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Wikimedia Discovery/Meetings/Maps retrospective 2016-04-21

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Discovery Maps (and Graphs) ("Interactive Team") Retrospective

2016-04-21

Covering whatever has happened related to the team since the last retro (2016-03-22).

Review action items from before

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  • Tomasz will schedule a long-term maps meeting
    • Tomasz met with Yuri. Output at high level is in FDC planning doc;
  • Chris will follow up with Yuri about a blog post regarding graphing pageviews (Victor Grigas wants to do a video)
    • Decided to hold off on this. It's more of an unofficial side project.
  • Yuri will check with Volker/Julien about maps; will report back (esp. to Tomasz)
    • Discussions have happened. Not top priority right now.
  • Yuri will write up 2 goal scenarios for Q4
    • We have Q4 goals, thanks to the whole team

What went well?

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  • order placed for maps backend servers
  • agreement reached on varnish (but still waiting for Mark's signature)
  • we have a great team!
  • Onboarding for Julien went well and was easy

What could we improve?

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  • Julien should share his birds...[he's calling in from Costa Rica]
  • I'm hoping for a better vision
  • collaboration with other teams (yuri)
    • So far cross-team collaboration has been very sporadic, albeit sometimes very productive (VE).  Would be great to have a bit more predictability
  • High level view of how Maps work technically  (yes, I've read the page, but I miss a component diagram - and yes again I do like UML, I was an architect until recently)
  • I felt we needed a designer lately
    • UX and visuals
    • Julien can take some of this (and already has started in some cases)
    • Question: How does this work with Ed?
    • Julien will bring to the weekly meeting with designers, but they are short-staffed now
    • At some point, we will need a designer (icons, etc.), but for now we can work with what we have
  • H/W request could improve by:
    • more clear communication
      • separate different requests for caching vs backend
      • better understanding of the content needed in a H/W request ("we can work with any server you give us" is actually confusing)
    • have an Ops representative in the team
  • Could use more of Chris's time; and Guillaume's for the hardware

What else should be noted?

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    • Long-term high-level planning has happened, but we probably need more tactical meetings/planning
    • Maps caching servers waiting for Mark's approval
    • Guillaume has not yet really started working on Maps (well, other than following H/W requests...)
    • Two meetings per week to keep the team in sync
    • Yuri has been operating as the Product Owner, using a collaborative style
      • Full PO might have helped, but would have blocked us in many ways
      • I don't see the need for a PM at all; Chris can interact with the community.  +1 +1
      • We could be more organized in this area, but dedicated person is not necessary
    • Will try to do analytics support at some point; so far has been OK

Action Items

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    • Tomasz will ensure long term plans are appropriately communicated
    • Tomasz will talk with Volker to check on getting help from editing team on maps
    • Yuri: Tactical planning
    • Guillaume: Poke Mark as needed until we get hardware
    • Guillaume to start reading and writing documentation and ask questions
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