Engineering Community Team/Meetings

The Engineering Community Team organizes two public monthly meetings, always on Tuesday at 17:00 UTC: Check the Calendar for details about the next meetings.
 * ECT Showcase (last Tuesday of the month) - Showing completed tasks and sharing short term plans. Video hangout + streaming.
 * ECT Office Hour (second Tuesday of the month) - Pre-scheduled topics followed by Q&A. IRC.

We also schedule videoconferencing team meetings for the remaining Tuesdays. Their notes are also published here. If you'd like to attend please send us a request.

Meeting notes

 * For meetings hosted before October 2013, see User:Sumanah/archivedtldrmeetings

Quarterly goals April - June
We decided not to define them when Sumana was on sabbatical. We must define them now.


 * Add GSOC / OPW, a goal beyond "do them". To be discussed. Better selection process. Better preparation for mentors. Better bonding process.
 * Something about our first Facebook Open Academy
 * Architecture guidelines, performance guidelines
 * Project Management Tools: guidelines approved
 * Community metrics dashboard, we use it (welcoming newcomers, pushing sprints for bottlenecks...)
 * We systematically reach out to FLOSS projects we rely on

Discussion of systematic outreach to upstreams: goal is:
 * avoid bug reports falling through the cracks
 * give upstreams opportunity to give us special treatment :) and interview us, ask us for case studies, ask us what we want
 * have those often-quiet relationships, mailing list subscriptions in place to give us opportunities for summits, security releases, etc.

Let's discuss more and let's update the Engineering Goals next week.

March goals
Quim
 * quite overloaded, impossible list of tasks for this month, although I'd rather keep them than forgetting about them
 * many tasks are time based and can't be missed, difficult to delegate because the rest of the team is busy as well
 * proposing to pass the Index of Key Upstream Projects task to Andre/Guillaume (tools) and Sumana (components), Quim will send an email summarizing the situation

Vacation/conf

 * Sumana away March 24-28

2014-02-25
ECT Showcase meeting at 17:00 UTC via Google Hangout on Air. Use to send your questions & feedback.

Featuring:
 * New: Google Summer of Code 2014 and FOSS Outreach Program for Women/Round 8 (Quim)
 * Ongoing: FOSS Outreach Program for Women/Round 7 and Facebook Open Academy (Quim)
 * Ongoing: Project management tools/Review (Guillaume/Andre)
 * Recent Bugzilla software improvements: Common links on frontpage, saved reports, ... (Andre)
 * Bugzilla etiquette finalized (Andre)
 * Ongoing: Rebooting Annoying little bugs (Andre)
 * Ongoing: Requests for comment process (Sumana)
 * Report: Events/FOSDEM/2014 (Quim)
 * Zürich Hackathon 2014 participation (Quim)
 * (if time permits) Brief update on tech communications activities (Guillaume)

Bugzilla 4.4

 * Bugzilla was upgraded to 4.4, moved to a new server, and puppetized. It also displays common queries on the front page now.

PM Tools task

 * https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project_management_tools/Review/Requirements
 * Not to spend too much time playing with tools and reading their docs
 * Use list at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project_management_tools#What_are_the_alternatives_to_Mingle_and_Trello.3F
 * Guillaume thinks the array of tools should cover all infrastructure pieces, e.g. grouping like "Bugzilla + Gerrit + ..." when one tool does not cover all pieces.
 * List all options discussed, make clear it's a draft; below the cut we have tools that we won't discuss anymore and the reasons for this.
 * Guillaume & Andre to make a draft of the list of all tools
 * Make a cut (drop/discard some tools from list of candidates).
 * Email to teampractices@ to test the waters. "we have 9 tools, can we get to three? We need to clean the list / eliminate and focus the discussion."
 * Does the cut make sense? If not why?
 * Try to get agreement on the cut.
 * when things too silent, too noisy, or consensus: reach out to wider wikitech-l: We started gathering requirements, we worked with the teampractices@ list to prepare candidates, does this make any sense to you?

