About this report

This document reports on the work Team Practices Group attempted and completed in FY2016Q3, January to March 2016. This report is derived solely from task records in Phabricator, as reported by Phlogiston. It does not include input such as team retrospective discussion and analysis. It does incorporate group discussion of the data reports.

What did TPG complete in Q3?

We defined 19 Milestones and objectives. (/FY2016Q3)
Out of 19, about 10 were “finishable” and the rest continuous.
Five milestones were completed in Phabricator.

How much work remains until we reach our goal?

We did not identify the full scope of work in any category early in the quarter, so we could not predict work remaining at any point during the quarter.

What did TPG work on?

TPG experimented with two kinds of categorization during the quarter.

By Basic Categorization

The more basic categorization used two categories, Quarterly Goals and Essential Functions. This was tracked using Phabricator project tags, and more than three quarters of tasks were categorized in this scheme.

By Detailed Categorization

The more detailed categorization approach used one category for each specific quarterly goal or non-quarterly-goal project. This was tracked using parent tasks in Phabricator. Several issues made this very difficult to maintain accurately, and about a third of all tasks were categorized in this scheme.

Week by week

Based on tag categories, more of our work was Essential Functions than Q3 goals. This count does not included embedded tasks (tasks TPGers did with the teams they work with, which is the majority of TPG time) or work that was not tracked by Phabricator tasks, and it is based on tasks, not total time and effort, so this is a very incomplete picture.

Can we use Phabricator reporting via Phlogiston to help balance overall workload between embedded-team work and TPG projects?

In previous retrospectives TPGers have identified difficulties with balancing work that TPGers do with the teams they are embedded on compared to work that TPG does not specific to any team. We do not currently have any means to quantify or even roughly estimate relative workload. One TPGers used a user project in Phabricator, combined with Phlogiston reporting, to attempt to track all tasks for the quarter.

This suggests that it could be possible to use this data to balance TPG workload in theory. However,

All TPGers would have to use User Projects and tag all of their tasks.
- Alternately, we could perhaps categorize using the Assigned To, but this is very fragile.
This doesn’t include non-Phab time, like meetings.
Without global pointing, probably not very accurate.
Not clear how to view everybody at once in context of TPG planning.