open source product management

with npm

@othiym23 / Forrest L Norvell npm, Inc.

npm

npm is many things• project

• company

• team

• philosophy & ethos

• product family

npm is many softwares

• registry

• website

• CLI

the CLI team

me

npm CLI team duties• meet npm, Inc.’s business objectives

• fix bugs

• support current npm users

• keep npm moving forward

make npm the most useful tool it can be for the most

people

“useful”

pragmatism > rigor

simplicity > completeness

problems > solutions

($ > !$)

• 356 support tickets

• 222 bugs

• 236 feature requests

traditional product management

• own the roadmap

• sell the strategic vision

• mediate between business owners, developers, & other stakeholders

say no a lot, but be stubborn about

what you say yes to

open-source product management

• balance competing demands

• consensus-seeking

• but sometimes you have to say no

example: making npm more

extensible

1. lifecycle

2. ADD M0AR HO0KZ

3. yay!

nope

(2. add more commands, like

git)

npm is not an infinitely extensible

miracle pegacorn

turn the problem inside out

npm as a set of APIs plugged into

a CLI

LET A THOUSAND PACKAGE MANAGERS

BLOOM

CAVEATS

• looked at a lot of different requests

• came up with a global solution for many local problems

• try to keep each goal supporting the others

npm’s roadmap• scoped packages

• multi-stage install / dependency tree realization

• npm as API

• better Windows support

• client-side development support

you

the npm release process

• new release every Thursday

• new releases published to npm@next for about a week of burn-in

• `npm@latest` for safe production release, `npm@next` if you want to help test the next release

supporting npm• the CLI team doesn’t have much time for support

• `npm report` will make crowdsourcing that easier, but it’s a ways out

• answering questions with the `support` label is ❤️ by me

using the npm issue tracker: labels

1.bug, support, feature request

2. next-patch, next-minor, next-major

3. documentation, patch-welcome, and novice

using the npm issue tracker: best practices• don’t add your bug to a closed issue

• …but please do add specific details that helped you

• no such thing as too much information, but gists are useful

• use cases are useful, +1s are terrible

PATCHES WELCOME• pull requests with tests are landed as quickly as practicable

• no patch is too small

• …but some patches are too big

developing npm• `npm test` while developing

• `npm run test-all` before submitting PR

• update the docs, plz

• people who add tests are my favorite people

thanks for listening / thanks for helping / thanks for being you

nice people matter