[teampractices] Triaging bugs and managing task backlog in Phabricator

Tue Dec 2 21:49:04 UTC 2014

On Tue, Dec 2, 2014 at 2:32 PM, S Page <spage at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> (Are all WMF teams on this mailing list?)
>
> "Core features" (aka the Flow team) is responsible for several extensions
> (Flow, Echo, Thanks, ...). We have a team board we're going to use to manage
> the current sprint.
> And we have a lot of bugs to triage.
>
> I'm thinking rather than having a separate team backlog board, a triager
> will nominate a bug for consideration by adding our team board to the task's
> Projects field.
>
> The default column in every workboard is "Backlog". With this approach I
> think it makes sense to rename that column in the team's project board to
> something like "Needs team triage" or "Consider for next sprint".
>
> Also, our team board appears to be editable by anyone. How can we lock it
> down so that only members of the project can add columns and move tasks
> around on it?
>
> Should/can we lock a project tag down so only members of the project can add
> this project to tasks?  I don't think so, that makes inter-team dependencies
> (Scrum-of-scrums) harder.
>
> Comments?  Do other teams have team boards in Phabricator?
>
> This approach is in
> https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Flow/Team/Processes#Bug_triage , I will move
> it to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Phabricator/Project_management if
> there's consensus (or no response :) ).
>
> Thanks. Interesting times!

MediaWiki-Core has been experimenting with a Phab board for about a
month [0]. We are hoping to get "more serious" about using it now that
the bugzilla migration is complete. We are mostly trying to do a
Kanban inspired process to help us visualize our work in progress and
bottlenecks. Arthur helped us come up with the columns and their
associated work in progress limits during a team training retreat in
October.

We are using these columns today:
* To Do
* In Dev/Progress
* Needs Review/Feedback
* Done
* Archive (hidden)

Rather than create a new board for each iteration/sprint/whatever we
are using the archive column as a storage area for things that have
been completed in past iterations. After each retrospective (weekly
meeting) somebody will move all of the items from the Done column into
the Archive column to reset the board. Originally we intended the Done
column to be final and just resolve the tasks after the retrospective.
This however turned out to be difficult as helpful people would find
the various tasks in the products they are associated with and close
them for us. :)

The one thing I think we may end up wanting in the future is a
separate board/project to track larger work items (themes/epics) that
are being groomed for our next quarterly planning.

[0]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/project/board/37/
-- 
Bryan Davis              Wikimedia Foundation    <bd808 at wikimedia.org>
[[m:User:BDavis_(WMF)]]  Sr Software Engineer            Boise, ID USA
irc: bd808                                        v:415.839.6885 x6855