Wikimedia Engineering/2015-16 Q2 Goals
Purpose of this document: Goals for the Wikimedia Product and Technology groups (collectively, Wikimedia Engineering), for the second quarter of fiscal year 2015–16 (1 October 2015 – 31 December 2015). The goal setting process owner in each section is the person responsible for coordinating completion of the section, in partnership with the team and relevant stakeholders.
Status fields can use the following templates: 
In progress, 
To do, 
Postponed, 
Done or 
Partially done
Product[edit]
Goal setting process owner: Dan Garry
We build the anonymous path of discovery to a trusted and relevant source of knowledge.
Our focus will be on building on-top of our anonymous and trusted search stack to improve relevancy, expose additional content and leverage locally relevant knowledge.
For the below goals, the objectives are relatively finalised, but the key results and dependencies still need further definition before the goals are locked in.
Search[edit]
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Improve language support for search. |
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|
Dec 2015 | Done
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| Make www.wikipedia.org a portal for exploring open content on Wikimedia sites. |
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|
Dec 2015 | Not done
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Wikidata Query Service[edit]
The Wikidata Query Service Team achieved its Q1 goal to release the Wikidata Query Service to production, with a public endpoint. In Q2, development on the project will be put on hold, user feedback about what features are missing will be collected, and usage of the service will be measured over the course of Q2; this will be used to assess whether further development will be required in Q3.
Maps & Geo[edit]
The Maps Team is currently on track with its Q1 goal to release the Maps tile service to production, with a public endpoint, in Q1. In Q2, development on the project will be put on hold, user feedback about what features are missing will be collected, and usage of the service will be measured over the course of Q2; this will be used to assess whether further development will be required in Q3.
Analysis[edit]
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Improve understanding of user satisfaction for search by iterating and improving on the search satisfaction metric. |
|
|
Dec 2015 | Not done
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| Support ongoing evaluation of usage of Wikidata Query and Maps services to decide on what's next for these services. |
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Dec 2015 | Done
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| Create recurring performance indicator on referrer traffic from the primary search engines and determine what features may have largest impact on referrer metric. |
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Dec 2015 | Not done
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Notes:
- In response to a request from the Head of Research and the Vice President of Product, the Discovery Analysis Team dedicated one of its analysts at 33% capacity to the annual fundraising campaign to aid in ensuring its success. This reduction in anticipated capacity places some of the above goals, particularly the first one, at risk.
Goal setting process owner: User:Trevor Parscal (WMF)
The Editing Department build collaborative, inclusive tools for creating and editing free knowledge. In Q2, the Department will focus on rationalising technologies and strengthening engineering practices whilst delivering on the key user workflows for editors across the product range.
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus: The visual editor and other editing improvements released to less-active accounts and logged-out users on the English Wikipedia. |
|
Community Liaisons
Communications Design Research |
EOQ | Part done; some parts delayed
|
| Strengthen: Prototype and research suggestion interfaces for the visual editor and ContentTranslation. |
|
Design Research
Research & Data |
EOQ | Partially done
|
| Experiment: Experiment with other kinds of editing and content. |
|
Design Research | EOQ | Partially done
|
VisualEditor Team[edit]
Involve more people than ever before in the collaborative effort of building free knowledge through improving the usability, stability and performance of VisualEditor, integrated with the developing reading experience.
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus: Increase use of VisualEditor by releasing VisualEditor to more accounts and anonymous users on English Wikipedia | More editors use VisualEditor | Community Liaisons | EOQ | Delayed by scope increases
|
| Strengthen: Improve support for math editing by improving the UX of the Math extension and researching its usability | It's easier to create and edit formulæ from within VisualEditor | – | EOQ | Done
|
| Strengthen: Improve support for graph editing by improving the UX of the Graph extension and researching its usability | It's easier to create and edit charts from within VisualEditor | – | EOQ | Done
|
| Experiment: Increase value of contributions by prototyping and researching integrating edit recommendations | We have an informed plan for next steps for integrating edit recommendations | Design Research
Research & Data |
EOQ | Delayed by other priorities
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| Experiment: Improve VisualEditor on mobile devices by prototyping and researching using VisualEditor on mobile devices | We have an informed plan for next steps for using VisualEditor on mobile devices | Design Research | EOQ | Partially done
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Collaboration Team[edit]
Increase the participation, mentoring and awareness of activity on the site by bringing structured conversations to both talk pages and the editing experience by improving and deploying Flow where it can help most.
