+teampractices
On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 4:17 PM, Greg Grossmeier <g...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > Hello all, > > First, some history and context: > > The #roadmap project[0] in our Phabricator instance was set up by Erik M > as a trial way of tracking upcoming releases, deployments, and generally > "new things of note", as these previously weren't tracked in one place. > It has a workboard[1] that is is broken up into: > * one column for each week for the current month > * one column for each remaining month in the current quarter > * then "not soon" > > The scope of this project covered both "things that might break the site > or are otherwise risky" and also "things people might expect to be > notified about". At the time things got released quite often without a > standard way for people to find that they were coming. > > I helped Erik with maintaining this project because it was also useful > for our weekly "roadmap and deployments update" meeting where most WMF > engineering managers got together for about 15-30 minutes to go over: > * What, of note, is going out next week? > * What, of note, is going out in the near term (i.e.: next few weeks)? > * Anything else we should know about? > > Outcomes of this meeting were: > * An updated outline of upcoming deployments on the Deployment > Calendar[2] > ** This helped inform the work of the WMF RelEng and Ops teams, > especially > * A time/space for people (especially Erik or others with intimate > "community knowledge/intuition") to object to something going out at > all, or at the proposed time > > > Since this project was set up, Guillaume started the #user-notice and > #developer-notice projects [4][5], which cover the "things to tell > people about" a lot better, are much more general covering incidents and > planned outages as well as code deployments, and are communicated out > via volunteer translators to dozens of community notice boards every > week. > > > == Current world / Assessment == > > We are still using the #roadmap project for a lot of things that don't > risk deployment/stability disruption, and also updating the Deployments > Calendar on wikitech. It is my opinion that there is not enough gain > from maintaining both work products to justify the effort, especially as > #user-notice and #developer-notice have become so valuable. > > > == Proposal == > > I propose that we discontinue the use of #roadmap. > > Potential gaps created by the deprecating of #roadmap and my proposed > solutions: > > * Lack of a project that tracks big upcoming software/product releases > ** The #release[3] project was created for this > > * Lack of a time-scale perspective of upcoming releases/deployments > ** I believe that the Deployments Calendar[2], while imperfect (wiki > templates), fulfills this > > * Users aren't informed of upcoming changes > ** the #user-notice[4] project in Phabricator should be used for that > > > == Expectations == > > To successfully do this (deprecate #roadmap) I expect all WMF > Engineering teams (as the group of developers I have more influence over > versus the Wikimedia engineering community) to pro-actively communicate > out their plans, in public, with the appropriate use of the Deployments > Calendar and the #user-notice Phabricator project. This means engaging > with the Community Engagement/Liaison team when appropriate. > > In no small way this is me, as Release Manager, showing trust in the > work of the WMF Engineering teams (which includes the product managers). > Do good things with it :-) > > Let me know if you have any concerns, > > Greg > > > [0] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/1109/ > [1] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/1109/ > [2] https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Deployments > [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/profile/1333/ > [4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/user-notice/ > [5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/developer-notice/ > > -- > | Greg Grossmeier GPG: B2FA 27B1 F7EB D327 6B8E | > | identi.ca: @greg A18D 1138 8E47 FAC8 1C7D | > > _______________________________________________ > Engineering mailing list > engineer...@lists.wikimedia.org > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/engineering > > -- Arthur Richards Team Practices Manager [[User:Awjrichards]] IRC: awjr +1-415-839-6885 x6687 _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l