Wikimedia Discovery/Retrospective 2015-06-16

Review of action items from last retro (May 6)

• Suggestion: Mobile team had a monthly showcase (a very positive/happy meeting)
  • DONE: We just had our first monthly showcase, and more are scheduled monthly
• Hopefully we can make our team page more visual
  • DONE: Team page now has photos
• Not sure what the point of some of the meetings is
  • DONE: Every meeting has a purpose ( https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Process#Recurring_Meetings )
• Need to get better with mailing list, process, etc.
  • IMPROVED: Process is defined and documented. No specific actions taken on "getting better w/mailing list").
• Lack of process is preventing us from getting some things done that we should (but is heading in the right direction)
  • IMPROVED: Process is defined and documented ( https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Discovery/Process )
• Getting work that the product owner wants doing actually picked up by engineers
  • IMPROVED: Hopefully the new process has improved this
• Establish prioritization -- What are our goals? Are we on track to achieve them?
  • IMPROVED: Hopefully Dan has made the goals and priorities clear
• Unclear how ongoing work (Wikidata Query Service, Maps & Geo) relate to our departmental objectives
  • IMPROVED: Hopefully this has been communicated by Dan and Wes
• We should all get together somewhere/sometime (ideally not at SF office)
  • IN PROGRESS: Wes is still working on this
• Need some kind of survey thing where people can say when they'll be available for offsite
  • DONE: This was done (google doc, google sheet)
• Still no schwag, patches, or t-shirts
  • IN PROGRESS: On the way, expected in early July

What went well

• Wes gives thumbs up to Dan's talk, other presentations, and team attending them
• Feels like we have a better handle on metrics now
• Feels good that someone (Oliver) is working on the relevance measurements (at least starting to have a plan is great)
• James is doing fabulous summrizations of external presentations
• Dan did an awesome presentation!
• Prioritising tasks has been working really smoothly by insisting they go through the PdM consistently
• State of the Map conference was hugely useful (conference in NYC)
• Habemus Scio! (hopefully we have found our data analyst)
• Hiring has been going well (aside from when Wes+Tomasz were out simultaneously)
• Meetings have been rpoductive, and often quick
• Good use of IRC channel (helps make us more of a team)
  • Using buffered clients is helpful so people get it even if they're not there (suggestions for Linux/Mac/Win?)
• Doing well accommodating remoties
• Nice onboarding template by Nik
  • +1. I'm using it for the Analyst job as a template.
• Feeling positive about recruiter transition (was worried, but seems OK)
• Deflected non-Discovery requests away from Oliver with some success
  • Oliver really appreciates support from Wes/Dan/Tomasz and others

What could have gone better?

• Clarify the association between prioritized tasks and team goals/milestones
  • Process for pulling tasks into sprints has not been communicated clearly
• Data Analysis is bushed; ongoing tasks suck up too much bandwidth to allow for long-term planningx
  • We are working on some short-term work at the cost of not doing longer-term beneficial work
  • Non-Discovery work didn't help, but hopefully improving
• Data Analysis is only half-scrum; we don't do points and Oliver's hairline would like us to switch (to scrum)
  • Another case of process not being communicated clearly
• Tuesdays feel like a write-off with all the planning (~4 hrs of meetings)
  • Wouldn't save time to spread it out over multiple days
  • Nik/Stas prefer clumping them in a single day
  • I feel better with one "meeting day" than lots of interrupting meetings on different days
• Clear blockers more quickly/frequently -- e.g. designate a scrummaster, or hold more frequent standups
  • Kevin is the "scrum master"
  • Example of blocker is portal EventLogging
    • Any code review is slow in WMF...requires frequent poking
    • If something gets blocked a long time and nothing breaks, maybe it is lower priority?
• We are working on a lot of things slowly, rather than a few things quickly
  • process based on code review is a forced pause, so some multitasking is unavoidable
• Confusion due to having engineering work in data workboard
• Foundation doesn't have standard for IRC buffers) (bouncers)
  • It's called email ;)
    • Google Wave?
  • If you email techsupport@wikimedia.org they can set you up with an irccloud account. On the downside you have to use their client, but it does the buffering and whatnot.
  • If you ask mukunda (irc: twentyafterfour) he has setup something on digital ocean for which he is willing to give out accounts as well
  • Max would rather not feel obligated to read logs from multiple channels
• Some information droppage (is Bob Flagg doing work for us? )
  • Bob is joining us as search relevance eng. Should have been announced.
  • When people are out, some stuff might not get delegated
• Didn't get David scheduled ito the retrospective
• Protecting Oliver and really everyones time from randomization tasks (is improving but ongoing challenge)
• Few of us sitting close to each other
• Two search outages recently
  • Nik had to bring cluster back while tired because others aren't trained up
  • Erik volunteers. Max woldn't mind but feels overloaded with maps stuff. Nik proposes David.
  • WMF contact list and/or Eng contact list should be kept updated
• We should have no single points of failure anywhere
• People being sick
• Budget has been a moving target
• Guiseppe has represented us in ops, but we might need more

What confuses us

• Are we hiring frontend engineers? Yes, we are. Thats our one open rec.

Retrospective of retro

• Went well. Important.
• Should it be half an hour longer?
  • Shorter encourages discipline
• Yuri needs a Mac :trollface:

Actionable Concerns (pulled from above)

Kevin

• Schedule our next retrospective
  • DONE. Retrospectives are now recurring meetings.
• Clear blockers more quickly/frequently -- e.g. designate a scrummaster, or hold more frequent standups
• Process for pulling tasks into sprints has not been communicated clearly
• Kanban (not Scrum) process has not been communicated clearly
• Everyone should make sure their contact info is up-to-date (https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/Contact_list)
  • Everyone has info now...I can't tell whether or not it is up-to-date
• Didn't get David scheduled into the retrospective
  • I have made a few changes to my process which will hopefully avoid this in the future
• Stacking meetings on one day works well for some people, but not for others
  • More people seem to propose stacking them, so will continue with existing schedule for now
• Lack of IRC norms regarding buffers/bouncers, and whether people read scrollbacks

Dan

• Confusion due to having engineering work in data workboard
  • FIXED (engineering work has been removed from analysis board)
• We are working on a lot of things slowly, rather than a few things quickly
• Data Analysis is bushed; ongoing tasks suck up too much bandwidth to allow for long-term planningx
• Protecting Oliver and really everyones time from randomization tasks

Wes/Tomasz

• Guiseppe has represented us in ops, but we might need more
  • IN PROGRESS: Wes is meeting with ops, and expects ops elastic support person for Q1
• Some information droppage (notably when Wes/Tomasz are out simultaneously, or Dan by himself)
  • Noted, and will remain vigilant in the future
• Few of us sitting close to each other
  • IN PROGRESS: Tomasz has proposed a new seating plan
• Budget has been a moving target
  • Can't go back in time to improve the past, but can improve moving forward
  • Wes is approaching grant funding and as issues arise will petition for additional funds as needed.

Nik

• Two search outages recently
  • Ops wrote up incident reports
  • Root causes are being tracked in phabricator
• Nik is a single point of failure