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus: Improve awareness of activity by providing a cross-wiki notifications feature | Echo can deliver notifications between many wikis, allowing users to access their notifications from any content wiki on any other content wiki | Security
Community Liaisons Technical Operations |
EOQ | In progress
|
| Strengthen: Increase access to Flow by deploying and supporting an opt-in system for it | Users have the ability enable Flow on their talk page | Community Liaisons | EOQ | In progress
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| Experiment: Increase engagement with notifications by prototyping and researching improvements to the notifications page | We have an informed plan for the next steps for improving the notifications page | Design Research | EOQ | In progress
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Multimedia Team[edit]
Enrich the content of our projects with more use of multimedia assets, by streamlining media contribution with UploadWizard, and evolving the rich editing experience to better suggest media.
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus: Increase media contribution by integrating media upload into VisualEditor's media dialog and drag-and-drop system | Users can upload media files directly within VisualEditor by browsing or dragging-and-dropping | – | EOQ | Done
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| Strengthen: Improve reliability by resolving UploadWizard bugs that cause users to start over | Users can use UploadWizard to mass-upload without interruption | – | EOQ | Partially done
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| Experiment: Improve multimedia editing workflow by prototyping non-destructive image editing | Users can make basic changes to images such as crop, rotation, etc. directly on the wiki | Performance | EOQ | Done
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| Experiment: Improve value of content by researching the learnability of content to inform future prioritisation of feature development | We have an informed plan for next steps for multimedia contribution features | Design Research | EOQ | Partially done
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Language Team[edit]
Growing and accelerating projects with smaller content bases by providing and promoting enhanced Content Translation tools for translating content from projects with larger content bases.
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus: Improve user retention by adding additional 'suggestion' features such as customised lists and adding additional relevant notifications | Increase in the number of translations per user | Research & Data | EOQ | Done
|
| Strengthen: Improve reliability by complying with WMF infrastructure requirements as defined by Services, Tech Ops and Security teams | ContentTranslation complies with WMF infrastructure requirements | Ops, Services | EOQ | Done
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| Strengthen: Improve reliability by fixing high-priority bugs that affect basic functionality | Users can use ContentTranslation without interruption | Parsing | EOQ | Done
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| Experiment: Increase visibility for third parties by collecting and sharing parallel corpora of translation modifications | API will be able to access the parallel corpora | Ops | EOQ | Partially done
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Parsing Team[edit]
Increasing the integrity, accessibility and stability of content by providing Parsoid as both a bridge for editing wikitext documents, but also a rendering system for viewing and querying them.
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus: Improve editing experience and draw closer to Parsoid HTML for read views by implementing support for native Parsoid extensions | Parsoid has an extension registration mechanism and native support for galleries | – | EOQ | Done; <gallery> will be implemented in Q3; <translate> and testing extensions done
|
| Strengthen: Improve mobile reading experience and draw closer to Parsoid HTML for read views by improving multimedia support in Parsoid | Parsoid's HTML5 DOM spec and HTML generation have been updated for audio and video | – | EOQ | Postponed; Deprioritized below other requests; Will be picked up in Q3
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| Strengthen: Modernise parsing infrastructure to use modern Web standards by replacing Tidy with the HTML5 parser in MediaWiki core | MediaWiki has an HTML5-compliant parser for fixing PHP parser output | – | EOQ | Partially done - rollout is more complex than anticipated; Incremental roll-out of smaller pieces
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| Experiment: Improve editing experience and take advantage of performance optimisation opportunities by prototyping some form of opt-in / opt-out system for well-balanced template output | MediaWiki has a mechanism for templates to specify their output as balanced or not | – | EOQ | Partially done; Implementation sketch in place; Prototypes to be done; Has to go through RFC process
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Goal setting process owner: User:AGomez_(WMF), User:Khorn_(WMF)
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus: Support the Big English fundraiser | Fundraising creative reaches their donation goals in December |
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21/1 - 12/31 | Done
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| Strengthen: Get France campaign tech-ready | Fundraising creative reaches donation goals in October (in France) |
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10/23 | Done
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| Experiment: Support Banner History rollout | Fundraising creative is able to see patterns and problems with banner consumption, before December |
|
10/1 - 10/31 | Done
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| Experiment: Start investigating SmashPig as its own code project |
Rough estimate of the work involved to create the open source project -OR- a decision not to move forward with independent payment libraries |
Unknown |
EOQ | Postponed - Extremely disruptive conversations were endangering our mission-critical Q2 fundraising goals. Postponed for a less complicated time.
