Wikimedia Apps/Team/Retrospectives/2018-04-24

April 24, 2018

== Previous Retrospective Actions ==


 * DB to finish setting up more DB:Other Dev meetings (esp with Cooltey) DONE


 * Lani to schedule Chore Wheel meeting with Rita and Mikhail to clarify vagueries DONE


 * Lani to add Mikhail to Chore Wheel rotation DONE

"1-2-3 PASTE"

== Keep ==


 * Pasting in ticket numbers during stand-up: it helps keep things on track


 * Referring to tickets being worked on in standup, since this helps with understanding how we are tracking for release, and surface where further discussion is required earlier


 * Taking on big and interesting tasks, and suggesting ways for improving our team and processes


 * Engineer syncs


 * Sending a preview list of tickets prioritised prior to planning meetings, since this seems to help efficiency in estimation


 * More frequent check-ins between engineers.


 * Engineers meetings, because they help me to solve problems in my work in progress patches.

== Stop ==


 * Letting volunteer patches sit too long


 * Letting tickets stay in Design sign-off too long, because the longer a task is left there, the longer it will take for the developer to switch context back to that task in case changes are required.

== Start ==


 * Stricter adherence to Zeplin mocks when building layouts.


 * Engineering round table


 * Revisiting our ticket estimates on a regular basis


 * Estimating tickets based on time to complete rather than complexity


 * Establish a common team norm for points estimation, ideally based on time so that we can more accurately gauge timelines for down-the-line activities (user testing, marketing, cross-team coordination, etc)


 * Setting semi-flexible release dates to ease planning and communications


 * Using the Deadline task template so that we have added flexibility to visualize task prios on the release board

== Questions ==





== Action Items ==


 * Dedicate 5 min in eng sync to talk about vol patches and process


 * Schedule a biweekly engineering roundtable, or at least get the devs together to talk about making a regular meeting


 * @mention Rita in tickets that will need design review once they've passed code review


 * Dmitry: go back over past tickets to calibrate estimates (update https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Apps/Team/Android/Story_estimation )


 * Charlotte: Set down estimate norms (planning meeting)


 * Lani and Max: Update task templates to use Deadline form, Bump original thread with instructions