Episode 116: Metrics For Maintainers with Sarina, Feanil, and Felipe

Aug 7, 2025

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Thank you to the folks at Sustain for providing the hosting account for CHAOSSCast!

CHAOSScast – Episode 116

In this episode of CHAOSScast, host Georg Link is joined by guests Sarina Canelake, Feanil Patel, and Felipe Montoya from the Open edX community, to discuss their experiences with the GrimoireLab tool and the launch and growth of their maintainer program. The conversation dives into the history and impact of the Open edX project, the evolution of their maintainer program, and the use of metrics to track and improve community health. The guests also share personal stories and provide insights into the challenges and successes they’ve encountered along the way. Press download now!

[00:00:34] Sarina, Feanil, and Felipe introduce themselves and their backgrounds.

[00:02:02] Feanil and Sarina explain the origins of the maintainer program, the mix of Python and JavaScript repositories, and how maintainers influence code direction.

[00:04:02] Feanil explains the history of Open edX, being open sourced in 2013 by edX (MOOC platform) and how Axim Collaborative took over stewardship in 2021.

[00:07:04] We hear Felipe’s journey into the project from student to TA to community contributor and leader since 2012. He details the empowerment and pressure of receiving merge access in the Core Contributor program.

[00:13:09] Sarina Explains why merge rights were initially limited to edX staff, and how the shift to community-led merging happened post 2020.

[00:15:26] Feanil describes how the Maintainer Program now distributes ownership and improves repository health.

[00:17:12] Feanil talks about his incremental metrics philosophy: starts with presence, then track responsiveness.

[00:21:34] Georg asks how maintainers use GrimoireLab dashboards and filters. Sarina explains the use of Backstage ownership metadata for filtering dashboards by maintainers or groups and Feanil emphasizes the need for flexible tooling due to overlapping team memberships.

[00:24:50] Felipe describes using dashboards to monitor his team’s participation and accountability.

[00:25:40] Sarina asks Felipe about dashboards he uses on Bitergia to track team contributions.

[00:28:26] Sarina shares how she tracks Elephant Factor and trends in commit and LOC volume and Georg highlights the value of identity reconciliation in data.

[00:30:45] Felipe talks about monitoring Slack, issues, and commits to ensure ecosystem health post-company transitions and Sarina notes challenges of mapping Slack/Discourse identities in Sorting Hat for deeper engagement metrics.

[00:34:11] There’s a discussion on syncing internal onboarding identity forms with Sorting Hat manually for now.

[00:35:35] Georg raises concerns about metric misuse in performance reviews. Sarina and Feanil stress metrics as guidance, not performance tools, and Felipe shares his team uses metrics as lagging indicators, not for pressure.

[00:39:55] Sarina explains how their impact report uses lines of code, commit trends, and elephant factor to show growth and codebase health.

[00:42:32] Find out where you can go to get involved and contribute to Open edX and edunext.

Value Adds (Picks) of the week:

[00:44:15] Georg’s pick is a podcast called, ‘Through The Griffin Door’ by the Carlin Brothers.
[00:44:50] Sarina’s pick is her kitten who’s taught herself how to play fetch and a podcast called, ‘The Best Idea Yet.’
[00:45:37] Feanil’s pick is ‘Logseq,’ a journaling and notetaking tool.
[00:46:42] Felipe’s pick is the ‘Waking Up’ app for mindful meditation.

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