balance, but I think it’s worth taking up the challenge.
  - Kerry Dye
    It’s interesting how this ties in with the decisions made recently with Umbraco, where hiring didn’t work out for them.
    - http://steveburge.com/ steve
      Thanks, Kerry. Yes, I think people interested in this should read a lot more about Umbraco. It seems that example might have a lot of lessons, not just in regards to their corporate / volunteer balance but also in how they failed with the release of a huge new version.
- http://twitter.com/TerraceMedia Sully Sullivan
  We do have a Volunteer Code of Conduct that asks people to “step down considerately” and we are nevertheless reluctant to help people to do that. Some of our problems stem from not reminding people of that code.
  There are empirical measures we can use to track performance and there are systems we can have in place as management tools, but Joomla! hasn’t really used either. When we have problems, (e.g. a site atrophying for a year), we ought to be able to manage our volunteers in such a way that says first, “How can we help you do better?” second, “You need to do better.” and lastly “We have someone we think can do better.” What can we do to put that kind of management structure in place? How can we create a demanding culture of excellence?
  I’m all for being patient with volunteers, but there has to come a point where a lack of achievement is taken seriously.
  - http://brian.teeman.net Brian Teeman
    Sully that comes down to having management with balls. You need the same balls to move a volunteer aside as you do to sack an employee.
    - http://twitter.com/TerraceMedia Sully Sullivan
      True, but it also means having a basis for decision that’s not purely subjective, and I’m not sure we have any way of saying “your volunteer performance isn’t at the level of effort we require” which can be said to be fair to the volunteers. Management, in addition to testicular fortitude, needs some grounding for those kind of decisions.
  - http://www.gnomeontherun.com/ Jeremy Wilken
    I think it actually comes down to clear roles, responsibilities, and expectations. If those are not set, we don’t have the ability to critique or enforce.
    - http://brian.teeman.net Brian Teeman
      agreed
    - http://twitter.com/TerraceMedia Sully Sullivan
      Also agreed. And with limited and debatable exception, I really don’t see where that’s ever been done. Instead, I think we tend to wait for a crisis to develop and worsen and then we have discussions about just how bad the crisis is and what we can do to work around it.
    - http://www.facebook.com/mark.w.bender Mark W. Bender
      Or improve ourselves (us/Project)
http://twitter.com/christinegraf Christine Graf
I agree with you, the organization of the Joomla project need to become more professional. For me, voluntary work does not exclude professionalism, but defining professional working standards and staff requirements are really necessary. It seems to me that almost the same few people are contributing (voluntary) to the project, they are in danger to burn out.
Therefore, it is also absolutely necessary to communicate better (in different languages), be more transparent and distribute the responsibilities to a wider community. There are more people out there which might be willing to work for the project, but inefficient structures and power struggles hinders them.
When working on the proposal for a new leadership, we were thinking in that direction.
- http://steveburge.com/ steve
  Thanks Christine. Yes, I was very impressed with the plans that your team put forward.
http://twitter.com/hagengraf Hagen Graf
I agree totally with you Steve!
http://www.michelazzo.com.br/ Paulino Michelazzo
Dear Steve,
I’m sorry to hear you so naive. OSM following the DA path? How? Killing how many there? End the curse of volunteerism? I’m thinking you’re wrong and looking too close.
First of all, the Joomla! have DNA’s problems. Old code, old ideas, old people (not with age, but ideas) driving the project. Many of these problems came from the Mambo era and nobody can finish it. Do you like an example? After almost seven years, someone have the idea to change the admin uid from 62 to 42 and now for something. Seven years to make a change like this? Fast no?
So, what’s happen? What’s happen with a project where I need to receive a permission to use the logo to make FREE marketing to the project (and I don’t receive the permission because someone lost)? What’s happen with people trying to create a “proprietary environment” with a free software? Also, where are the people to help communities in different places of the world? I’m not talking about Fiji or Nepal, I’m talking about places like Chile and Brazil (please, don’t ask abouot the last archivements on these places).
