Development policy/Code Stewardship/FY18Q4-status

Introduction
The Code Stewardship model was the outcome of a number of discussions that occurred within the Code Health Group. tldr; In order to drive improvements across the code base, we needed to know who to work with. The Code Stewardship model looks to address this by defining a person or group to function as the primary contact.

Updates to Developers/Maintainers
During Q2 the paradigm of Code Stewards was added to the Developers/Maintainers page. As this page serves as the primary source to the community for information about points of contact for the various components/extensions/services, it was deemed a good launch point for introducing the Code Stewardship model.

In addition to the various updates to the Developers/Maintainers page over the course of the last two review cycles, a dashboard of sorts was added to the top of the page during Q4. The dash is intended to provide a quick glimpse into the current Code Stewardship status.

Code Stewardship Review
As an outcome of the sunsetting working group, the Code Stewardship Review process was defined during Q2.

Starting Q3 the Code Stewardship Review process was put into place. The focus being to review high priority components/extensions/services that appear to be un/under funded and deployed to the WMF production environment.

The goal of this process is two-fold, identify a Code Steward, and define a path forward for the item being reviewed.

Below are the specific items that were reviewed in the last two quarters of FY18. More information can be found on the Code Stewardship Review Work board.

Q3FY18 Review cycle AbuseFilter
Status: Stewards - Platform Team

Outcome: Sustain - Passive Maintenance for near term. Working on plans to expand support.

TimedMediaHandler
Status: Stewards - Readers Engineering Team

Outcome: Sustain

IRC RecentChanges
Status: Stewards - Analytics Team

Outcome: Migrate to new solution

RelatedSites
Status: Stewards - CommTech Team

Outcome: Sunset/Undeploy

TranslationNotifications
Status: Stewards - Language Team

Outcome: Sustain - Passive Maintenance for near term. Working on plans to expand support.

LiquidThreads
Status: Open

Outcome: Pending additional review with CTO/CPO.

Zotero Translation Server
Status: Stewards - Audiences/Contributors/Editing Team

Outcome: Migration - Zotero Translation Server as deployed in WMF is dependent on a tech stack that is EOLing in August. Plans are in place and work being done to move off that stack and use newer NodeJS based Zotero solution.

FlaggedRevs
Status: Stewards - Collaboration Team

Outcome: Pending

Geodata
Status: Stewards - Search Platform Team

Outcome: Sustain

UrlShortener
Note: This item was actually addressed prior to the start of the quarterly review cycle.

Status: Stewards - Platform Team

Outcome: Sustain

FY19 Annual Plans
FY19 will see an expansion of the Code Stewardship model with the primary goal of removing as many gaps as possible. For more information, please see the Code Health Program Annual Plan.

Code Deployment Review
One area that we are discussing in the Code Health Group is revisiting the Code Deployment Review process(aka Review Queue). The process serves as a gatekeeper of sorts to ensure that various requirements are met prior to the initial deployment of new code into the WMF production environment. Although not called out specifically in the FY19 annual plans, the long-term success of the Stewardship model will need the Code Deployment Review process to take into account Stewardship and maintenance plans.

FY20 Annual Planning Process
One of the primary objectives of getting Code Stewards defined is to enable better maintenance/sustainability planning for deployed code.

We will be working to augment the annual planning process with maintenance/sustaining elements. Working with the Code Stewards we will build an understanding of what it will take to support deployed code (code reviews, bug fixes, features, etc...) and look to fund accordingly.

Summary
Overall, the first two quarters of actively developing and deploying the Code Stewardship model has been positive. We've been able to get some higher priority areas of code supported and even some pending concerns addressed. That being said, there's still work to be done.

The continued Code Stewardship work will be an enabler to many of the other areas of improvement that we are driving such as reduction of Technical Debt, increased Code Health, and overall increased developer community happiness.

Code Stewardship is a clear message from the Foundation that we are here to support the technology and technical community behind the mission.