Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017/First Tech Debt Bash

Wikimedia Developer Summit 2017 Session Notes Template

Session Overview

Title: First Tech Debt Bash

Day & Time: Tuesday 4pm

Room: Ventana

Phabricator Task Link: task T153022

Facilitator(s): Greg Grossmeier with support from Kevin Smith

Slides: google docs presentation

Note-Taker(s): Gabriel W and Chad H

Remote Moderator: none?

Advocate:

Session Summary

• Tech Debt should not be called out as a thing we do for one quarter, it needs to be ingrained in our work on a daily/sprintly basis.

• A higher focus on Tech Debt in the short term might actually increase the velocity of feature development because TD itself slows down new feature work.

• Victoria: propose to make an owner of Tech Debt who would prioritize and advocate (celebrate) for it org-wide. Then engineering teams would weight those priorities (from this TD owner) with their own.

• Victoria: ~25% of time should be focused on addressing TD

• Mark B: suggestion of adding a slide to QR slides speaking to Tech Debt (what they worked on TD-wise, or not and why)

Detailed Summary

etherpad notes

Purpose

Get the community of MediaWiki developers, more aligned with our wishes to address technical debt.

Discussion Topics

Action Items

• Everyone: Reach out to Greg and Kevin if you have any further thoughts/concerns/ideas/proposals
• Greg and Kevin will follow up with Victoria post Dev Summit (scheduled for January 27th)
  • Purpose of follow-up: to decide on the specific actions and who owns them from the above notes/summary.