[teampractices] [Engineering] The end of the Roadmap Phabricator project

Fri Jul 3 17:30:34 UTC 2015

+teampractices

On Thu, Jul 2, 2015 at 4:17 PM, Greg Grossmeier <greg at 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 |
>
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>
>

-- 
Arthur Richards
Team Practices Manager
[[User:Awjrichards]]
IRC: awjr
+1-415-839-6885 x6687
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