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Wikimedia Discovery/Meetings/Maps retrospective 2016-08-08

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Format

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This retrospective was conducted using the "Five finger retrospective" format.

Action Items from last month

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  • Yuri: Publish long-term maps roadmap
    • Written; wants to discuss with team before publishing
  • Yuri might email Discovery asking for examples of maps uses that he could cite in the presentation
    • Presented a bunch of usages.
  • Julien: Make sure work progresses on the State of the Maps presentation
    • (jg) Presentation took place in Seattle and went quite well :)
    • (jg) We could have cleaned the final version a little sooner - but last minute/4am prep is a style that Yuri particularly likes :P
  • Julien: Follow up on Kartographer documentation improvements
    • (jg) Refactor took longer than expected
    • (jg) All the front end code is precisely documented (and soonish publicly available at doc.wikimedia.org : Max? )
    • (jg) To be continued: more documentation ON-wiki
  • Guillaume: upload (documentation) diagrams to commons (carried over)
    • Yes Done - linked from https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Maps#Puppetization_and_Automation
  • Kevin: Invite Guillaume to next maps retro
    • Yes Done
  • Kevin will schedule a meeting to discuss ops/maps relationship
    • NOT NEEDED since Guillaume is working on these issues
  • Kevin will schedule a meeting with Yuri and Chris to figure out wiki conversation <-> phab tasks
    • Initiated an email conversation
  • Kevin: Propose making reading SoS notes "strongly encouraged"
    • Yes Done

What happened since the last retro (June 30)

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https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery/Meetings/Maps_retrospective_2016-06-30

  • State of the maps US
  • vacations!

Thumb: Thumbs up--something that went well

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  • Awesome slides by Julien & Max, well presented, thanks!
    • https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kscsp0YS7nw
  • First Wikipedias receiving Kartographer
  • Ops understanding that maps are moving forward
    • Guillaume did some very good work on this front!
    • Weekly ops/maps meetings (Mondays) - send notes to Guillaume if you have anything going on... either requireing Ops attention, or just something cool that happens
  • Awesome time in Seattle with the team... the Sushi, the museum, underground tour, great (and mostly productive) conversations +

Index finger: The ONE thing you want people to know (about how this team has functioned over the last month)

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  • We need to work on presenting better to WMF (including functionality and KPI) and to the community
    • Not using existing Friday Discovery status as well as we could
    • Not publicizing growth of maps enough
    • Look at presenting during Metrics meeting (large audience)

Middle finger: Something that did not go well

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  • setting up new maps servers (eqiad) is taking more time than it should
    • 3-4 weeks is a long time to set up 4 servers
    • Guillaume context switching doesn't help
    • Work should have happened before and didn't
    • Doing some automation which is taking longer than just "making it work" would
  • Still no frames around maps and still some confusion between developers
    • JG: Not sure about mediawiki best coding patterns (new to it). Unsure who makes technical decisions when multiple arguments are received.
    • Not sure how to prioritize good specs vs. good performance vs. iterative quick but may not be sustainable
    • "Done is better than perfect". "Stalling is the least productive option".
    • Would Jon Robson be a good person to talk to? Kaldari? Anyone on ArchCom? Roan?
    • And Front End Standards Group.
  • Need KPIs, still don't have any
    • We do actually have some numbers (e.g. varnish stats, maps dashboards)
    • We should at least be able to say "this is the route we took and these are the benefits we got"

Ring finger: Something about relationships--within the team, between teams, other

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  • First Wikipedias receiving Kartographer and VE/template concerns
    • They felt out of the loop from a product/release standpoint
    • They have been working on some patches all along; we have gotten good contributions from them
    • Yuri did mention upcoming work at SoS
  • Need to engage other teams more pro-actively (esp J Forrester)
  • Good relation with the Vega team (graphs)

Pinky: A little thing that would be easy to overlook (or was overlooked)

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  • we're bad at integration testing
    • Max has started setting up a way to do at least some testing outside production
    • GL: I'm not  a big fan of integration testing, but it would probably make sense to invest a bit more than we have
    • Could use the old map cluster; some vague plans
  • some ground work needs to happen (Cassandra upgrade, log cleanup, ...) and needs to be prioritized
    • Seeing small things that need to be improved (debt)...hard to get it prioritized

Action items

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  • Yuri: Discuss roadmap with team
  • Katie: Will follow up with VE team; maybe define communication norms between teams
  • Julien: Will ping people to try to get UI patches unstuck
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