The Joomla! ecosystem is very different from Drupal and WordPress. Try to find 10 payed modules for Drupal. You can’t. Try to find 10 really cool extensions to WordPress. You can’t. But on the other hand this is normal for Joomla! Is this bad? No, is nice… for who make the payed extensions. Volunteerism is normal on the others communities and nobody need to change it to “make money”.
People that drive the Joomla! community, with rare exceptions, leave the community alone. We feel it in our skin and every time that we hear about the “gods from Joomla!”, is a joke. So, how we can change for a new model with the same people and same ideas? How we can change this situation where we need to live with plans changing every week, every month, every semester, without a north? How can I give to my client a good rest if I don’t have it because the “gods” change the game’s rules? Is hard.
The problem is not professionalism. The problem is the core, the brain. Like my country where we have a DNA problem where we need to make a complete transfusion, I think the Joomla! need the same.
Regards,
- http://steveburge.com/ steve
  Hi Paulino
  I’m not sure I entirely follow your arguments there. One on the one hand “we need to live with plans changing every week, every month, every semester” but on the other “Seven years to make a change like this?”
  Code? That’s a different topic. It’s hard to underestimate the inertia in a large project with millions of installs. Even small changes can cause repercussions for 100,000s of people. WordPress and Joomla both have a good amount of legacy code. The alternative is the Drupal path, almost starting from scratch with each release.
  Trademark? Sure, that area needs more professionalism. We agree
  - http://brian.teeman.net Brian Teeman
    Let’s not confuse “professionalism” with “payment”
    You can be “professional” without being “paid”
    - http://steveburge.com/ steve
      Exactly. There’s two two parts to the argument above … we do need “paid” people but also “professional” people.
      - http://www.facebook.com/mark.w.bender Mark W. Bender
        “Paid” or “Volunteer”, I sure would hope that everyone would act in a “professional” manner when working on, or dealing with any project.
http://angrylittletree.com/ Jeff Eaton
A very interesting article, Steve — thanks for writing it up. I do want to point out a couple of minor points, though.
First, “much of the work on WordPress and Drupal is done by Matt and Dries’ employees” isn’t quite accurate. While Acquia employees do a ton of work on Drupal and their personal and employer-funded contributions are a huge boon, recent analysis of commit logs for Drupal 6, 7, and 8 reveals that the vast majority of patches are created and maintained by developers unaffiliated with ANY major Drupal shop. While large Drupal companies contribute a lot, the long tail of volunteer developers or devs working at small “under the radar” shops is absolutely essential.
In the Drupal community we’ve found that employer and client sponsored work on core is the best fit for large problems that require dedicated focus for weeks, months, or even years at a time. Things like ‘building a new configuration management system’ or ‘refactoring the database API’ benefit from devs who can consistently dedicate large chunks of time over the long haul as an initiative is born, coalesces into a concrete plan, gets implemented, and is tried by the fire of community developer review.
Your comments about the dangers of volunteer-driven organizations are really important, though. In some ways it can be framed as an issue of professionalism, but it can also be viewed as a matter of community compassion and care for its members. In a previous job, I worked for a large church with a huge volunteer staff. They had to pay a LOT of attention to the health and well-being of their volunteers, and actively prioritize their volunteers’ needs above the short-term needs of one project or another. While it made certain big projects tough, over the long haul it helped build and sustain a VERY strong stream of dedicated volunteers.
Blended organizations — ones that mix full-time professionals, large pools of passionate volunteers, and “volunteer support” staff whose job is to keep the volunteers healthy and balanced — seem to be the most successful long-term models.
- http://steveburge.com/ steve
  Thanks Jeff. Yes, that professional / volunteer mix that is one I’d like to see Joomla move towards.
  Drupal is a particularly interesting example because of the sheer ambitious size of some of the projects involved for Drupal 8. How the professionals and volunteers work together to get stuff done over years is fascinating.
