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

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

Action Items from last month

 * 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)
 * ✅ - linked from https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Maps#Puppetization_and_Automation
 * Kevin: Invite Guillaume to next maps retro
 * 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"
 * Kevin: Propose making reading SoS notes "strongly encouraged"

What happened since the last retro (June 30)
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

 * 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)

 * 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

 * 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

 * 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)

 * 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

 * 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