Readers/Web/Team/Retrospectives/Q3 Retrospective 2012-2013

Mobile web retrospective Q3, 2012/2013

What's worked well?

• Experimentation in alpha/beta
• Massive improvement in story preparation
• Beta labs… so close!+
• Team synchronization, awareness (norms, responsibilities, etc)
• Increased reliance on data
• Code reorganization/cleanup/improvements
• Improved standup attendance
• Improved remote conferencing
• Massive team support when I was ill
• Prioritized code review
• Increased collaboration with E3 and analytics +
• Improvements in synchronization with ops
• Analytics dashboards! +
• Unity and focus around big picture goals/targets
• Javascript Views and templates
• Better design / product / dev coordination
• We broke things and annoyed people and got blamed for things +
• Pivoting fast (dumping bad stories, trimming requirements) when necessary
• Coming together to fight dragons (like CentralAuth)
• Architecture Review
• Jon being the liasion for ops

What hasn't?

• We neglected the edit feature! ++++++
  • Editing made a 'must have' for Q4
  • If team's not happy with big picture goals (eg 1000 unique uploaders), we need to push back
• Lack of monitoring/alerting (e.g. 500 errors on watch list yesterday) +++++
  • Already have some basic monitoring checking en wiki on HTTP
  • Icinga...?!?!
  • Need to expand these checks for other domains, incl https, and API
  • Max will own making sure this happens
• Deployments still too stressful and require too many folks ++-++
  • Finish getting beta closer to production, incl https and whatever
  • Make more automated tests
  • Michelle!
• Code review challenges - partly workflow related, partly slow review++++
  • HIRE
  • Sanity check velocity
  • Process change... like, before picking up new work, focussing on code review
  • Propose process policy change for the team
  • Arthur!
• Lots of regressions (and… editing in stable?!) ++++
• Code quality got worse, need some refactoring/cleanup
• Brion being sucked into web login/proxy work
• I've had almost no time for experimentation or LevelUp+
• Juliusz is the only one who seems to review my code :( (JS in particular)
• consistently don't finish stories +
• we don't factor in code review in estimation
• we forgot about april fools -
• single deployment windows force last minute code review and disappointment when code doesn't get merge
• i feel like we can do more as a team and haven't quite reached our potential
• Core blocking us (CentralAuth for example)
  • Us introducing core changes, but not getting them merged quickly
• We need to be more vigilant against sandboxing alpha / beta
• Too many meetings across the course of the week. No free days
  • Structured mobile team meetings are OK, it's the other meetings with other teams, ad-hoc mtgs, etc
• Analytics :-S
• forgetting about some stuff in alpha/beta (e.g. dynamic content loading) and letting it grow tumbleweeds-+
• More spying on users

Anything otherwise still puzzling?

• How do i run the acceptance tests
  • Michelle to share documentation, and host a group session
• How do we get better feedback from users about beta/alpha
  • Community liaison could be really good at this...
  • Maryana
• Are we moving too fast? +
• Who wants to learn to deploy?!
  • Jon, Michelle... Juliusz
  • Hangout during deployment for anyone interested
• What are the exact reasons for "deployment windows" (why can't we deploy anytime)?
  • To prevent mid-air collisions
• More opportunities for the entire team to be in one place?+++
  • Plan more specific events while in the office to improve, increase velocity, etc.
  • Do what ops/platform did - brownbags, cross-team collaboration

NB: Michelle Grover 10:38 AM Juliusz said his laptop turned off and smells like it's burning