Then: prototypes and RFC?

RFC process
list of requirements & nonreqs for this document -- including whether this needs to exist. person to start with: csteipp. the one who really wanted this to exist. get it out of architects' heads & into a doc to point to so, know what this will need to look like. then use SF visit to fill that out, interview Brion for stuff
 * weekly cadence of RFC meetings
 * have a defined scope for arch guidelines 1.0

immediately: scoping. what is process for having areas finalized. (tags?) question: for each area, who is architect or acting architect? define areas such that gaps are obvious.
 * prioritization exercise -- use the clusters, have more sensible clustering. Have areas.

[ask Roan about process of becoming architect]

architecture guidelines out of draft form by April 15? no


 * personal goal by April 15: feel like I've improved as MW developer

TODO: Sumana to suggest an ECT/VDC budget for 2014-2015

Reminder: Sumana at Code4Lib in March and PyCon in April

Sumana just read _Switch_ by the Heath brothers

2014-02-11
ECT IRC meeting at 17:00 UTC via. See the minutes

Topics:
 * Project management tools/Review - (andre/guillom)
 * Bugzilla 4.4 upgrade - (andre)
 * Bugzilla Etiquette - (andre)
 * RFC coordination (Sumana)
 * OPW (Gumana)
 * Tech news and ambassadors (Guillaume)

2014-01-21
Monthly goals
 * Guillaume
 * January report delayed due to holidays etc, but it is shipped now.
 * Tech News is being shipped consistenly with the help of Odder, which is a great step in the way to consolidation. Some WMF product managers are also updating directly. Some progress.
 * Andre
 * Bugzilla 4.4 ready to go; waiting for Daniel, Sean and Andre need to agree on time when to switch database and DNS
 * Stakeholders of "PM tools evaluation" were individually contacted as a reminder to fill out the form
 * Slowly need to move from documenting needs to analyzing answers and decreasing number of candidates
 * Sumana
 * not started FOSDEM prep stuff
 * may move upstream list to Feb
 * In San Francisco in the next following two weeks.
 * Quim
 * GCI winners announced
 * New task, list of WMF employees with travel approval for the Zürich Hackathon 2014

Budget 2014-15, what does this mean for ECT
 * Do we need more people? Do we need more volunteer development budget?
 * Sponsoring volunteers to Wikimedia events, FOSS OPW...

2014-01-14
ECT IRC meeting at 17:00 UTC via

Meeting notes and IRC logs (backup copy)

Topics:
 * Project management tools/Review
 * Facebook Open Academy
 * Bugzilla 4.4 upgrade
 * MediaWiki/Homepage redesign/Design Document

2014-01-07
Last quarter review
 * Overall good. We accomplished what we wanted to accomplish.
 * We had one person less, but we were good at fine-tuning the plans regularly, and being in sync

January plans


 * Quim has currently too much on the plate. Can't take much work related to Architecture Summit. Welcoming help with "The Wikipedia Stack" session for FOSDEM.
 * Andre recommends Bug_management/Upstream_bugtrackers to get ideas about upstream projects we use
 * Sumana will work on better software architecture documentation in relation with the Summit, starting with Requests_for_comment/Process, as proposed by Rob: "Some of the reasons the documentation is so sparse is because we have a larger issue of process to sort out, but the right first step would be to try to write up something that is as complete as, say, Python's PEP process or PHP's RFC process, and collecting the list of questions that exercise produces so that we can have a larger conversation about what we want to do there."
 * Sumana will also take the preparation of "The Wikipedia Stack".
 * Sumana is also interested in verifying the data provided by Metrics Grimoire at http://korma.wmflabs.org/, but this might be a side project.

