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Community Tech/Retrospectives/2015-09-15

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Action items from last time

[edit]
  • Standups (chickens and pigs)
    • Johan listens, and then might share info at the end (seems to be working)
  • CL communication as part of workshops?
    • Maybe a topic for next week's workshop?
  • Backlog ran empty
    • Not a problem now. Big backlog.
  • Find way to have more communications outside of the standups (one-on-ones)
    • Scheduled weekly 1:1's
  • Timeboxing spikes: Worked well, or didn't?
    • Hard to timebox due to external dependencies
  • Process for dealing with unfinished work from previous sprint
    • Rolled over outstanding work into next sprint
  • Communications w/Editing (and other) teams
    • No action other than creating a goal for next Q to write up and share with teams
    • Would like clear process and expectations

What has gone well?

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  • Meetings seem to fit in time slots OK with current practices
  • Bryan Davis was very helpful on untangling some of the bot code
  • Consulting with community on talk page about what to do on the bot was helpful
  • Phabricator's still working pretty well
  • Estimations/prioritizations went much more smoothly+1
    • Hatjitsu was useful
  • Development work has gone well.
  • Was able to work independently because of the nature of database-reports task
  • There were fruitful communications with MZ and Lego on IRC
  • Spliting the Phab boards seem to be OK so far (easier to see what's going on)
  • Meeting with Niharika seems to have been really useful for both of us in the last two weeks+1
  • Getting access to old tool code has been easier than I expected (although maybe there were exceptions?)

What could have gone better?

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  • Working with community legacy code: super frustrating and hard to keep momentum going
  • Specific engineering maneger/support when Ryan was gone would have been useful
  • Could use more review/feedback+

+* Didn't actually complete a lot of work (although some tasks were in review/clean-up) +* Work could have been faster if lesser time was spent on trying to fix legacy code and not just do it all over

  • More interaction with the community would have been better for fixing the database reports
  • Satisfaction survey is behind schedule due to a couple issues and lack of time
  • The extension itself was all right but I could've used more support/structure during it
  • We need a PM. I think I need more of Ryan's time but there isn't that much of it.
  • Niharika and Frances both ran into poorly documented and therefore confusing code (though Martin's been good at answering questions for the bot)
    • Much time was wasted trying to fix legacy code without documentation.

What else is on your mind?

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  • Need to gear up for wishlist survey
  • One week sprint extension, good? bad? discuss.
  • How do we do code review in GitHub?

Deeper discussions

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  • Working with community legacy code: super frustrating and hard to keep momentum going
    • Dispiriting to spend a lot of time and not necessariy have a lot of results
    • Would be fun as an academic exercise, but not with task of making real changes
    • Lack of documentation. Original maintainers not helpful.
    • "Was faster to write it myself"
    • Lego has been helpful; maybe other people with broad knowledge could help
    • In some cases, consider rewriting from scratch--might be more efficient
    • End goal is to have working, maintainable code
    • Expectations: If not realistic, frustration is natural
    • After wishlist survey, might have more new code and less legacy
    • Ties into need for PM (or more availabilty of Ryan as mgmt) (Ryan is continuing to push on this issue)
  • Need to gear up for wishlist survey
    • Roadmap has survey going by end of month, which is really soon
    • Mostly Ryan
    • Needs guidance regarding translations; needs CL support (more than Johan)
    • Will need to translate actual proposals (talking with Siko)
    • Want to recruit volunteers to help moderate the survey process
    • Polishing draft process (will float this week)
    • Niharika has some related experience so maybe could help; Frances willing to help think things through
  • How do we do code review in GitHub?
    • Wants to leave feedback, but no clean UI to leave notes
    • Apparently github does have line-by-line commenting; Frances has the knowledge

Retro of retro

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  • Train delays shortened the meeting!
  • Didn't get to talk about everything (maybe that's OK?)
  • Would've liked more time for discussing issues raised
  • 2 weeks?
    • Seems right (3 is too long)
    • Maybe make next one longer if not everything got talked about
  • Have team enter items in etherpad ahead of time?
    • Rarely seems to work
  • Reviewing action items at start?
    • Useful
    • Hopefully fewer of them in the future

Action Items (pulled out after the meeting ended)

[edit]
  • Working with community legacy code: super frustrating and hard to keep momentum going
  • Specific engineering manager/support when Ryan was gone would have been useful
  • Could use more review/feedback
  • More interaction with the community would have been better for fixing the database reports