|
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strengthen: Drive engagement by launching Link Preview on mobile web beta and Read More on web beta | Engagement (5% increase in links clicked) in beta or on non-EN Wikis (Link Preview T111329, Read More T94906) |
|
EOQ | Partially done
Read more is on beta, link preview is on hold |
| Experiment: Drive app retention via feeds and modern UX (notifications Q3) | iOS App overhaul released
7 day 15% of users retained (up from 10% in Sept ‘15) (Feeds T104415, Modernization T104510) |
|
EOQ | Partially done
Notifications pilot in place. |
| Focus: Measure MediaWiki API usage, and data dump loads. | Availability of usage metrics on Hadoop warehouse for analysis. (T102079) |
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EOQ | In progress
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| Strengthen: Investigate migrating API traffic to OAuth. | Decision on if migration is desirable; then measurable impact based on existing usage (currently unknown) |
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EOQ | To do
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| Strengthen: Release Auth Manager: MediaWiki plug-in security architecture | Usage (# of services using new architecture) (T89459) |
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EOQ | In progress
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| Experiment: Prototype services based architecture for web and apps | Working web app with feature parity of current mobile web stable reading experience (not scalability, quality). (main task T113066, Wikimedia Developer Summit 2016 discussion T114542) |
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EOQ | Done
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UI Standardization team[edit]
Goal setting process owner: Volker Eckl
| Objective | Key Result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Basic stylesheet of accorded design properties |
Basic stylesheet ("base.css") of generally accorded design properties/values to spec implemented in a central repo & accompanying HTML. |
Designers on web-facing teams, community involvement | EOQ | In progress
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| Enhance accessibility of Living Style Guide (Blueprint) & WMF libraries |
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Editing (OOjs UI), community involvement | EOQ | In progress
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| Style Guide |
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Design Research team | EOQ | In progress
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| Objective | Key results | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strengthen: Establish baseline for measuring community satisfaction with WMF tech support | Completed Tech Support survey across multiple Wikimedia projects and languages | Learning and Evaluation support | Mid-November | Done
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| Focus: Include Wikimedia communities in goal development and prioritization | Completed cross-project Community Wishlist survey, with community members voting on priority | EOQ | In progress
| |
| Focus: Address current top-priority community technical requests | At least 3 mid to large-sized requests from existing wishlists | EOQ | In progress
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Technology[edit]
Goal setting process owner: Kevin Leduc
In progress
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus: Use Hadoop infrastructure to replace computation of Wikistats | Replicate 5 of wikistats most popular pageview reports defined here. | Research (Erik Zachte) | In progress
| |
| Strengthen: Pageview API | API is operationalized and ready to be queried by outside world. A blog post is published on Wikimedia’s blog. | Services Team | Done Blogpost
| |
| Experiment: Build infrastructure Scalable Event Bus | A service to produce to kafka with a standardized schema is running in production. | Services Team | In progress
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Goal-setting process owner: Rob Lanphier
(previously discussed/published at WMF, but not posted here until 2015-12-11)
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus: Prepare WikiDev '16 | Demonstrate that we can develop a modern system in an inclusive, consensus-oriented, open manner. Large number of diverse RfCs, with ample discussion prior to WikiDev '16 | Wide participation in Engineering | 2016-01-04 | Done - Preparation happened, summit resulted :-)
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| Strengthen: Improve ArchCom utility | Set up Architecture Committee to succeed. Maintain one public IRC meeting per week |
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2015-12-31 | Done - 10 IRC RFC review meetings, plus 3 “Agenda bashing” meetings for WikiDev ‘16. Most were at the usual time (14:00 PT)
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| Experiment: ArchComm naming | Think through our loaded naming scheme, possibly renaming bits (e.g. “Architecture Committee” and “RfC”) | Consultation over naming | 2015-12-31 | Not done - oh well
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Goal-setting process owner: Ori Livneh
Speed is Wikipedia's killer feature. ("Wiki" means "quick" in Hawaiian.) As the Wikimedia Foundation’s Performance team, we want to create value for readers and editors by making it possible to retrieve and render content at the speed of thought, from anywhere in the world, on the broadest range of devices and connection profiles.
The following is a summary of the 2015–16 Q2 Performance team goals.
| Objective | Key results | Dependencies | Estimated time of arrival | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Availability | Make MediaWiki code ready for concurrent deployment across multiple data centers. This is a milestone on the way to full deployment (T88445). | TechOps | EOD | In progress
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| Reporting | We'll publish weekly performance reports that provide clear and compelling insights into important performance characteristics. | None | When ready | Done, but cadence is monthly for now.