Other questions
 * Sumana: the training at hacker School and the fact of contributing to several projects has been very useful to see how unfriendly our community can be to newcomers, compared with other projects. Our complexity can be comparable to the Linux Kernel, with so many components and dependencies. Gerrit is utterly unfriendly for newcomers compared to GitHub. We need to highlight simple tasks and processes that newcomers can complete without needing all the background.
 * Quim: true. This was one of the reasons to apply for Google Code-in, and now we are in a better position to offer those isolated tasks, easy to complete. Still, there is a lot of work to be done.
 * "Architect" title discussion -- trailed off? outcome?
 * Quim: It was agreed that Wikimedia Foundation job titles shouldn't be mixed with technical community roles. WMF HR and community meritocracy are different things. Still, nobody contested the current role of "architects" of Tim, Brion, and Mark.
 * MassMessage & ​​related "who signs off on big new features" thing - what was the outcome?
 * different views on review and agreement process
 * Quim: ... unclear outcome. My personal interpretation is that WMF teams can lead in the observance of quality criteria for new big features coming from other community members, but they are not the gatekeepers. "The community" is who decides. Still, that discussion didn't end with e.g. a documented release process for these features. In my opinion the risk of having another clash in the future for the same reasons still exists.
 * what do we want to happen during Architecture Summit?
 * ECT is helping but we don't have any goal as a team other than a successful event.

2013-12-30
Video recorded, waiting to be migrated to Commons.

ECT Showcase meeting at 16:30 UTC via Google Hangout. Use to send your questions & feedback.

Featuring:
 * Google Code-in (Quim)
 * Documentation / training tasks (Guillaume)
 * Discovery reports
 * Conversion of manually-translated mediawiki.org pages to use the Translate extension
 * Adding TemplateData to the most used templates (sadly only on the English Wikipedia)
 * FOSS Outreach Program for Women (Quim)
 * Facebook Open Academy Program (Quim)
 * Project management tools/Review (Guillaume, presenting for Andre as well)
 * List of interested parties / stakeholders
 * Project management tools documents the current situation
 * Talk:Project management tools/Review will document people's current workflows, practices and habits, which we'll use to determine requirements
 * FOSDEM. Wikis devroom schedule, Wikimedia stand. (Quim)
 * Bugzilla Etiquette. (Guillaume, on Andre's behalf)
 * Bugzilla server migration (Quim, on Andre's behalf)
 * Bugzilla UI enhancements (Quim, on Andre's behalf)
 * Bugzilla taxonomy (Quim, on Andre's behalf)
 * Tech news news (Guillaume)
 * Now using MassMessage (and Edwardsbot as a temporary workaround)
 * Readability metrics, Subscription metrics, language metrics
 * End of year report
 * Shell access for Katie Filbert a.k.a. aude. (Quim)
 * Select one technical writer temporary contractor (Quim)

2013-12-17
January - March quarterly plans
 * Each team member elaborating on their Jan-Mar 2014 plans on Engineering_Community_Team
 * Looks good so far. We will polish the plan when Sumana is back on January
 * Project Management Tools, outreach programs and FOSDEM will take most of the work
 * Rebooting Annoying little bugs might be dropped if we are too busy

December
 * All in all on track
 * Andre will probably drop tasks depending on Bugzilla 4.4
 * Guillaume and Quim will probably drop/change Google Code-in tasks to be created
 * Holidays: Andre basically off since the 20th until the end of the month, although he will keep an eye on urgent Bugzilla reports. Guillaume and Quim well take some days off here and there, but keeping an eye on Google Code-in.
 * Guillaume and Andre to start defining questions/topics and setting up meetings with PM tools evaluation stakeholders but we don't expect a lot of progress during the holidays.

General planning
 * The problem about having to keep plans in different places can be solved by using LSTransclusion
 * The current planning format seems to work better to organize our work and communicate what is going on

2013-12-10
ECT IRC meeting at 17:00 UTC via

Meeting notes and IRC logs. (Backup copy)

Topics:
 * Google Code-in
 * FOSS Outreach Program for Women
 * Engineering Community team goals for January - March 2014

2013-12-02
Quick retrospective on the November goals Planning Quick overview of the December goals Quim: Let's go through the Jan Mar quarterly goals next week.
 * Guillaume, Quim and Andre quickly went over their goals and accomplishments for November
 * Guillaume, Quim and Andre quickly went over their planned goals for December

Tools discussion

Quim: what is the problem we want to solve?

