Talk:WMF product development process/Archive 2
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Sounds like waterfall
The process as written here seems to imply that a feature, even a large one like VE, would go through all the phases, roughly in order, as a single effort. Basically it would culminate in a "big bang" release of the whole thing, months or possibly years after the initial conceptual work was done. That contrasts sharply with the agile and FOSS approach of "release early and often".
I believe (as do most agile and open source practitioners) believe that whenever possible, small increments of work (at most a few developer-weeks of effort) should move through all the phases, including release, so that real end-user feedback can inform later increments of the same major feature. I hope that is how this was intended to be used, but if so, it needs a fair bit of clarifying text. If the intent is to shift to a more waterfall-style development process, then that's a whole other discussion we should have. --KSmith (WMF) (talk) 20:45, 28 October 2015 (UTC)
Beta features
Could you perhaps discuss in this document the role of the "Beta features" system?
This was created as a place for people to opt in to new tools but has been used somewhat randomly. Sometimes new features bypass the beta system altogether - going straight into production (a recent example being the new notification icons) and sometimes things sit in the beta system indefinitely. Personally I'd really like it if there was a consistency about how the beta system was used, and also some objective, public, and measurable goals applied to each feature as the criteria for 'graduation' being an opt-out/default feature. Currently the beta system tells you how many people have often in to a given too, but not its retention rate or how many people that is as a % of active users etc.etc. No one likes surprises, and you've got a perfect platform to test and receive feedback, but it's just not seemingly part of the standard procedures. Wittylama (talk) 18:11, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
Is this other page superseded? There seem to be large overlaps in content. Nemo 18:20, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
Where did the flow page go?
Hmm - the rest of the content here got lost or moved - it was Flowized, now I can't find it. Did something get moved? Nemo, can you help? -Rdicerb (WMF) (talk) 19:13, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
- I think you're talking about Talk:WMF_Product_Development_Process. --Elitre (WMF) (talk) 19:15, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
- Oh dear. You're right. Thank you for the clarification! We have too many pages with the same name, and I didn't see anything in the log that looked like something had changed. *le sigh* -Rdicerb (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
- Yeah, looks like Flow has some bug about moves. Nemo 19:33, 5 November 2015 (UTC)
- Oh dear. You're right. Thank you for the clarification! We have too many pages with the same name, and I didn't see anything in the log that looked like something had changed. *le sigh* -Rdicerb (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 5 November 2015 (UTC)