Scoring with Playbooks

I've always liked how coaches in American Football have a "cheat sheet" for calling plays and whatnot. The camera usually shows them with their trusty strategy guide inhand in between plays:

I've always thought it would be a good idea to have these sorts of things but for software. So I created a generic one, focusing on "How to get started" becoming a MOTU. The PDF is here: Playbook.pdf

So the idea is we hand these out at Packaging Jams, FOSSCamp, conferences, and generally any place where geeks tend to hang out. The intent for these is that they are modular, so you can create custom Playbooks for nearly anything. (Bug Stuff, QA, etc.) This could also be helpful for derivatives, something like "The Ubuntu Studio Audio Editing Playbook" sounds awesome. People can then remix the Playbooks for all sorts of combinations.

The steps and bullets are purposely simple (sorry about the blur), you can hang it on your wall and use it as a reminder when you're packaging. If you're an existing MOTU or interested in the MOTU process I'd like to hear from you in the comments on how you feel it can be improved. Also, if you're planning on running a Packaging Jam, I'd like for you to try it out and have your members follow along through the workflow diagram.

So do you guys think things like this are useful? One of the reasons for making this was that I found myself repeating the same things to upstream developers and them asking the same questions about Ubuntu-specific things (What's a MOTU?), so if you're an upstream maintainer you might find this sheet useful.

Comments

[Jeff]

This is an awesome idea! I think it will come in very handy.

Would you be willing to share the template used to create the PDF?

Thanks,
Jeff

[mgunes]

Nice one, Jorge. It's been on my mind for a while to make a similar one for people who want to get started in QA. Maybe we can work on it together.

Inspirational material:

http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2007/09/git-cheat-sheet.html

[nixternal]

That's pretty slick Jorge. But did you have to use the KC Chiefs coach holding the playbook? Their playbook is obviously no good :p Good job! You have inspired me to do the same for a couple of other topics.

[Neskie Manuel]

This is such a useful document. Clear concise steps. I was thinking there needs to be something like this to start brand new translations. This helps in a more immediate way, because I need to package a font and a keyboard layout so people can contribute to a new translation project on Launchpad.

[jorge]

@Jeff, unfortunately I don't have access to the marketing material. Something I need to do is figure out a way normal people can make their own playbooks and have some tool autogenerate a slick looking PDF.

Maybe a LaTeX template or something?