Phlogiston/Roadmap

As of Jan 2017 edit

In late 2016 TPG briefed product owners and vertical heads about Phlogiston as a solution to Phabricator reporting, and surveyed them on how valuable they found Phlogiston.  We had a full range of opinions, from not at all to very much, leaning more positive.  People were more positive about Phabricator reporting in principle than they were about Phlogiston as the specific solution. Six of fourteen responses were "not at all" in agreement with using or supporting Phlogiston on their teams; and interest overall could be characterised as "lukewarm at best" or perhaps "sharply divided". We therefore identified a range of levels of support we could provide for Phlogiston:

  1. abandon
  2. life support
  3. niche product
  4. promote
  5. ​f​ully staff

Taking into account:

  1. The​ ​mixed ​results from the survey
  2. Anecdotal evidence about team interest
  3. The varying and currently lower level of interest in these specific kinds of metrics at the Foundation.
  4. ​Th​e possibility that we'll be asked again to provide this capability or consultation around it ​in a few years

​We've landed at​ Life Support.  This means:

  1. Joel to contribute limited time to bug fixes/critical requests from existing customers.
  2. If a fresh opportunity arises, consider offering to other teams (for example, for a one-time diagnostic look at their backlog), but be very cautious about committing any support
  3. Report to Phacility to see if they can use any of the work as a model for what we want added to Phabricator

Related reporting tasks in Phacility edit