Have we improved with documentation and communicating changes in data widely?
Regarding TextCat A/B test mix-up: "Team(s) handled the communication well--no complaining, finger-pointing, etc."
Our dashboards are a source of admiration from other teams; one person described them as "That awesome analytics platform that you use"...Dan continues to hear remarks such as "Discovery is awesome at A/B tests" and similar
Room for improvement: More tie-ins with the analysis teams from other verticals?..."Data Analysis Coworking Days" were awesome!
Should Mikhail have to do sys admin stuff? Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps Guillaume could be more involved?
No interaction between Interactive Team and Analysis Team...Maps dashboard is languishing and is not being used (?)
Figure out if we want to split up Mikhail and Chelsy for meetings and teams
Interactive
Yuri handling the conversation on Wikivoyage regarding Maps (50+ replies!)...Feeling great to be working FOR and WITH the community
hard to track all the bullets and sync the phab tickets, onwiki discussions and actual live deployments all together
Concerns about ops: balance between autonomy and top-down control...but Guillaume is doing a great job and is helping with this
Concerns about status of integration testing
Portal
Success with qualtrics. Didn't end up using quicksurvey.
Some frustrations getting timely code reviews from people not on the team
Good support from Chris, Dan, Quim, and others after receiving uncivil responses
Extensive interactions with translation folks
Received volunteer contributions
Cooperation that we had with Comms (Ed and Jeff) was great!
The portal layout talk page, with involvement from community and team members, significantly improved the final design.
Didn't research page views within 60 days of the huge increase :( :(
Search
phan (php static code analyzer) is proving a useful addition to CI testing
somehow we partially own the production logging infrastructure (by being elasticsearch "experts")
Ongoing frustrations with cindy (integration tests)
working with mobile team to implement geo features
Addressed some technical debt and made code look saner
Doing some good work with Graphs team to make visualizations easier (e.g. integrating w/WDQS)
Some concerns about being limited to weekly deployment window (but probably best for now)
Help from Chris and Benoit on getting request for comment/translations on the Village Pumps
Non-team-specific
Shifts in product management between Dan and Deb for analysis and search seemed to go well
Wikimania was fun and productive
You all might not see it much, but having a team of liaisons I (Chris) can talk to is like having a (small) army behind our work :)
Analysis, Interactive, Portal, and Search teams all had offsites or other gatherings where at least some members got to spend time together in person
Guillaume has shared some concerns about his prioritization and visibility of work across multiple teams
Translating our (major) communications should be more common (this is on me - CK)
Recurring "tech chats" have worked well for both search and interactive; search has sometimes invited Deb
KH: Try not to put in extra hours, generally. Time-sensitive occasional things are understandable.
Spark projects!
Lots of kool demo at last CREDIT showcase!
1 DevSummit is being planned. Consider what Discovery might want to get out of that event+
Very much appreciate the support in communicating with the community (Search says thanks to Chris & Deb!) Weekly status reports are great, too!+1
2 Being involved in several of the recent technical conversations with Analysis and Search has been delightful. I (Deb) love hearing the thought processes behind some of the seriously techie things that we do as a team. It enables me to grow more knowledgeable about everything Disco.++
1 Weekly status reports have really taken off and become an incredibly good way to communicate what's happening in Discovery+
1 Despite having multiple sub teams, the Discovery team is still something that has a real existence. Not easy to do, but well done!
