Community Tech/Retrospectives/2015-11-09

Action items from last time

• For this week, aim for smaller tasks
  • Tried. At least one epic got broken down
• Kevin: Agile workshop next week (Kanban/sprint planning)
  • DONE 2015-11-05, but the topic was "Estimation and Velocity"
• Follow up on plagiabot offline (on mailing list?) (Frances)
  • haven't yet, still probably a good idea, but not high priority
• Write up github workflow on wiki somewhere (Meta Development subpage) (Frances)
  • DONE
• Talk to Quim about GSoc commitments - Niharika will initiate email
  • Done and resolved.
• Kaldari: Post retro notes
  • Done
• Danny to follow up on template/broken gadgets page/board
  • Not done
• Follow up on DBA question (Kaldari will investigate)
  • Done - apparently Jaime Crespo is the (only) DBA now

What has gone well?

• Niharika's visit: lots of good hallway conversations, pair programming, and more!
  • Yes, really great to have time with Niharika.
  • It was awesome.
• Pairing on the Citation Bot API tickets worked incredibly well
  • Will plan to do more stuff similarly, remotely *
• Lots of good work got done, many tickets closed.
  • Special:GadgetUsage, dismissed sitenotice, CitationBot tix, broken French gadgets.
• Analysis / Sprint planning / Backlog makes more sense (to me, at least) and there's now a full backlog :)
• New Phabricator workboard organization (thanks Danny!)
• Getting info from Kunal and Timo about Gadgets 2.0
• Agile meeting about estimation was very helpful +1
  • Ryan's sizing examples also helpful +2
• Sprint planning meeting went amazingly, we finished up work for the sprint kickoff meeting
• I (Ryan) got to actually do some development work (fixing dismissed notices, HotCat/VE bug, etc.)
• Still so glad to have Danny as PM! :D+1

What could have gone better?

• Plagiabot: never did get it set up, decided to put all the hacks in Copyvios Detector
  • Should have pulled the plug sooner (could be noticed eariler in a standup)
  • During estimation, should heavily weight whether there are installation instructions
  • Team doesn't have much experience with that kind of situation
  • Possibly have better contingency plans--cards with optional paths +1
  • In standups, could go through the board +1
  • (Possibly eng tasks/mini-milestones would help)
• We (not just the team, the entire WMF) don't have a good system for getting translations. This is a problem. I had to ask a number of favours to get our prioritized languages done.++++
  • Ryan talked to Community Resources (Siko); paid resources available
• Our sprint kick-off meeting was a bit chaotic, but everything got sorted eventually (next time make sure Danny is in all Sprint planning meetings)
• Not a lot of development on my tickets due to travel mainly :( Hope to make up for it this week
• Yeah, other distractions also, personally feel pulled in many directions +++
• Gadgets 2.0 has pretty much no documentation +
  • Add docs as you go, when possible (should be a task, and estimated)

What else is on your mind?

• How did our publicity blitz go (emails to mailing lists, etc.)?
  • Lots of activity (many participants)
  • No negative feedback
• Ongoing work on estimation sizes as we go along

Deeper discussions

We (not just the team, the entire WMF) don't have a good system for getting translations

• CE needs to take the lead
• CT can keep pushing on this
  • Create detailed use cases; when/how often are they needed
  • Raise with Toby; schedule a meeting?
• We have a nice system for software translations, but not for community interactions
• Ryan spent a ton of time and effort getting translations
  • Suggestion: document time that was spent (by everyone--Ryan, Johan, Danny), compare it to time spent when using external service
• Danny will talk with Siko
• Ryan will send translation info to Danny

Yeah, other distractions also, personally feel pulled in many directions

• Lots going on
• Time box extraneous(sic?) tasks?
• Possible mitigations: saying no, prioritization, clumping work to minimize context switching
• Frances to talk to Quim this week, try out some time structuring

Action Items

• Kaldari: Post retro notes
• Danny to follow up on template/broken gadgets page/board
  • (wasn't done last time)
• Kaldari: make sure Danny is in all Sprint planning meetings
• Danny to add a task for gadgets 2.0 documentation
• Kevin: Plan another workshop
• Follow up on "plan to do more stuff similarly, remotely * " (N, F)
• Frances follow up with Quim
• Danny to talk to Siko about translation services
• Kaldari to send Danny info about translation services