Andre: as discussed on the team-practices mailing list: we're starting to have many tools like bugzilla, RT, Trello, Mingle. Each team likes their tool for various reasons. Some teams have moved from one tool to another. Long-term plan: agree on 1 or 2 tools, preferably open-source. Big question: how much are the teams willing to compromise?

Chris: teams using Mingle are starting to move away away from our self-hosted instance, to a hosted instance (by ThoughtWorks, makers of Mingle)

Quim: ECT's work is to facilitate a discussion in order to reach to a common reference. The Gerrit discussion served to find a reference that was enforced. Here we are not trying to enforce anything, although we hope that the reference helps new projects and teams to choose them.

How to get there?


 * This month: define the field:
 * requirements we're considering
 * options we're considering
 * All that coming from a community discussion on the team-practices list
 * Next quarter: discuss, discuss, discuss, agree on the list of requirements and agree on the One Single Tool. And ideally, start implementation, show something in Labs

Andre: summarize discussions on the team-practices list, define a set of criteria and use it to build a table and see what tools meet them

Quim: There is going to be plenty of room for bikeshedding, and it's our role to prevent bikeshedding. We shouldn't have an opinion about the tool but our goal is to guide and facilitate the decision process. We need to identify the primary stakeholders: RobLa, Arthur Richards, S Page, and other people who are interested but don't need to be as involved in the process

One possible split of responsibilities for Andre and Guillaume: Andre starts discussions and facilitates them, Guillaume summarizes and documents (using s to avoid cyclic discussions). Guillaume will also see what we can reuse from the previous discussions that happened over the past few years.

2013-11-26
ECT Showcase meeting at 16:00 UTC via Google Hangout. Use to send your questions & feedback.

Featuring:


 * Google Code-in kickoff, and ECT related tasks already closed. Qgil, Andre, Guillaume.
 * Dashboard for tasks about technical communications
 * 10 students so far, 2 essays completed (in English and Romanian), 6 underway, 3 failed or abandoned
 * Tech news news: Guillaume.
 * Keeping the weekly rhythm, there's a good process now. Each week, the newsletter has been available in 12 to 14 languages, making it AFAIK the most translated weekly publication across Wikimedia projects. MassMessage has been deployed on all wikis and we've tested it successfully to deliver Tech news; we're waiting for the deployment of a final bugfix before switching to this delivery system.
 * FOSS Outreach Program for Women - Round 7, participants announced. Qgil
 * Bugzilla custom CSS cleanup: 16 unneeded CSS files removed, 6 left to stay. Andre
 * Bugzilla Etiquette: Initial draft created, looking for feedback. Andre
 * FOSDEM main track session accepted, and Wikimedia stand proposal submitted. Qgil
 * Technical Writer position published. Qgil
 * ECT Quarterly Review. Qgil

2013-11-19
Last week
 * FOSDEM: Erik Moeller's main track proposal "The Wikipedia Stack" has been accepted. No public page yet. Dimitar submitted an application for a Wikimedia stand.
 * Quarterly review: all went well. QA volunteers' priority was demoted. Chris mentions that this decision is in sync with the prioritization of goals to be presented today in their quarterly review.
 * Google Code-in going well; tasks are being claimed and worked on. Quim says: some tasks have already been completed with patches in Gerrit, which is an argument we can use to convince developers to become mentors of coding tasks.
 * Bug 54985 - Set up SecurePoll poll on enwiki for Arbitration Committee elections fell between the cracks. It was "normal" when it was submitted but then nobody noticed until last week, and now it is "highest". Andre will think how to avoid that requests like this are missed.

