Proposal to drive Diagnostics WG initiatives through user journeys

Start with the linked Node.js WG Diagnostics User Journeys Google document and the proposal's recommended next steps. Review diagnostics issue #254 and summit issue #152 for related context; completion would require agreement on supported journeys and tooling, followed by moving the content into the GitHub repository.

Intro - Problem Statement

The Node.js Diagnostics WG members meet throughout the year to seek alignment on proposals and prioritize efforts in the Node.js diagnostics space. In the last Diagnostics Summit in Munich, March 2019, we identified that the working group doesn't have a clear articulation of the scope of use cases for users trying to diagnose problems with Node.js processes. The lack of a clear definition around supported diagnostics user journeys and the lack of alignment on long-term supported tooling and best practices lead to a fragmented tooling ecosystem with more than 25 Diagnostics WG identified tools.

This large surface area means that the community is spread thin in their efforts, while also creating an undue focus on specific tools and solutions. We propose that the WG should collect the user use cases, existing and ideal user journeys for our diagnostics solutions and tooling, as well as the gaps that exist, and use it to drive efforts to provide solutions like best practices and sufficient tooling over future LTS releases. We expect that shifting our focus to being more user-centric will help us to improve the runtime for the needs of various Node.js developers around diagnostics and facilitate the continued growth of Node.js adoption.

Goal

The goal of this proposal is to help the Diagnostics WG to prioritize work items and shape the next generation of tooling. We also believe that having a story for long term supported, cross-platform, stable, and developer friendly diagnostics tools will give enterprise companies more confidence in investing in Node.js as the runtime of choice for their use-cases. This can improve the number of meaningful contributions made to the various Node.js Foundation projects.

Proposal

The proposal is to collect and document the most common user journeys and recommended tools with pros and cons in specific scenarios and to highlight the existing tooling gaps today.

The current state of the proposal provides a template for collaborating on the use-cases with some draft around existing solutions and ideas for ideal user journeys.
Please check out the current version of the ongoing Node.js WG Diagnostics User Journeys document.

Recommended Next Steps

• Seek alignment on goals
• Agree on shifting focus from specific tools to long-term supported user journeys
• Agree on supported workloads in the first round (API servers, workers etc.)
• Agree on long-term user journey support over LTS releases
• Agree on supported use-cases
• Align on recommended tools for use-cases
• Deep dive meetings per use-cases to create ideal user journeys
• Move the content to GitHub repository
• Use User Journeys to drive the Diagnostics Best Practices initiative
• Regroup on tooling gap and create a long term vision for diagnostic tools

The upcoming Berlin Collaborator Summit could be a good place to seek alignment on some of the topics mentioned above.

Node.js WG Diagnostics User Journeys