Wikimedia Discovery/Meetings/Discovery retrospective 2016-10-13

Previous action items

 * Everyone: Review 10% time policy, and discuss possible changes on its talk page: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery/Experimentation_Time
 * No discussion there yet
 * Mikhail: Discuss beta analytics with David (and/or others)
 * (Forgot to ask about the status)
 * Mikhail: Consider what it might mean for a team lead to take on "analysis liaison" responsibilities
 * (Forgot to ask about the status)
 * Kevin: Schedule next DiscoRetro♫, and note in the etherpad that tl;dr from team retros are encouraged

Issues raised in team retros

 * Analysis
 * Have we improved with documentation and communicating changes in data widely?
 * Regarding TextCat A/B test mix-up: "Team(s) handled the communication well--no complaining, finger-pointing, etc."
 * Our dashboards are a source of admiration from other teams; one person described them as "That awesome analytics platform that you use"...Dan continues to hear remarks such as "Discovery is awesome at A/B tests" and similar
 * Room for improvement: More tie-ins with the analysis teams from other verticals?..."Data Analysis Coworking Days" were awesome!
 * Should Mikhail have to do sys admin stuff? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps Guillaume could be more involved?
 * No interaction between Interactive Team and Analysis Team...Maps dashboard is languishing and is not being used (?)
 * Figure out if we want to split up Mikhail and Chelsy for meetings and teams
 * Interactive
 * Yuri handling the conversation on Wikivoyage regarding Maps (50+ replies!)...Feeling great to be working FOR and WITH the community
 * hard to track all the bullets and sync the phab tickets, onwiki discussions and actual live deployments all together
 * Concerns about ops: balance between autonomy and top-down control...but Guillaume is doing a great job and is helping with this
 * Concerns about status of integration testing
 * Portal
 * Success with qualtrics. Didn't end up using quicksurvey.
 * Some frustrations getting timely code reviews from people not on the team
 * Good support from Chris, Dan, Quim, and others after receiving uncivil responses
 * Extensive interactions with translation folks
 * Received volunteer contributions
 * Cooperation that we had with Comms (Ed and Jeff) was great!
 * The portal layout talk page, with involvement from community and team members, significantly improved the final design.
 * Didn't research page views within 60 days of the huge increase :(  :(
 * Search
 * phan (php static code analyzer) is proving a useful addition to CI testing
 * somehow we partially own the production logging infrastructure (by being elasticsearch "experts")
 * Ongoing frustrations with cindy (integration tests)
 * working with mobile team to implement geo features
 * Addressed some technical debt and made code look saner
 * Doing some good work with Graphs team to make visualizations easier (e.g. integrating w/WDQS)
 * Some concerns about being limited to weekly deployment window (but probably best for now)
 * Help from Chris and Benoit on getting request for comment/translations on the Village Pumps
 * Non-team-specific
 * Shifts in product management between Dan and Deb for analysis and search seemed to go well
 * Wikimania was fun and productive
 * You all might not see it much, but having a team of liaisons I (Chris) can talk to is like having a (small) army behind our work :)
 * Analysis, Interactive, Portal, and Search teams all had offsites or other gatherings where at least some members got to spend time together in person
 * Guillaume has shared some concerns about his prioritization and visibility of work across multiple teams
 * Translating our (major) communications should be more common (this is on me - CK)
 * Recurring "tech chats" have worked well for both search and interactive; search has sometimes invited Deb
 * KH: Try not to put in extra hours, generally. Time-sensitive occasional things are understandable.
 * Spark projects!
 * Lots of kool demo at last CREDIT showcase!
 * 1 DevSummit is being planned. Consider what Discovery might want to get out of that event+

Department-wide things that are working well

 * Very much appreciate the support in communicating with the community (Search says thanks to Chris & Deb!) Weekly status reports are great, too!+1
 * 2 Being involved in several of the recent technical conversations with Analysis and Search has been delightful. I (Deb) love hearing the thought processes behind some of the seriously techie things that we do as a team. It enables me to grow more knowledgeable about everything Disco.++
 * 1 Weekly status reports have really taken off and become an incredibly good way to communicate what's happening in Discovery+
 * 1 Despite having multiple sub teams, the Discovery team is still something that has a real existence. Not easy to do, but well done!
 * +1. I feel like generally Discovery has a lot more cross-sub-team cohesion than other verticals. Our smaller size does make that easier, but it's still the result of active efforts of people involved. So that's nice. :-)
 * We're doing well with taking into account those peeps that are remote and in vastly different time zones (scheduling meetings and chats) :)+
 * +1
 * Agreed! From my perspective as a SF-based staff member, it seems like we're really doing well at the remoteness thing because I can work from home with zero issues, and have few concerns about being remote from the UK for a few weeks later this month :-)
 * Good input and collaboration on ideas for the search results page from lots of people on the team
 * Great use of Phabricator to synchronise our efforts
 * This ties into the remote-friendlyness point above
 * Also increases our documentation and transparency

