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Reading/Multimedia/Retrospectives/2019-01-17

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2019-01-17

Previous Action Items

  • Ramsey to do the ticket guidelines doc DONE
  • Max to send out examples of Phab templates used by teams, how they create them, share them, etc DONE
  • Amanda and Pam to create short proposal for using epics (e.g. "this is what we need, here's a way to do that"), team to comment async (e.g. "this is covered in the status quo" or "I see these risks") DONE

Special Topic

[edit]

Launch Retro

[edit]

What about the launch went well that we would want to repeat in the future?

  • We didn't break everything, and didn't have to revert
  • Lots of support from colleagues in WMDE (especially), Release Engineering, and other teams. +
  • There are so many captions!  In so many languages!
  • I really liked hanging out on the deploy call
  • Despite the pressure we got from some sources, I feel like the team persisted in the work that needed to be done and handled it well +
  • Live hacks for fixing community gadgets in person as we deploy! Whee. +
  • The deploy call was much appreciated/neat to be involved in
  • Community messaging plan seemed to work - little expression of being taken by surprise ... really?  (maybe? we only have anecdotal evidence, and comparisons to past software releases)
  • Folks working behind the scenes to rally support from people who believe in SDC - very helpful

What about the launch could be improved for future launches?

  • Some things were a bit buggy - we REALLY need a QA person on the team.  ++++++
    • +1 and also more robust automatic testing?
    • +1 I am advocating/can advocate more for this
    • +1 (Growth & Android teams do QA testing & then final design review)
  • Stakeholders need to be more reasonable/informed about what's realistic re: timeframes ... ++
  • As there were tech issues (out of our control), we would have benefited from have flexibility around the launch date to have more time to do design reviews/testing on both Alpha & Beta
  • i’m now seeing the challenges of [design] working two releases ahead of the team. it makes it hard to both connect with the work i did last spring and do more testing. +++
    • as a result, i am building time into my schedule for tending to tickets & design reviews of implemented designs, as well as more testing (either on Alpha or Beta)
  • We've put energy into streamlining the ticket structure/process and to ensure that it's effective, going forward, on my part I will be writing and tracking tickets much more, and I need us to be explicit about when and who needs signing off of tickets
  • Babel doesn't work on Beta :(  A key piece of the way folks see file captions
    • Babel should work on Beta? It did before. Just tested, Babel totes works on Beta.
  • There was no final design review/approval to ship--I want a clear gate +++
  • Deployment call should have had WMDE in it, rather than them also helping in a side-channel.
  • We should have a single, shared QA checklist for regression testing that everyone uses? +
  • Multiple sources in the product team (including myself) report a need for a true production mirror so we catch things like weird content/rules/templates the community has set up
  • We burned some community capital with our allies :( How can we avoid that in the future?  Do we do a check in with them before shipping?
  • I want to know if our release is going to break a key volunteer tool

Topics voted up

  • Some things were a bit buggy - we REALLY need a QA person on the team.  ++++++
    • +1 and also more robust automatic testing?
    • +1 I am advocating/can advocate more for this
    • +1 (Growth & Android teams do QA testing & then final design review)
    • We did ask for one, were told there are only so many, and that maybe we can use an external group that wouldn't really fit our needs
    • This is a WMF-wide issue
    • We could also have everyone on the team do QA in a more structured fashion
      • If we do this, there is a risk to let the execs off the hook. QA is a standard part of development everywhere in the world, despite accomplishing so much without it
    • MGMT has been pushing for a production env mirror to make testing easier
    • Are we convinced that a QA person would find the bugs that happened?
      • Yes
    • Major themes: get a QA person, figure out staging, find out what improvements we can do to make beta user testing productive and getting feedback
    • Feature flagging is risky because of the potential to lose eyes on issues
  • i’m now seeing the challenges of [design] working two releases ahead of the team. it makes it hard to both connect with the work i did last spring and do more testing. +++
    • as a result, i am building time into my schedule for tending to tickets & design reviews of implemented designs, as well as more testing (either on Alpha or Beta)

Parking Lot

  • Ramsey's ticket guidelines ought to be on a wiki page
  • "Pain works"?

Action Items

  • Amanda and Ramsey for meeting with MGMT: QA, staging env
  • Keegan to noodle on getting community to test on  leave feedback
    • Perhaps a checklist
  • Design
    • We need to be more explicit about when things need design review
    • Pam to pair with devs as they implement designs, see how that goes
    • Both of above are ad-hoc pings for now
  • Ramsey: We need a QA checklist, with Design elements as a part of that
  • Pam: Look into how other teams deal with regression testing with a Designer involved
  • Don't lose the epics thread
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