  Some people have thrown out Umbraco as a warning about the hazards of such a mix, but there’s a lot of hazards involved with standing still and not evolving.
http://twitter.com/navtomorrow Rod Martin
I’m going to jump in here – not because I work with Steve – but because I think this idea has great merit. Allow me to illustrate:
When I was a Pastor in London, Ontario, we ran a summer day camp for two weeks – 9:00 am – 2:00 pm. Every day, almost 400 kids showed up for fun, Bible lessons, activities etc. The number of paid staff: 3. The number of volunteers: 100. As you can imagine – it took months of planning, prep and advertising. We had volunteers head up almost every functional area, with the paid staff running interference and getting things done with them that they didn’t necessarily have time to do. People actually planned their family vacations around Day Camp so they could participate.
My point is…
Paid staff can bring out the best in volunteers when they partner together around a common cause.
Paid staff can also bring a level of professionalism to the volunteer’s service via mentoring, direction and encouragement.
Finally – paid staff can fire volunteers that fall prey to what Steve calls “volunteerism”.
I realize this isn’t a perfect analogy (show me one that is… as noted in the other comments – WP and DA have their own issues)… but this is totally doable – **with the right people on the bus… in the right seats** as Collins would say…
my 2 cents
- http://brian.teeman.net Brian Teeman
  Rod
  I will counter that I too used to run summer camps for two weeks with similar numbers (but they were residential) that were 100% volunteer run.
  **with the right people on the bus… in the right seats** anything is doable – voluntary or employed
  - Ken Crowder
    For those unaware. Brian was quoting Jim Collins from his book, Good to Great. It’s a great quote from a great book. Here is the whole quote:
    “We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats—and then they figured out where to drive it. The old adage “People are your most important asset” turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are.”
    ~ Jim Collins, author of Good to Great
http://www.gnomeontherun.com/ Jeremy Wilken
Steve, I think this is a crucial discussion. I think it actually hinges upon something more basic that these two elements then are based upon: expectations and responsibilities.
You can hire people, but to do what? What expectations exist? What are their responsibilities? Paid or volunteer, this is critical to being professional.
http://twitter.com/greggles Greg Knaddison
It’s a bit ironic saying that the process to get added to planet lacks professionalism. I would have added you to planet faster if your articles were better :/ The original version of http://www.ostraining.com/blog/drupal/password-recovery-for-drupal-7/ was published to Drupal planet but didn’t work (then I qa’d it for you, for free, as a volunteer, and you updated it but didn’t thank me. OK…).
The Trainers page is intended to be a showcase for trainers who have made significant contributions to the community. It’s important not to confuse “lack of action” with “lack of professionalism.” In this particular case I’d say the impediment to progress was that you needed to engage more with the community as a contributor instead of being the “biggest trainer” without a reputation of contributing.
- http://steveburge.com/ steve
  Thanks Greg. Apologies about that blog post and not following up. It’s the first Drupal one we’ve to re-write and unfortunately it was the first one that went out on the Planet. People qa’d the other posts on the feed for a couple of years without problems.
  Possibly true on the contributions angle too. I started the local Drupal user group here in Atlanta, but volunteered in Joomla instead for several years.
  Those two examples seem to be diverting people from the points I was trying to make, so I’ve removed them.
AmyStephen
Pay whom to do what? I think it’s really easy to jump on that paid employee thing and believe that’s going to solve the problem, but the problems I hear you identifying are not activities employees in OSM will tackle. Will these employees manage JED? Will they fix bugs? Will they test releases? Not likely, and that is the work that the community needs done “more professionally.” On that point, I agree.
You must admit, it’s odd to see you identify the problem of taking two years to be listed as a Drupal educational provider and then also cite the DA as an example of the path to take since they have 11 employees. Did the DA help you get listed? Do they manage those listings? The work that communities want and need to be done is not what these individuals are hired to do. In the end, you have paid employees and the same service levels. You demonstrated just that with your example.