Department-wide things that could be improved

 * 6 The comment under Portal above about code reviews: we're getting big enough and dispersed enough as a team that we can have that cross-team prioritization problem. ++++++
 * One good thing though is that we are still close enough that a nudge may be all it takes to spur needed action
 * 3 Surveys—Qualtrics is limited in how many we can do and not lightweight. It'd be nice to have our own mini-surveys on search results, for example.+++
 * Reading's QuickSurveys don't address any of our needs
 * 5 Getting more (and sometimes clearer) descriptions into Phabricator on work that needs to be done.+++++
 * Would like to see some PM attention on WDQS future directionsDepartment-wide things that are a mixed bag
 * 4 We've gotten used to working with Deb—and made improvements in our process—so we're sorry to see her transition away from Search; OTOH, transitioning from Dan to Deb went smoothly, so transitioning back should be even easier. ++++
 * Some nodes in the team network have almost no direct connection, but more do than are strictly required
 * e.g., Trey says: thanks to various meetings and the unmeeting, I talk to almost everyone on the team at least every week or two—except Julien; I almost never talk to Julien. On the one hand, it could be a lot worse, on the other hand, it was better when we had the whole team DiscoRetro♫ more often.+
 * 3 Having a more limited role in Search is sad for me (Deb) - I've really enjoyed getting to know the team better and how they operate (like a well oiled machine!). However, transitioning over to the Interactive team in a limited role allows me to get involved with more cool things. I'm also super happy that I still get to work with Jan regarding Search/Portal and with Mikhail and Chelsy on the Analysis team.
 * I (Guillaume) is really happy to see Deb joining Interractive as well! :) +++

Other Department-wide notes, issues, concerns, questions

 * 8 Looking forward to Erika starting on Monday! Yay!+++++++

8 Looking forward to Erika starting on Monday! Yay!+++++++

 * Anything we should prepare? HR should handle most of the basic "welcome" stuff.
 * When she's in the office, it would be great if someone could take her to lunch
 * 1:1 meetings as she gets settled in
 * She should get invited to the unmeetings (Trey) and Discovery checkin (Kevin)

=== 6 The comment under Portal above about code reviews: we're getting big enough and dispersed enough as a team that we can have that cross-team prioritization problem. ++++++ (One good thing though is that we are still close enough that a nudge may be all it takes to spur needed action) ===
 * Reminder that it's OK to nudge people, even across teams
 * Often gentle friendly nudges will be appreciated
 * Some issues with specialization

5 Getting more (and sometimes clearer) descriptions into Phabricator on work that needs to be done.+++++

 * Task descriptions should have enough detail in the description that someone could figure out what it means
 * Worth a few seconds to create a decent title, and description
 * Mentioning other tasks either in the description or as a sub/parent task can help
 * Examples of helpful tasks used in Chelsy's onboarding:
 * https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T143137 & https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T143762  & https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T147216
 * Also helpful to add comments to indicate why it is changing state (moving to a column, getting reassigned, getting declined)
 * Is it acceptable to update a description of someone else's task, such as if the comment thread is really long?
 * Like a wiki: if you can improve it, go for it. Use discretion.

=== 4 We've gotten used to working with Deb—and made improvements in our process—so we're sorry to see her transition away from Search; OTOH, transitioning from Dan to Deb went smoothly, so transitioning back should be even easier. ++++ ===
 * Makes Dan happy to hear. Would like to hear what has improved. Could happen outside this meeting.
 * Example of an improvement: having devs attend weekly planning mtg
 * Deb has a way to add structure to what she does, subtley, by asking questions. It's great. It's a rare gift.

3 Surveys—Qualtrics seems limited and not lightweight. It'd be nice to have our own mini-surveys on search results, for example.+++

 * Qualtric and QuickSurvey are both limited. It would be great to have better options
 * Is QuickSurveys feature set helpful but the implementation is off?
 * It worked well for the team that created it, but doesn't help us--not based on page content, not across multiple pages
 * We tried to adapt it, but didn't really work
 * Qualtrics is expensive
 * Maybe when we have site-wide A/B testing, it could have some survey features

=== 3 Having a more limited role in Search is sad for me (Deb) - I've really enjoyed getting to know the team better and how they operate (like a well oiled machine!). However, transitioning over to the Interactive team in a limited role allows me to get involved with more cool things. I'm also super happy that I still get to work with Jan regarding Search/Portal and with Mikhail and Chelsy on the Analysis team. ===
 * As the transition back to Dan moves forward, if you have feedback, please share it!

Do people find this All-Discovery retrospective useful? Is the frequency right?

 * A few people said they like it; nobody expressed discontent
 * If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to follow up afterward with email!
 * (Offline suggestion: Every 2 months rather than 3?)

Action items

 * Erika should get invited to the unmeetings (Trey) and Discovery checkin (Kevin)
 * Katie asked HR to schedule a lunch meeting for Erika; Dan will add people as appropriate