Wikimedia Discovery/Retrospective 2015-06-16

Review of action items from last retro (May 6)

 * Suggestion: Mobile team had a monthly showcase (a very positive/happy meeting)
 * DONE: We just had our first monthly showcase, and more are scheduled monthly
 * Hopefully we can make our team page more visual
 * DONE: Team page now has photos
 * Not sure what the point of some of the meetings is
 * DONE: Every meeting has a purpose ( https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Process#Recurring_Meetings )
 * Need to get better with mailing list, process, etc.
 * IMPROVED: Process is defined and documented. No specific actions taken on "getting better w/mailing list").
 * Lack of process is preventing us from getting some things done that we should (but is heading in the right direction)
 * IMPROVED: Process is defined and documented ( https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Process )
 * Getting work that the product owner wants doing actually picked up by engineers
 * IMPROVED: Hopefully the new process has improved this
 * Establish prioritization -- What are our goals? Are we on track to achieve them?
 * IMPROVED: Hopefully Dan has made the goals and priorities clear
 * Unclear how ongoing work (Wikidata Query Service, Maps & Geo) relate to our departmental objectives
 * IMPROVED: Hopefully this has been communicated by Dan and Wes
 * We should all get together somewhere/sometime (ideally not at SF office)
 * IN PROGRESS: Wes is still working on this
 * Need some kind of survey thing where people can say when they'll be available for offsite
 * DONE: This was done (google doc, google sheet)
 * Still no schwag, patches, or t-shirts
 * IN PROGRESS: On the way, expected in early July

What went well

 * Wes gives thumbs up to Dan's talk, other presentations, and team attending them
 * Feels like we have a better handle on metrics now
 * Feels good that someone (Oliver) is working on the relevance measurements (at least starting to have a plan is great)
 * James is doing fabulous summrizations of external presentations
 * Dan did an awesome presentation!
 * Prioritising tasks has been working really smoothly by insisting they go through the PdM consistently
 * State of the Map conference was hugely useful (conference in NYC)
 * Habemus Scio! (hopefully we have found our data analyst)
 * Hiring has been going well (aside from when Wes+Tomasz were out simultaneously)
 * Meetings have been rpoductive, and often quick
 * Good use of IRC channel (helps make us more of a team)
 * Using buffered clients is helpful so people get it even if they're not there (suggestions for Linux/Mac/Win?)
 * Doing well accommodating remoties
 * Nice onboarding template by Nik
 * +1. I'm using it for the Analyst job as a template.
 * Feeling positive about recruiter transition (was worried, but seems OK)
 * Deflected non-Discovery requests away from Oliver with some success
 * Oliver really appreciates support from Wes/Dan/Tomasz and others

What could have gone better?

 * Clarify the association between prioritized tasks and team goals/milestones
 * Process for pulling tasks into sprints has not been communicated clearly
 * Data Analysis is bushed; ongoing tasks suck up too much bandwidth to allow for long-term planningx
 * We are working on some short-term work at the cost of not doing longer-term beneficial work
 * Non-Discovery work didn't help, but hopefully improving
 * Data Analysis is only half-scrum; we don't do points and Oliver's hairline would like us to switch (to scrum)
 * Another case of process not being communicated clearly
 * Tuesdays feel like a write-off with all the planning (~4 hrs of meetings)
 * Wouldn't save time to spread it out over multiple days
 * Nik/Stas prefer clumping them in a single day
 * I feel better with one "meeting day" than lots of interrupting meetings on different days
 * Clear blockers more quickly/frequently -- e.g. designate a scrummaster, or hold more frequent standups
 * Kevin is the "scrum master"
 * Example of blocker is portal EventLogging
 * Any code review is slow in WMF...requires frequent poking
 * If something gets blocked a long time and nothing breaks, maybe it is lower priority?
 * We are working on a lot of things slowly, rather than a few things quickly
 * process based on code review is a forced pause, so some multitasking is unavoidable
 * Confusion due to having engineering work in data workboard
 * Foundation doesn't have standard for IRC buffers) (bouncers)
 * It's called email ;)
 * Google Wave?
 * If you email techsupport@wikimedia.org they can set you up with an irccloud account. On the downside you have to use their client, but it does the buffering and whatnot.
 * If you ask mukunda (irc: twentyafterfour) he has setup something on digital ocean for which he is willing to give out accounts as well
 * Max would rather not feel obligated to read logs from multiple channels
 * Some information droppage (is Bob Flagg doing work for us? )
 * Bob is joining us as search relevance eng. Should have been announced.
 * When people are out, some stuff might not get delegated
 * Didn't get David scheduled ito the retrospective
 * Protecting Oliver and really everyones time from randomization tasks (is improving but ongoing challenge)
 * Few of us sitting close to each other
 * Two search outages recently
 * Nik had to bring cluster back while tired because others aren't trained up
 * Erik volunteers. Max woldn't mind but feels overloaded with maps stuff. Nik proposes David.
 * WMF contact list and/or Eng contact list should be kept updated
 * We should have no single points of failure anywhere
 * People being sick
 * Budget has been a moving target
 * Guiseppe has represented us in ops, but we might need more

What confuses us

 * Are we hiring frontend engineers? Yes, we are. Thats our one open rec.

Retrospective of retro

 * Went well. Important.
 * Should it be half an hour longer?
 * Shorter encourages discipline
 * Yuri needs a Mac :trollface:

Actionable Concerns (pulled from above)
Kevin
 * Schedule our next retrospective
 * DONE. Retrospectives are now recurring meetings.
 * Clear blockers more quickly/frequently -- e.g. designate a scrummaster, or hold more frequent standups
 * Process for pulling tasks into sprints has not been communicated clearly
 * Kanban (not Scrum) process has not been communicated clearly
 * Everyone should make sure their contact info is up-to-date (https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Contact_list)
 * Everyone has info now...I can't tell whether or not it is up-to-date
 * Didn't get David scheduled into the retrospective
 * I have made a few changes to my process which will hopefully avoid this in the future
 * Stacking meetings on one day works well for some people, but not for others
 * More people seem to propose stacking them, so will continue with existing schedule for now
 * Lack of IRC norms regarding buffers/bouncers, and whether people read scrollbacks

Dan
 * Confusion due to having engineering work in data workboard
 * FIXED (engineering work has been removed from analysis board)
 * We are working on a lot of things slowly, rather than a few things quickly
 * Data Analysis is bushed; ongoing tasks suck up too much bandwidth to allow for long-term planningx
 * Protecting Oliver and really everyones time from randomization tasks

Wes/Tomasz
 * Guiseppe has represented us in ops, but we might need more
 * IN PROGRESS: Wes is meeting with ops, and expects ops elastic support person for Q1
 * Some information droppage (notably when Wes/Tomasz are out simultaneously, or Dan by himself)
 * Noted, and will remain vigilant in the future
 * Few of us sitting close to each other
 * IN PROGRESS: Tomasz has proposed a new seating plan
 * Budget has been a moving target
 * Can't go back in time to improve the past, but can improve moving forward
 * Wes is approaching grant funding and as issues arise will petition for additional funds as needed.

Nik
 * Two search outages recently
 * Ops wrote up incident reports
 * Root causes are being tracked in phabricator
 * Nik is a single point of failure