I’m not saying if it’s good or bad to have employees in OSM. But your post looks more like a response to frustrations, maybe with the last botched release, and I believe you are grabbing at an easy answer without connecting the dots of what these individuals would be hired to do and then confirming that those roles are indeed what the community needs to thrive.
- http://steveburge.com/ steve
  Hi Amy
  No, no code. No JED, not bugs, no release testing.
  I probably shouldn’t have included the example about the training page.
  No, not a short-term thing. I’ve been telling OSM they should go professional for a couple of years now.
  - AmyStephen
    Ok, so we need the volunteers who do the work communities need to be more professional – and – we need to hire people for OSM? To do what, please?
    - http://steveburge.com/ steve
      Similar to the DA example: https://association.drupal.org/about/staff
      Start with sponsorships, grow into events, grow into areas that can support our volunteers.
      - AmyStephen
        You are a great guy who has contributed a lot to many open source projects. I know you care. I don’t know that it would help or hurt Joomla to hire staff to do those things. I am more of the belief that you can’t change the culture of an organization. The one thing I do know is that it does take a great deal of time and energy to really contribute to a project and that comes at a personal cost. I also know there are no easy answers. After that, I’m not sure anymore.
      - http://steveburge.com/ steve
        Thanks indeed, Amy. If I was to raise an objection to my ideas above, it would be exactly that. The all-volunteer nature of Joomla has been established for years and a change would be wrenching. As me and you have discussed before, it’s amazing how stubborn our cultures can been, even after just a few years.
      - joeygartin
        IMHO Joomla does need some change moving forward or it may be irrelevant in coming years. It has benefited in the past from hitting a sweet spot for web developers and non-programmers. Non-programmers (designers & business people = not coding php directly) have had a platform they can use and extend with an AWESOME marketplace for both free and commercial extensions. PHP programmers have had a platform with an open API and great marketplace (with a focused target market) to develop on and sell their goods. That combination of people and environments has propelled Joomla to the top of deployed websites. That was then (pre-2012) and this is now. Moving forward Joomla needs to find some strategy that will work post-2012. There is a lot of contention growing between the core OSM Joomla management and the general Joomla public. You can see and read it all over the web in the last 12+ months. Alternatives are starting to rise up within the Joomla crowd (Nooku to name one), as well as people are moving to Drupal at a pretty fast rate. If Drupal had a marketplace for developers to build a business model like Joomla does (JED), then I think the migration would all but over by now.
        I personally enjoy Joomla greatly (the codebase is a little antiquated by todays standards), but I have found myself using other solutions for the last few projects. The sweetspot (moving forward) may not be enough to save Joomla from it’s own internal issues.
      - http://steveburge.com/ steve
        Hi Joey
        I think the very grown-up reaction to Nooku’s departure was a sign of how far Joomla has come over the last couple of years. Almost everyone I saw just shrugged their shoulders and said “good luck to them”.
        The situtation between the OSM / Joomla management and the general Joomla public is
        inifintiely better than it was a few years ago.
        The big difference now is that the competition is stiffer. Drupal, for example, has professionalized greatly in the last few years.
        Drupal going to a marketplace? Other people mentioned Joomla’s culture not accepting paid staff. I’d say that Drupal’s culture of no paid extensions is equally strong and will be equally hard to change.
Hils
“Volunteerism is hanging on no matter how lame your efforts and how many obstacles you’re putting in the way of others.”
This is, in my view, firmly the resonsibility of Leadership. A good ‘professional’ leader would identify this problem and move the particular volunteer to a place that was more suitable for them and also, probably, where they would be more comfortable. This is not happening. In an Open Source Community, like life, there is a place for everyone. But it takes skill & experience to identify a volunteer’s strengths and weaknesses early enough to avoid the situations we can see now.
