ContributingDraft

It starts with a conversation

We ask that you bring ideas to our team before carrying out the work. This will help us to understand what you’re trying to achieve, and what’s stopping you from achieving this with Telescope today. Starting with a conversation also helps to reduce potential rework and frustration for you as a contributor.

• Reach out to us in our Slack channel
• Present your idea at our Weekly Office Hours
• Submit a contribution proposal

Types of contribution

After an initial conversation and assessment of an idea, we talk contribution process. We distinguish between three types of contributions, which is a model inspired by Zalando.

Light

A simple bug fix or small design tweak to an existing design element.

We always encourage feature teams to take on light contributions themselves. This helps in getting the work done faster and makes our design system a shared responsibility. If a team agrees to take on a light contribution, the process looks something like this:

Medium

A bigger change to an existing design element or pattern.

Medium contributions may be a bit time consuming. But in many cases, it should be possible for teams to fit in the work as part of building their features. If a team agrees to take on a medium contribution, the process may look something like this:

Heavy

The introduction of a new design element or pattern.

Heavy contributions can be a time consuming and highly iterative process. And we need to be mindful around delaying feature delivery. But if time and resources in the feature team allows for it, fantastic! The process for adding a new component may look something like this: