Readers/Web/Team/Retrospectives/Q3 Retrospective 2013-2014

2013/2014 Q3 Retrospective, Mobile Web

Agenda

 * Film reviews
 * Film reconstruction
 * Film analysis
 * How to make a better film
 * -fin-

Film reviews
https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/document/d/1lZ3cYUITGHNZ0sBkgpJEm3Uu-7EUAqmELwXvZlXDvLc/edit#heading=h.sp4en4133f63
 * 5/10 ( the start of a trilogy with way too much plot development for the later 2 movies)
 * (rushes out and demands a refund)
 * 7/10
 * 7/10
 * 6/10
 * 6/10
 * 5/10

Iteration Narhwak
Jan 6 - Jan 20 Velocity: 37 Bugs fixed: 12 Lightning Deploys: 4
 * Typography updates
 * TOC for Tablets
 * New diff engine -> stable
 * Updates to chrome (header)
 * User intent removed from profiles
 * A/B test infrastructure overhaul
 * PHP template exploration (spike)
 * Begin documenting JS
 * Anonymous editing discusion
 * Arthur prods about 'ready for signoff'
 * Kaity is really happy about typography
 * Kaity is disapointed about user profiles

Iteation Orangutang
Jan 21 - Feb 3 Velocity: 23 Bugs fixed: 8 Lightning Deploys:0
 * Juliusz becomes tech lead
 * Architecture summit
 * Mediawiki UI hack day #5
 * Preview screen removed from VE workflow
 * Limn Thanks graph
 * Left nav signup a/b test moved to stable [still running]
 * We start telling people they are logged in when they visit Special:UserLogin as a logged in user
 * Captcha refresh
 * New overlay UIs -> stable
 * We start measuring 'activated' users
 * Browser tests begin consistently failing
 * Jon prods about 'ready for signoff'
 * Kenan does a 'remote signoff' session
 * Kaldari feels frustrated about templates http://devopsreactions.tumblr.com/post/80665983757/when-you-read-the-new-specs-and-they-say-to-change-the

Iteration Peacock
Feb 4 - Feb 17 Velocity: 14 Bugs fixed: 51 deploys: 1
 * Discuss with VE how we can better collaborate
 * Browser infrastructure review (spike)
 * Scrolling to section selected by user in VE
 * VE typography made consistent with rest of MobileFrontend http://devopsreactions.tumblr.com/post/80055981841/working-on-the-layout
 * Searching enabled on special pages
 * Infoboxes on tablets
 * Jon goes on vacation
 * LD for mobile app
 * 'MobileFrontend' product created in BZ (Bugzille, not Belize)
 * Arthur prods about 'ready for signoff'
 * Bingle breaks

Iteration Queen Snake
Feb 18 - March 4 Velocity: 3 Bugs fixed: 4 Lightning deploys:
 * Tablet friendly overlays - issues, notifications, talk
 * Jon returns from vacation
 * Kaldamari is awesome, did tablet friendly overlays like a boss.
 * Started a lot of work and didn't finish

Iteration Racoon Dog
March 5 - March 17 Velocity: 39 Bugs fixed: 35 Lightning deploys: 1
 * Core change by volunteers breaks mobile login in certain situations
 * WAP deprecated
 * mobile-l wins over mobile-tech
 * Dropdown link inspector (started)
 * New toolbar for VE
 * Sharing code with desktop media viewer (spike)
 * Browser test audit
 * Red links -> beta
 * QA tests for diffs in stable
 * Lead photo abuse filter support
 * useskin=minerva supported
 * labs migration to eqiad
 * work on Winter and Personal Compact bar begins
 * talked about starting work on VE reference dialog, but had to wait for VE team
 * Tomasz on vacation
 * Arthur mini vacation

Iteration Squirrel Monkey
March 18 - March 31 Velocity: 13 Bugs fixed: 22 Lightning deploys: 1
 * Git-review hook introduced
 * Nearby broken (LD needed)
 * Flow and mobile gettogether
 * EXIF data spike/complaints from Commons about lots of mobile copyvios
 * Licensing updates to edit, talk, and upload interfaces
 * Switching between edit modes
 * Page images on search identified by ops as making Varnish cry http://devopsreactions.tumblr.com/post/80866774093/things-broke-badly-on-holidays
 * Link inspector gets styling (in the process a lot of groundwork for more mobile features in VE)
 * Typography refresh -> core
 * Elasticsearch support http://i.imgur.com/ZZ8Vltg.gif
 * Tomasz returns from honeymoon
 * Moiz suggests we do more user testing (with random people on the streets)
 * Kaldari is happy
 * VE/Mobile web reevaluate our collaboration, determine things have generally been going well, make vague plan about transitioning to VE taking over mobileification in the future, after we enable tablet redirect

Stuff that doesn't fit into timelines / recurring themes

 * Felt a bit sad when I raised questions on stories during planning meeting which hadn't been addressed by time of estimation meeting
 * Felt that we spent a lot of time talking about stories that were not ready for estimation
 * The tests are always broken! http://i.imgur.com/12RRgxf.gif
 * We didn't deliver any real user value (except for tablet users)
 * Still haven't found another dev

Characters
Tomasz: The guy with the voice of god - Morgan Freeman: http://www.firstclassfashionista.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/morgan-freeman-as-god.jpg

Arthur: the Stranger from The Big Lebowski

Moiz: Confused in the beginning, a wiseman later on. That kid from Rushmore: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-1N2dBhyKOlI/T-ZYg_hbQBI/AAAAAAABfFE/GPdSTVdFzAU/s1600/rushmore.jpg (not true, that's Steven) I'm feeling I have a better understanding of the team, our process and a bit more comfortable about where i can contribute. Thanks for making me home, people: http://media.giphy.com/media/12ZDIx1Mw1cXVm/giphy.gif

Kenan: learned about the dangers and the opportunities, mapping out a clearer path,

Max: Mad scientist who appears periodically to throw banana peels under others' feet. Pretends to be funny but he's not. Usually does his mad science projects in background screaming how everyone will die when the project is complete. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Doc_Brown.JPG (?)

