Topic on Talk:Team Practices Group/Flow

These questions are in the context of the kinds of processes we are currently using or aspiring to within WMF, such as quarterly and annual goal-setting, and per-team processes that are typically Scrum-Ban-ish or less structured.

1. What term refers to all of this stuff? More specifically, what term shall we use to refer collectively to any text that defines a scope of work and is a desired outcome, not an output or input of unit of work?
   1. High-level Planning
   2. Outcome Specifications
2. Is a set of one Objective and one or more related Key Results collectively one Goal?
3. What's the relationship between Milestones, Milestone Criteria, Objectives, and Key Results?
   1. Milestones = Objectives, Milestone Criteria = Key Results
   2. Key Results = outcomes you are trying to achieve, Milestone = collection of work that should result in some or all of a Key Result, Milestone Criteria = outputs you are trying to achieve
4. How should all of this be represented in Phabricator?
   1. Not at all - keep it in Wiki pages only.
   2. Fully, all high-level stuff should live as Phabricator objects, and things that are currently wiki pages should be replaced by Phab queries or should be maintained as synced to the results of Phab queries
5. When and how does this stuff interact with Task-level work (such as Scrum Planning, backlog grooming, and other Scrum activities and ceremonies)?
   1. In Planning Meetings
   2. In Grooming (in creating new Stories and in prioritizing)

• 1: A-ish "Planning" is simpler.
• 2: I would simplify and consolidate the concept of "Goal" for any big task that requires a significant amount of focus and work, getting rid of milestones, objectives, key results, etc.
• 3: See above. Having Goals and then subtasks to achieve those goals is enough. The added complexity doesn't bring any value, and confuses most full-time developers and basically all volunteers. IMHO.
• 4. Every object worth of planning attention should have their own Phabricator task reflecting dependencies, priorities, etc.
• 5. Meetings support Grooming, not the other way around. Grooming is an ongoing, asynchronous, remote-friendly activity open to everybody's input. Meetings are synchronous and, in practice, leaning towards restrictiveness and co-location (the problem of distance is being solved, but no tech will get rid of timezone differences). Meetings are useful to push grooming and resolve whatever the online grooming was not able to resolve.

Summary: Projects, Goals, Tasks, and Sprints are clear ingredients that allow 1000s of connections and combinations. I would be very careful introducing any other type of object to this mix, assuring that its definition and use are almost self-explanatory.

I remain intrigued by the statement that "Grooming is an ongoing, asynchronous, remote-friendly activity open to everybody's input."

I asked about this elsewhere, and only received one answer, from a PO who has seen roughly 10% of the grooming be performed asynchronously by tech leads or developers.

My guess is that in projects without a strong Product Owner, grooming is in fact a collective activity, which can be asynchronous. With a strong PO, it seems like they have to own grooming, and therefore have to be fully involved with any grooming activities. If grooming happens without them, there would need to be extensive communications to sync up. (Note that phab does not generate notifications for moving items up or down within a column.)

But as I said, I would love to hear more about this.

1. It sounds like WMF is trying the OKR method. It has a lose definition. I've never been able to find a single, well defined description of process. I've worked with it at 4 different companies. Does WMF have its own definition? If not, can we facilitate?
2. This relates to #1. I would say yes. OKR are essentially SMART goals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria
3. It depends on how you define milestone. Usually a milestone is a gate in a phase and gate system. Would our milestones be the end of each quarter?
4. In a Scrum team, the goals should be reflected in the priority of the backlog. So, yes it should be in phabricator for those teams attempting Scrum. Kanban "ToDos" sections of the board should roughly follow this as well.
5. If a team's work is prioritized to meet their goals/OKRs then each task should have some relationship to them. The Fr-tech team is adopting sprint goals so that individual tasks have context to the whole quarter. We are also trying to maintained 3 planned sprints. Check out our backlog here: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/fundraising-backlog/

1. There is a WMF definition/explanation of OKR: Wikimedia_Engineering/OKR

Is strategy item 0.?

First time using Flow w00t!

Other terms that may be relevant (or redundant) are Epic and Roadmap.