Planning
 * Andre must update his quarterly reviews. The rest of quarterly / monthly goals is up to date.
 * Activity pages for ECT:
 * Andre to decide whether to add one for collaboration tools or rename Bug management, increasing its scope
 * Merge "Mentorship programs" and "Volunteer coordination and outreach" into "Outreach"
 * Create one for Upstream relations

2013-11-12
ECT IRC meeting at 17:00 UTC via

Meeting notes and IRC logs. (Backup copy)

Topics:
 * FOSS Outreach Program for Women
 * Google Code-in
 * Engineering Community team quarterly review

2013-10-29
ECT Showcase meeting at 16:00 UTC via Google Hangout http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y3Gl-oR2ucU Use to send your questions & feedback.

Featuring:


 * Google Code-in ideas page. Qgil
 * Technical communications/What you can do? guillom
 * GSoC & FOSS OPW wrap-up presentation and lessons learned. Qgil
 * Community metrics: Who contributes code. Álvaro del Castillo
 * New guided bug entry form for Bugzilla newcomers -- andre
 * InlineHistory in Bugzilla, showing metadata changes between the lines -- andre
 * Tech/News — has resumed a weekly publication schedule, is translated into at least half a dozen languages every week. guillom
 * Pywikibot migrated from Sourceforge to Bugzilla; import script by Legoktm, imported 400 tickets, triaged 100 tickets over the weekend -- andre
 * Wikis devroom @ FOSDEM accepted (call for participation). Qgil
 * https://blog.wikimedia.org/c/technology/ and Technical communications/Tech blog activity . guillom
 * New experimental process for Engineering Community Team/Meetings. Qgil

2013-10-22
Google Code-in (selection by Google by Nov. 1; program starts on Nov 18; then it lasts about 7 weeks, until Jan. 6)
 * We're going to apply; this is about many many small tasks, each one taking ~2-3 days for a 13-17yo student to complete during their free time
 * Programming: only 1 of the 5 areas of this program. An opportunity for other areas: QA, doc, marketing, design
 * No critical mass last year
 * ECT, QA and Design teams are the only ones concerned at the moment; other teams aren't really prepared for this yet. We may involve them later on during the program, when we/they see progress on other tasks
 * Mentors must respond/review tasks within 36h, and ideally within 24h
 * < Discussion about QA's involvement in google Code-in >
 * Andre: triage-related tasks.
 * Guillaume: Can think of 3 tasks at the moment, one is recurring every week so that makes a few more, another one can be reused a few times as well
 * Quim suggests: Documentation pages to update (use outdated or similar), writing small tutorials (step by step), screencasts, etc. Guillaume will ask the Liaisons team
 * Quim: will find community management-related tasks

Other topics:
 * pywikipediabot bug day
 * ECT Showcase, if there is anything to plan.
 * Things Guillaume may have missed that you really want him to know :)

2013-10-15
Full log.
 * We agreed to prepare Wikimedia's application to the Google Code-in program:
 * qgil: set up Google Code-in page and Google Form with the info agreed here so far
 * qgil: agree participation with QA, UX
 * qgil: coordinate with ECT for outreach tasks
 * andre__ and qgil : triage EASY bugs focusing on code and documentation.
 * We agreed to use try MeetBot in the next ECT meeting on IRC. Instructions.
 * andre__ and qgil to focus first on Google Code-in, and then plan Bug of the Week on November, according to the results obtained.
 * Guide to plan monthly goals: what completed tasks do you want to show at the showcase meeting?

2013-10-01
Experimenting with ECT meetings
 * Quim: would like to work more as a team. We're working well as individuals at the moment, and it's working well overall, but we might be able to work even better together


 * Also, we ought to work more closely with liaisons, community advocacy and the communications team at the WMF


 * And work more closely with "the community" (discussion about what this entails exactly)


 * Monthly check-in: what did we do, and what would we like to do. (reuse monthly report)
 * i.e. like quarterly review, but more lightweight and monthly. Also relates to Rob's wish of getting that monthly showcase of what was done.
 * And liaisons / LCA / Comms could be invited to that monthly retrospective / sync-up
 * One public Google hangout per month; two week later office hour on IRC
 * Release management and QA have now their own meeting. Still invited optionally to ECT meetings and we are open to topics proposed by them.