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| Faster painting | We want a 10% reduction in the time-to-first paint across desktop and mobile. | None | When ready | Done
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Goal setting process owner: Greg Grossmeier
All tracked in: #releng-201516-q2 - More details at Wikimedia_Release_Engineering_Team/Goals/201516Q2
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| STRENGTHEN
Reduce CI wait time |
|
Operations / WMF Labs | EOQ | Not done
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| FOCUS
Reduce number of deploy tools from 3 to 2 |
|
Services / Operations |
EOQ | Not done
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| FOCUS
Retire Gerrit and Gitblit in favor of Phabricator |
|
(small) Operations / DevRel | EOQ | Not done
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| FOCUS
Release MediaWiki 1.26 |
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WMF Engineering
MW Technical Community |
Mid-Nov | Done
|
In Wikimedia Research we use qualitative and quantitative methods to provide strategic insights and technological solutions to the movement and the Foundation, to foster innovation and to inform the development of new products.
Research & Data[edit]
Goal setting process owner: Dario Taraborelli [ Wikimedia Research goals overview ]
| Objective | Key results | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FOCUS
Streamline ownership of research / data-related work |
Publish a map for internal use of who is responsible for specific requests around research and analytics. (T112317) |
|
10/1-10/31 | In progress
|
| STRENGTHEN
Revscoring integration |
Bring revscoring to fruition to our users as a Beta Feature (score integration into RC feed) (T112856) |
|
EOQ | In progress
|
| STRENGTHEN
Productize article and link recommender systems |
Article creation (T112321) and link (T112322) recommendation productized as services so they can be integrated with products and community tools. |
|
EOQ | In progress
|
| EXPERIMENT
Value-added research |
Deliver research on historical data to quantify who adds value to English Wikipedia (T99172) |
|
EOQ | In progress
|
| EXPERIMENT
Reader segmentation research (stretch) |
Deliver research on reader segments and behavioral patterns (T112326) |
|
EOQ | In progress
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Design Research[edit]
Goal setting process owner: Abbey Ripstra [ Wikimedia Research goals overview ]
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| STRENGTHEN
Mentor people to do quality design research (those not on DR team). |
One person outside the design research team does a complete design research project to DR team standards, expanding the number of people who do design research well. |
|
EOQ | Done
|
| STRENGTHEN
Design Research workshop to build collaboration capacity with product teams. |
Workshop happens, and product teams learn more about collaboration with Design Research and vice versa. |
|
MidQ | Done
|
| STRENGTHEN
Improve participant recruitment process |
Implement changes to reduce steps in recruitment (of design research participants) process to make recruiting more efficient. |
|
EOQ | Done
|
| FOCUS
Collaborate with product teams to implement design research projects. |
Design Research has done design research projects in collaboration with product teams to inform human centered product development. |
|
EOQ | Done
|
| EXPERIMENT
Persona interviews |
12 persona interviews completed |
|
EOQ | Partially done
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Goal setting process owner: User:CSteipp (WMF)
We make life hard for the people who want to harm our sites or the people that use them.
| Objective | Key result | Dependency | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Automated security static analysis of MediaWiki |
|
None |
EOQ | Done
|
| Expand developer training |
|
None |
EOQ | In progress
|
| (stretch) Document and report initial metrics for security reviews |
|
None |
EOQ | To do
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Goal setting process owner: Gabriel Wicke
For details, see the Phabricator task.
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Strengthen: Build out the REST API | Provide cached & purged REST API entry points for at least two high-traffic API use cases, and work with users to speed up page loads. | Reading, Editing |
EOQ |
|
| Focus: Set up an event bus and change propagation solution | Key change events like edits, renames, deletes available in a publish-subscribe event bus. Basic change propagation / pre-generation functionality for REST services operational. | Analytics | EOQ |
|
| Experiment: Prototype an API-driven web front-end | Gather information to inform our longer-term front-end architecture by prototyping a service-worker / node.js based front-end. | Reading | EOQ |
|
Goal setting process owner: User:Mark Bergsma (WMF)
| Objective | Key result | Dependencies | ETA | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Focus: Encrypt PII on cross-data center links |
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EOQ |
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| Strengthen Security: Strengthen infrastructure user authentication |
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EOQ |
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| Experiment: Support bare metal servers in Labs | Allow provisioning of physical servers within the Labs network, governed by Labs Puppetmaster and LDAP user accounts | EOQ |
| |
| Strengthen Incident monitoring infrastructure |
|
EOQ | Partially done
|