Open edX Proposal #57: Core Product

Abstract

This OEP defines a set of product guidelines for the Open edX platform, including a Product Narrative, Product Offerings, and Component Tiers, and describes how these principles impact the community.

Motivation

Since the Open edX project began in 2012, the number of features and ways to use the platform has proliferated. It has become increasingly difficult to build releases, get up and running with a new Open edX instance, and simply approach the platform as a new user. Recent efforts have thought about the platform holistically, defining different community use cases and how the platform might best serve those communities' needs. This work has identified that the Open edX project needs to be focused on defining, developing, and supporting a core set of functionality and associated extensions, which will be explored further in the next section.

Specification

Aligning the Open edX community on principles of product management, product development, and product vision is crucial to the adoption and success of the platform. So, in this OEP, we establish a set of terms:

• the Product Narrative;

• the Product Offerings: Core Product, Extended Product(s), and Full Catalog; and

• four Component Tiers: Kernel, Bundled Extensions, Official Extensions, and Unofficial Extensions.

The community will use this common language to understand and classify the components of the Open edX product. These terms will provide a decision-making framework for product prioritization, feature support, and the contents of the community release. Below, we describe the meanings of each term.

Product Narrative

The Product Narrative is defined as the high-level vision statement for the Open edX project. It succinctly articulates the value proposition and impact of the project, the features which differentiate it, and the values and characteristics that position it as a market-leading solution.

Ongoing work to define the Product Narrative and subsequent deliverables can be tracked here.

Product Offerings

Core Product

The Core Product is defined as a clear articulation of which features, experiences and use cases come fully supported by the default configuration of the community-maintained Open edX installation. [Delete this bit in bold, once everyone has had a chance to see the final comment: supported user bases.] The Core Product should be the community’s first priority when it comes to maintenance, security patches, and feature investment.

The Core Product is defined by a set of people across the community, driven by the Product Working Group. It is based on user and market input. It answers key questions such as:

• How do current and future features in the default Open edX installation align with the Product Narrative and the needs of users?

• What current and future features and experiences are available in the Core Product, and why?

• What is the spectrum of alternatives if a developed feature doesn’t align with the Core Product?

Ongoing work to define the Core Product and subsequent deliverables can be tracked here.

Extended Product(s)

There has been interest in the community to define one or more Extended Product(s). These hypothetical Product Offerings would enhance the Core Product with a set of extensions. An Extended Product might be created to, for example, support a specialized Open edX use case for which the Core Product alone is not suited.

Although this OEP acknowledges the interest in such Product Offerings, there is currently no plan to fully define, implement, or offer any Extended Product. If such a Product Offering is codified in the future, this OEP will be updated.

Full Catalog

The Full Catalog is defined as the Core Product plus all known Open edX extensions.

An actual catalog of components will be created and maintained to be as comprehensive as possible. Community members will be encouraged to submit their extensions to be listed in the Full Catalog.

Component Tiers

Open

A diagram of the Product Offerings and what they contain (LucidChart source) [Footnote: 2].

The Product Offerings defined above provide for the organization of components into four Component Tiers, described below. Each component’s Tier will be listed in the Full Catalog and can be updated over time to reflect changes in its technical implementation, its maintenance status, and its relationship to the Product Offerings.

Kernel

The Kernel [Footnote: 1] is a technical term for components that cannot be separated from an Open edX installation. They include:

• frameworks, such as XBlock, which support extensions; and

• “baked-in” features, such as the Problem Block or the Course Home, whose implementations are tightly coupled to the core Open edX installation.

Bundled Extensions

Bundled Extensions are components of the Core Product that are built upon the frameworks provided by the Kernel. Their technical implementations are decoupled from the Kernel, but they are purposely “bundled” (included) into the Core Product due to their broad utility. Like any Core Product component, this means they are available to end users in the default configuration of the community-maintained Open edX installation method.

An example of a Bundled Extension is the Open Response Assessment (ORA) tool, which is built using the Kernel’s XBlock framework.

Official Extensions

Official Extensions are components outside of the Core Product that the Open edX community believes:

• fulfill a need that is consistently expressed by multiple community members, and

• can be effectively maintained by the community.

An example of an Official Extension is XQueue, an independently deployed interface between the Open edX LMS and external grading systems.

Unofficial Extensions

Unofficial Extensions describe any and all components outside of the Core Product and Official Extensions that add functionality to the Open edX platform or integrate with it. These are authored by various members of the community. Authors of such components are encouraged to submit them to be listed as Unofficial Extensions in the Full Catalog.

