Ask HN: How do technical non-developers help with open source projects?

I used to code for a living but decided that I enjoy being a technical writer and PM much, much more.

Things I enjoy:

  * Writing detailed functional specifications.
  * Creating wireframes & mockups.
  * Creating flowcharts, BPMN docs & graphs to explain a project.
  * Planning Poker, Creating sprints.
  * Discussing technical issues with developers.
  * Simplifying technical issues for customers.
  * Learning about new technologies.
  * Explaining new technology to customers.

My question is; Is there a need for someone like me in any open source projects and if so, how do I contribute?

I'm also a technical product manager and have struggled with this question too.

I have also wondered the same thing in the startup context: is there a good role for me in a <10 person startup, <5 person startup?

Very much so! I'd love some help writing/documenting/explaining to people a lot of the work I've done behind Cayley (http://github.com/google/cayley). I can explain it very well one-on-one or to a developer but my writing/explaining/diagramming gets a little esoteric for the people at large. Even planning/prioritizing some things would be useful.

So if graph databases strike you as cool new technologies and you'd like to learn more, check it out and feel free to drop me a line personally at barak (at) cayley.io

Hi there! I know the Joomla project could definitely use some help like that...if you're interested I would send this same message you've written here to the CMS Google Group: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/joomla-dev-cms

Development is entirely community driven (which is both a pro and a con) but at the same time it would be nice to have a strong PM hand helping to guide things again (we had a great person from the Netherlands during some of the early years of the project, Wilco Jansen, but since he bowed out of the role several years back I feel we've been missing that direction he was able to provide).

I would definitely look forward to having you contribute to Joomla if it seems like something you would find interesting!

I run a project called ioquake3 that has been out for almost a decade and we are in desperate needs of more technical folks to help spec out and plan development for the most boring parts of the framework we need to remain relevant in 2015.

Finding the boring things that other people don't do is exactly the most valuable thing you can do for any open-source project.