+1. I feel like generally Discovery has a lot more cross-sub-team cohesion than other verticals. Our smaller size does make that easier, but it's still the result of active efforts of people involved. So that's nice. :-)
We're doing well with taking into account those peeps that are remote and in vastly different time zones (scheduling meetings and chats) :)+
+1
Agreed! From my perspective as a SF-based staff member, it seems like we're really doing well at the remoteness thing because I can work from home with zero issues, and have few concerns about being remote from the UK for a few weeks later this month :-)
Good input and collaboration on ideas for the search results page from lots of people on the team
Great use of Phabricator to synchronise our efforts
This ties into the remote-friendlyness point above
6 The comment under Portal above about code reviews: we're getting big enough and dispersed enough as a team that we can have that cross-team prioritization problem. ++++++
One good thing though is that we are still close enough that a nudge may be all it takes to spur needed action
3 Surveys—Qualtrics is limited in how many we can do and not lightweight. It'd be nice to have our own mini-surveys on search results, for example.+++
Reading's QuickSurveys don't address any of our needs
5 Getting more (and sometimes clearer) descriptions into Phabricator on work that needs to be done.+++++
Would like to see some PM attention on WDQS future directionsDepartment-wide things that are a mixed bag
4 We've gotten used to working with Deb—and made improvements in our process—so we're sorry to see her transition away from Search; OTOH, transitioning from Dan to Deb went smoothly, so transitioning back should be even easier. ++++
Some nodes in the team network have almost no direct connection, but more do than are strictly required
e.g., Trey says: thanks to various meetings and the unmeeting, I talk to almost everyone on the team at least every week or two—except Julien; I almost never talk to Julien. On the one hand, it could be a lot worse, on the other hand, it was better when we had the whole team DiscoRetro♫ more often.+
3 Having a more limited role in Search is sad for me (Deb) - I've really enjoyed getting to know the team better and how they operate (like a well oiled machine!). However, transitioning over to the Interactive team in a limited role allows me to get involved with more cool things. I'm also super happy that I still get to work with Jan regarding Search/Portal and with Mikhail and Chelsy on the Analysis team.
I (Guillaume) is really happy to see Deb joining Interractive as well! :) +++
Other Department-wide notes, issues, concerns, questionsedit
8 Looking forward to Erika starting on Monday! Yay!+++++++
8 Looking forward to Erika starting on Monday! Yay!+++++++edit
Anything we should prepare? HR should handle most of the basic "welcome" stuff.
When she's in the office, it would be great if someone could take her to lunch
1:1 meetings as she gets settled in
She should get invited to the unmeetings (Trey) and Discovery checkin (Kevin)
6 The comment under Portal above about code reviews: we're getting big enough and dispersed enough as a team that we can have that cross-team prioritization problem. ++++++ (One good thing though is that we are still close enough that a nudge may be all it takes to spur needed action)edit
Reminder that it's OK to nudge people, even across teams
Often gentle friendly nudges will be appreciated
Some issues with specialization
5 Getting more (and sometimes clearer) descriptions into Phabricator on work that needs to be done.+++++edit
Task descriptions should have enough detail in the description that someone could figure out what it means
Worth a few seconds to create a decent title, and description
Mentioning other tasks either in the description or as a sub/parent task can help
Examples of helpful tasks used in Chelsy's onboarding:
Also helpful to add comments to indicate why it is changing state (moving to a column, getting reassigned, getting declined)
Is it acceptable to update a description of someone else's task, such as if the comment thread is really long?
Like a wiki: if you can improve it, go for it. Use discretion.
4 We've gotten used to working with Deb—and made improvements in our process—so we're sorry to see her transition away from Search; OTOH, transitioning from Dan to Deb went smoothly, so transitioning back should be even easier. ++++edit
Makes Dan happy to hear. Would like to hear what has improved. Could happen outside this meeting.
Example of an improvement: having devs attend weekly planning mtg
Deb has a way to add structure to what she does, subtley, by asking questions. It's great. It's a rare gift.
3 Surveys—Qualtrics seems limited and not lightweight. It'd be nice to have our own mini-surveys on search results, for example.+++edit
Qualtric and QuickSurvey are both limited. It would be great to have better options
Is QuickSurveys feature set helpful but the implementation is off?
It worked well for the team that created it, but doesn't help us--not based on page content, not across multiple pages
We tried to adapt it, but didn't really work
Qualtrics is expensive
Maybe when we have site-wide A/B testing, it could have some survey features
3 Having a more limited role in Search is sad for me (Deb) - I've really enjoyed getting to know the team better and how they operate (like a well oiled machine!). However, transitioning over to the Interactive team in a limited role allows me to get involved with more cool things. I'm also super happy that I still get to work with Jan regarding Search/Portal and with Mikhail and Chelsy on the Analysis team.edit
As the transition back to Dan moves forward, if you have feedback, please share it!
Do people find this All-Discovery retrospective useful? Is the frequency right?edit
A few people said they like it; nobody expressed discontent
If you have any feedback or suggestions, feel free to follow up afterward with email!
(Offline suggestion: Every 2 months rather than 3?)
Done