Drupal core ideas

Deprecated process

A place to propose ideas for Drupal core and get them through validation and planning phases. All issues marked as “Approved plan” and “Active initiative” together provide a good high level overview of what's being worked on to improve the Drupal core product.

See past discussion at #2785735: [policy, no patch] Agile process for bigger changes in core (Part A: Ideation).

The goal of the Drupal Ideas project is to make Drupal product management decisions more explicit and transparent. What we do to achieve this:

• Provide a dedicated place to propose core product changes
• Have a more structured format for discussing and weighing the relative impact of these proposals
• Create an implementation plan for large changes before writing most of the code to prevent rework, frustration and burnout :)

Everybody is invited to propose ideas and discuss them.

How it works

1. Develop an idea that you feel is a good candidate for Drupal core
2. Check the existing ideas to ensure it does not already fit in one of those
3. Post a summary of the idea to the core ideas queue using the template below, or this initiative template
4. Communicate the issue widely: Blog about it, use twitter, post in Drupal chat channels
5. Encourage community discussion of pros and cons (even just getting +1s is valuable)
6. When consensus is built, a community member other than the initial proposer should mark the issue RTBC
7. The product management team (above) will review the RTBC issues for acceptance

Next steps

1. Once the idea has been accepted in concept, an implementation proposal should be written (preferably as a new issue)
2. Post a new plan issue in the ideas queue with specific implementation details
3. Communicate this back on the original idea issue so those participants can see it, and again communicate it widely for community discussion.
4. Try to contact the appropriate core framework/subsystem maintainers to review the idea as well
5. Again, it should be RTBC'd by someone other than the proposer
6. Again, the product management team(above) will review the RTBC issues for acceptance

Template for proposing an idea

To make both proposing and reviewing an idea quick and easy, use this template to answer four basic questions:

What is the problem to solve?

(Missing functionality X, prevent Y from happening, make Z easier to do)

Who is this for?

(Evaluators, site visitors, content authors, site managers, (advanced) site builders, developers, core developers, site owners, other?)

Result: what will be the outcome?

(Describe the result: how will this improve things for the stated audience(s)?)

How can we know the desired result is achieved?

(Usability test, a metric to track, feedback)

Review and decide

• Link to roadmap and initiatives, outlining the big strategic priorities
• Deciding = prioritising. There's nothing to stop you from working on your idea, it may just not be something the core committers will focus on

Big ideas & Initiatives

• For big changes: develop a "plan" issue that breaks down the tasks that need to be completed to get it done. This will first be a "proposed" plan. Once complete enough (how?) it becomes an approved plan.
• Very large, strategically important changes can be elevated to "strategic initiative". This mostly means that it likely needs more than 1 plan issue to define all the things that need to be done. Work related to strategic initiatives gets core committer priority

Maintainers

The ideas project is maintained by the Drupal core product managers.