Wikimedia Release Engineering Team/Yak



Yak shaving day/Yak shaving week is a quarterly deep work mini offsite for the release engineering team.

🇩🇰 Skald's Yak Shaving Lore
Hwæt the Release Engineering team in days gone by and the managers that coached them had courage and greatness. We have heard of their brave campaigns…

📖 Definitions

 * Yak Shaving
 * "yak shaving is what you are doing when you're doing some stupid, fiddly little task that bears no obvious relationship to what you're supposed to be working on, but yet a chain of twelve causal relations links what you're doing to the original meta-task."


 * Yak Shaving Day/Week/Month/Year
 * A mini developer-driven quarterly offsite where we cancel meetings and focus on deep (and often neglected) work as a team

🐃 Yaktributes

 * Yaktributes
 * Portmanteau "Yak" and "Attributes"

A good yak (task for a yak shaving day/week/month/year). See our Yak shaving workboard on phab.


 * 1) Is obtainable within the allotted yak shaving window
 * 2) Has few external dependencies; i.e., if it's obvious you'd be blocked waiting for another team or individual not participating in the yak shave: probably best to avoid (unless that's the scope -- get to the blocker point)
 * 3) Is not a quarterly goal, necessarily -- don't feel obligated to work on quarterly goals unless that's what your heart most desires
 * 4) Is Self contained. If it's a small idea with a big potential impact that you're excited to work on: perfect

BONUS: Work with each other if you're into that. Shared hacking time is fun (for some...I hope 🥺)