An example of an Unofficial Extension is Richie, a CMS maintained by FUN MOOC that integrates with the Open edX platform.

Impact

Open edX Releases

Defining the Core Product will enable the community to focus on the core products and services that enable the platform to be well understood and optimally poised to deliver powerful and wonderful learning experiences that meet our mission to democratize education. The Open edX named releases will, with adoption of the Product Offerings, be more focused. It will be easier for the technical team in charge of the release to both decide which repositories to include and which features to enable by default. Further, testing the release will be more focused. Test cases will cover the most common use-cases over the most commonly and most important components within the Open edX ecosystem.

The process of creating a release will be largely unchanged from today. As happens currently, only one release needs to be made. It includes:

• The components of the Core Product, toggled on by default.

• Additional components, togged off by default. These components may include, for example: Official Extensions, experimental components, and features that are outside of the Core Product yet are technically coupled to it (i.e., “Baked-In Features”) [Footnote: 3].

There will be little to no additional testing burden for components that are toggled off, as there is no promise of full community support for them. The testing team will work closely with the product team to determine precise testing plans and determine which of these additional components warrant testing.

Open edX Component Support

With the adoption of Product Offerings, the community will be more focused on the highest impact parts of the project, as determined by a broad cross-section of the community itself. It will be clearer to the community which portions of the release they can expect support on, and which portions will have little to no support. Those components residing outside of the Core Product’s Bundled Extensions will not be a priority of the project’s product strategy.

The Core Product will be the focus of the project’s product strategy; the project’s various working groups are expected to prioritize support of the Core Product’s components ahead of any other components. Stated directly, support priorities are as follows:

• Core Product: The community will support the Core Product as its top priority.

• Official Extensions: The community will try to support Official Extensions, and it will do so largely by delegating responsibility via the Maintainers Program. If the community cannot consistently support or maintain Official Extension, then it may be reclassified as Unofficial.

• Unofficial Extensions: The Open edX community will not directly support Unofficial Extensions, and they will not be the focus of the Open edX project or its working groups. Of course, this does not preclude individual community members or teams from working on or supporting these components themselves. If the community demonstrates both consistent demand and consistent support for an Unofficial Extension, then it may be reclassified as Official.

Product Investments

A clearly defined Core Product will assist product managers conducting market research to more easily identify feature gaps and parity analyses. They can ask questions such as: Do the highest impact features of the project adequately meet user needs? Where are they weak? How can we best invest to address those weaknesses?

Marketing and Growth Efforts

Both the Product Narrative and Core Product will guide marketing efforts across the community, enabling marketing managers to more easily articulate the central value proposition of the project, differentiate it from competitors, and focus communications on specific target audiences with particular needs.

References

• Earlier draft of OEP-57

• Earlier discussions on the Core Product and Kernel

• Follow-up Work: Definition of Product Narrative

• Follow-up Work: Core Product definition (Link TBD)

• Follow-up Work: Full Catalog listing (Link TBD)

[Footnote: 1] From a technical perspective, the Kernel contains the Ideal Kernel, what engineers would like the Kernel to be: a small, easy-to-understand, and easy-to-maintain collection of extension frameworks (such as the XBlock framework). However, the Kernel currently contains more than just the Ideal Kernel; it contains a roughly-understood Ideal Kernel, plus a bunch of features that are so tightly tied to the code in the Kernel that it can’t run without them (such as the Problem Block and Course Home). There is desire in the Open edX community to refactor some or all of these features to be Bundled Extensions, which would reduce the size of the Kernel and bring it closer to our conceptions of an Ideal Kernel.

[Footnote: 2] The diagram in the text represents a simplified version of what the Product Offerings are, and how they interact. A more full version of this visual can be seen below (LucidChart source). Note the distinction of the “Ideal Kernel”, as described in Footnote 1. Another technical difference obscured in the simplified diagram is the fact that some baked-in Kernel features are actually outside the Core Product; although present in the Kernel, they are disabled by default in the Core Product. Finally, the diagram below shows, via arrows, how extensions might make use of other extensions or frameworks.

Open

[Footnote: 3] In the future, there may be more specific guidance around which additional components are to be included, but toggled off, in releases. If created, that guidance will be linked here. Until then, it will remain up to the discretion of the community and the release manager as specified in OEP-10.

Change History

2022-09-30

• Document created, `Pull Request #XXX <https://github.com/openedx/open-edx-proposals/pull/XXX>`_