Kaldari: Like Molly Ringwald coming of age. Early on, I was frustrated when my ideas about integrating templates into core got pretty much shut down at the Architecture Summit. It felt like being rejected by the popular kids (who wanted DOM-based parsing). But then I regrouped on other projects like typography refresh, tablet overlays, etc. and it was all like http://img2-3.timeinc.net/ew/i/2012/09/19/SIXTEEN-CANDLES.jpg.

Juliusz: felt a little bit like that at the beginning of my tech lead role: http://www.seejanewin.com/images/do-it-all.gif Trying to do a bit of mediation between various teams

Kaity: http://media.giphy.com/media/q9fohf0Erd50A/giphy.gif

Jon: Running around fighting failing browser test orcs and trying to band together a bunch of people to go to the eye of Gerrit but not really succeeding. Like a Frodo without a Sam. Possibly perceived as grumpy (blame the ring) and a bit of a loose cannon. Has Daddy issues like most Wes Anderson characters.

Film analysis
Mr Wolf: http://media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/32/ca/d2/32cad2cc2b329f87b9e88e57990d84ce.jpg
 * A lot of chaos; everyone has their own issues they're fighting - not feeling a lot of unification, eg kaldari fighting templates, jon fighting browser tests
 * all the characters are in different movies
 * spent *a lot* of time on VE; feels like we should be farther along by now
 * didn't feel like we delivered a lot of user value
 * not a lot of collaboration around the side projects
 * we need a Frank Underwood (House of Cards), or Mr. Wolf (Pulp Fiction) - someone who just gets things done, or kills them.
 * We did a lot more collaboration with other teams
 * this probably caused our velocity to drop - communication overhead
 * Felt like we interacted a lot more with community members - not necessarily instigated by our team
 * Having a hard time hiring into our team
 * Velocity graph all over the place - why? http://media3.onsugar.com/files/2013/12/10/026/n/1922398/2087e66bf8dc905d_thumb_temp35398911386717848/i/Chaotic-Christmas-Movies-Video.jpg
 * Stories were really difficult to estimate
 * VE work was really challenging - was it a result of how we do things? how the VE team does things?
 * It's not realistic to expect a velocity graph - the whole point is to have an average; probably not worth worrying about this, so long as we have the average
 * First iteration felt really strong, and then things dropped off
 * Getting into VE work and OOjs stuff was really hard and frustrating; things were just not built with mobile in mind and a lot had to be redone
 * Previously, MF was very basic, and now we're focusing on much more complex stuff - it's not surprising that things got more difficult and complicated
 * browser tests a huge recurring issue; eating up a lot of focus time and causing context switching
 * beta features, typography features also taking up focus
 * would like more transparency and visibility into VE
 * priorities seem really chaotic
 * no deadlines, we have no way to know or expect when things will be done
 * feels like anyone in the group can change priorities
 * feels like VE is always context switching; always interruptable
 * maybe a bigger organizational problem around differing team practices
 * Careful! let's not speculate too much into what's going on with them - it was challenging to estimate and predict
 * Difficult to communicate with VE team online - very easy in person, dangerous for remote collaboration
 * VE would not respond to bug reports
 * symptomatic of priority mismatch - eg we are not VE's top priority, but VE is our top priority
 * Overall, Moiz thinks this is all normal and generally good!
 * We did achieve some great things, like deprecating WAP, got a lot into core, great skin work
 * we should understate the fact that this team has taken on some really hairy problems. just because we haven't released it all yet, it doesn't mean that we haven't done great work on really tough problems
 * doesn't feel like we're unified in doing the 'legwork' - oojs, typography updates, browser tests
 * tech lead role switch felt good
 * felt more pre-work could have been done prior to estimation meetings, stories could have been more refined

Remaking the movie - themes for improvement

 * People being focused on different things (tablets, VE, plumbing, browser testing, QA, Max's work, beta features...) ++++++
 * by x date we'll have green browser tests for n weeks
 * any patch that breaks browser tests will be reverted
 * every iteration will be about ONE thing
 * Reorganize our meetings to really focus on the backlog
 * By the end of this quarter, the only things in beta are features that we actively worked on during this quarter
 * Getting VE to a state we can hand back to the VE team ++++
 * QA improvements +++

Decided

 * Reorganize our meetings to really focus on the backlog (Arthur)
 * By the end of this quarter, the only things in beta are features that we actively worked on during this quarter (Kenan)
 * Audit and decide what to do with existing beta features
 * Reevaluate at the end of the quarter during netxt retro - if this works and feels good, we can turn it into a team norm

What worked?

 * good conversations
 * good actions at end
 * Movie theme wasn't too painful
 * Talking is good
 * gifs are good
 * movie review at start was interesting and revealing

What what didnt?

 * time management(?)
 * little long
 * we forgot to hold hands it's not too late!
 * Not sure how much the iteration by iteration review was useful + but I did like the photos and screenshots
 * Too abstract (movie metaphor), I felt a bit disconnected, maybe I should watch more movies
 * no actual reenactment of movie scenes
 * Sound for remotes was below average
 * Can we do this more often, and shorter
 * weird phone call
 * no 3 week iterations :-(

What still puzzles you?

 * The ghost of mingle
 * MINGLEEEEE :(

Parking lot
Mingle -> Trello?