Roadmap
Anunna Roadmap: How We Decide What to Work On
The Anunna HPC team has a lot of ideas, wishes, requests and opportunities to work on. At the same time, our capacity is limited. Besides improving and changing Anunna, we also need to keep the day-to-day HPC service running.
This means we need to make deliberate choices about what we work on, when we work on it, and what we do not work on.
Our roadmap is the way we make these choices together with our users and key users.
Why do we work with a roadmap?
There are several reasons why having a clear roadmap is important:
- There is a lot of work to do. If everything is important, nothing is important. We need to make choices and focus our effort where it creates the most value.
- Our capacity is limited. The HPC team is responsible not only for improvements and changes, but also for the day-to-day operation and support of Anunna.
- We are still learning. The Anunna team is continuously learning what works best for our users and for the team.
- Wishes and demands come in different stages of maturity. Some ideas are well understood and ready to act on, while others are still "green" and need more exploration. The roadmap process helps us distinguish between them.
- Every decision to do something is also a decision not to do something else. By making priorities explicit, we make these trade-offs visible.
- Our users should help decide what matters most. The HPC team has technical expertise, but our clients and users are best positioned to tell us where improvements will have the greatest value for their work.
The roadmap is therefore not simply a list of things the HPC team wants to do. It is a shared prioritisation process between the HPC team and the people who use Anunna.
How does the roadmap process work?
We work with a six-month roadmap cycle. Twice a year, representatives of our users come together with the HPC team to discuss and prioritize the work for the coming half year.
The process starts well before the roadmap session itself.
1. Build the longlist
We start with a longlist of User Stories.
A User Story describes a need or desired outcome from a user's perspective:
As a [type of user],
I want [something],
so that [benefit or outcome].
For example:
As a researcher, I want to be able to monitor my jobs more easily, so that I can quickly identify jobs that are not progressing as expected.
User Stories can cover both small improvements and larger topics. They can be written from any relevant perspective: researcher, data manager, software developer, HPC support, system administrator or another stakeholder.
The important thing is that the story clearly describes who needs something, what they need, and why it matters.
2. Prepare and prioritise the User Stories
Before a User Story is considered for the roadmap, we try to make sure that we understand it sufficiently well.
When preparing a story, we keep several questions in mind:
- What is the expected value? What business, research or user value would this deliver?
- What risk does it reduce or what opportunity does it enable?
- Why now? Is there a reason this needs to happen soon rather than later?
- Are there dependencies? Does this work depend on another change being completed first, or does other work depend on it?
This does not mean that every User Story needs a detailed business case. The purpose is to make the reasoning behind prioritization visible and understandable.
At this stage, the longlist can still be quite large.
3. Vote: what matters most?
During the bi-annual roadmap session, every representative receives the complete longlist of User Stories.
Each representative reads through the stories and selects four User Stories that are most relevant from their perspective.
The voting is deliberately done from the perspective of the people represented in the session. Different users may value different things, and that is useful information.
The goal is not to find a mathematically perfect ranking. The goal is to identify the topics that have the strongest relevance across our user community.
Based on the voting, we reduce the longlist to a shortlist of approximately 10–12 User Stories.
4. High-level estimation
The shortlist is then further refined by the HPC team. This is also done during the bi-annual roadmap session.
For each User Story, the team makes a high-level estimate of the effort and complexity involved. This is not intended to be a detailed project plan or a commitment to a precise number of hours.
The purpose is to understand the relationship between:
value × urgency × risk/opportunity × effort × dependencies
The HPC team does the technical estimation, while the client representatives observe the process and are encouraged to ask questions and provide feedback.
This is an important part of the process: the HPC team brings the technical perspective, while the users bring the perspective of value and impact.
What comes out of the roadmap session?
At the end of the roadmap session, we have a clear and predictable set of User Stories for the coming six months.
These stories form the roadmap that the Anunna team will focus on.
The intention is to work through the selected User Stories one by one, rather than constantly switching between many competing priorities. This allows the team to focus its capacity and increases the likelihood that we actually finish the things we start.
The roadmap is therefore also a way of saying:
"These are the things we believe will deliver the most value right now, and these are the things we will focus on."
It does not mean that nothing else can happen during the six months. Operational incidents, security issues, urgent technical problems and genuinely time-critical opportunities may require us to change course.
However, such changes should be visible and discussed rather than happening simply because the latest request happened to arrive first.
How can users influence the roadmap?
The most direct way to influence the roadmap is through the key-user group.
Key users help us understand what is important to the people using Anunna and bring different perspectives into the roadmap process. They participate in the bi-annual roadmap sessions and help determine which User Stories deserve attention.
You do not need to be an HPC expert to contribute. In fact, a key part of the role is bringing the user perspective into the conversation.
If you have an idea or a problem that you believe should be addressed, it can become a User Story and enter the longlist. Being on the longlist does not automatically mean that it will be implemented; it means that the idea is visible and can be considered as part of the prioritization process.
Want to join the key-user group?
Would you like to help shape the future of Anunna and have a voice in deciding what the HPC team should focus on?
Please reach out to Alexander van Ittersum and let him know that you would like to be part of the Anunna key-user group.
Your perspective helps us make better choices about where our limited capacity can create the most value for the Anunna community.