“That person is failing in their position but they are a volunteer and they are trying hard …” – we have all heard that one if we suggest changes!
A solution could be to either hire, or identify a volunteer, as a Community Manager. A ‘professional’ Community Manager, with a successful track record of managing and, most importantly, empowering a large Open Source Community. Such a person would be able to work with both paid & volunteer people seemlessly.
In my view, and having looked at the lastest OSM Board Meeting Minutes, April 2012, and seen the amount of money Joomla holds, hiring/appointing a Community Manager is more critical than hiring a Head of Sponsorship. If our Community isn’t happy & thriving, they leave… as history has shown. A good, sensitive Community Manager would reverse that trend by actively caring for & nurturing the Community and encouraging the positive and very rewarding side of volunteering.
- AmyStephen
  Excellent, Hils. IMO, *you* would be an ideal person to do just that. I could definitely get behind Joomla having a compassionate, involved community manager who *believes* there is a place for everyone (and sometimes locating that spot takes a bit of time and testing to find). Appreciate the encouragement you provide the community now, even from “outside the castle.”
  - Hils
    Thanks Amy but even I can identify more suitable candidates for such a position! But at the moment perhaps it is the principle not the person? …and I believe that the position of Community Manager is equally as important as a Project Manager for the Joomla Community to become whole.
  - http://www.facebook.com/mark.w.bender Mark W. Bender
    Amy, I fully agree with your insights about the Joomla! Project “needing” a Community Manager (team) who can help bring out the “best” in our great community!
- http://steveburge.com/ steve
  Thanks Hils. Yes, those are the kinds of roles that would be worth investigating.
  Purely from a practical point of the view, the sponsorship position is a good place to start, but having someone in roles like this would, I believe, strengthen Joomla.
Sandy Ordonez
This is an article written by Benjamin Mako Hill, an open source superstar on “Problems and Strategies in Financing Voluntary Free Software Projects.” Highly recommended. He feels there should be no paid employees but gives benefits and weaknesses of various scenarios.
http://mako.cc/writing/funding_volunteers/funding_volunteers.html
I think the biggest problem is that everyone “assumes” they know what the majority of the community needs, which would be solved if we had a transparent election process. However, those take time to build. Additionally, while it is true there are issues, I think it is also important to take a step back and say “WOW” the community has done a good job, and celebrate accomplishments, instead of always beating each other up.
There are no “role” models, Joomla (and others like it) are pioneering this type of organization model. I think the community is trying to address those structural issues, however, it is definitely a longer process than say a corporate organization. IMHO, building good vibes and helping diverse people feel empowered might be a good focus or start.
- Hils
  Thank you for that link Sandy – I will take time to read it
  A couple of points:
  ” I think it is also important to take a step back and say “WOW” the
  community has done a good job, and celebrate accomplishments, instead of
  always beating each other up”
  Frank, open discussion is not beating each other up. Mostly it is a factual analysis of what is currently happening and identifying a productive way forward. It is professional to discuss these matters in an unemotional, cool way.
  “the community is trying to address those structural issues”
  At the moment, the Community is ‘blind’ to any structural issue discussions. This is being dealt with by the current Leadership.
  - Sandra Ordonez
    Hills I totally believe in open discussions and being straightforward – I am a New Yorker. lolol Trust me – I’m all for people saying exactly on their mind. IMHO, I just feel that in a volunteer org, keeping morale up and focusing on positivity is essential, while at the same time focusing on issues in a more constructive way. (not to mention, its really hard to find new blood in htat type of environemnt). I’ve been taken back at how much frustration exists, certain situations where people forget that there are humans at the other end of the line and, and little celebration of why this community is so beautiful and unique. I don’t think the community is blind, b/c i think that many conversations I’ve encountered so far revolve around those. I mean I saw a lot of that happening pre and post JAB. However, I’ve barely been here one year, so I could just not fully understand whats going on….but thats what i see from my corner of the world.