Wikimedia Discovery/Meetings/Maps retrospective 2016-08-08
Format
editThis retrospective was conducted using the "Five finger retrospective" format.
Action Items from last month
edit- Yuri: Publish long-term maps roadmap
- Written; wants to discuss with team before publishing
- Yuri might email Discovery asking for examples of maps uses that he could cite in the presentation
- Presented a bunch of usages.
- Julien: Make sure work progresses on the State of the Maps presentation
- (jg) Presentation took place in Seattle and went quite well :)
- (jg) We could have cleaned the final version a little sooner - but last minute/4am prep is a style that Yuri particularly likes :P
- Julien: Follow up on Kartographer documentation improvements
- (jg) Refactor took longer than expected
- (jg) All the front end code is precisely documented (and soonish publicly available at doc.wikimedia.org : Max? )
- (jg) To be continued: more documentation ON-wiki
- Guillaume: upload (documentation) diagrams to commons (carried over)
- Done - linked from https://wikitech.wikimedia.org/wiki/Maps#Puppetization_and_Automation
- Kevin: Invite Guillaume to next maps retro
- Done
- Kevin will schedule a meeting to discuss ops/maps relationship
- NOT NEEDED since Guillaume is working on these issues
- Kevin will schedule a meeting with Yuri and Chris to figure out wiki conversation <-> phab tasks
- Initiated an email conversation
- Kevin: Propose making reading SoS notes "strongly encouraged"
- Done
What happened since the last retro (June 30)
edithttps://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Discovery/Meetings/Maps_retrospective_2016-06-30
- State of the maps US
- vacations!
Thumb: Thumbs up--something that went well
edit- Awesome slides by Julien & Max, well presented, thanks!
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kscsp0YS7nw
- First Wikipedias receiving Kartographer
- Ops understanding that maps are moving forward
- Guillaume did some very good work on this front!
- Weekly ops/maps meetings (Mondays) - send notes to Guillaume if you have anything going on... either requireing Ops attention, or just something cool that happens
- Awesome time in Seattle with the team... the Sushi, the museum, underground tour, great (and mostly productive) conversations +
Index finger: The ONE thing you want people to know (about how this team has functioned over the last month)
edit- We need to work on presenting better to WMF (including functionality and KPI) and to the community
- Not using existing Friday Discovery status as well as we could
- Not publicizing growth of maps enough
- Look at presenting during Metrics meeting (large audience)
Middle finger: Something that did not go well
edit- setting up new maps servers (eqiad) is taking more time than it should
- 3-4 weeks is a long time to set up 4 servers
- Guillaume context switching doesn't help
- Work should have happened before and didn't
- Doing some automation which is taking longer than just "making it work" would
- Still no frames around maps and still some confusion between developers
- JG: Not sure about mediawiki best coding patterns (new to it). Unsure who makes technical decisions when multiple arguments are received.
- Not sure how to prioritize good specs vs. good performance vs. iterative quick but may not be sustainable
- "Done is better than perfect". "Stalling is the least productive option".
- Would Jon Robson be a good person to talk to? Kaldari? Anyone on ArchCom? Roan?
- And Front End Standards Group.
- Need KPIs, still don't have any
- We do actually have some numbers (e.g. varnish stats, maps dashboards)
- We should at least be able to say "this is the route we took and these are the benefits we got"
Ring finger: Something about relationships--within the team, between teams, other
edit- First Wikipedias receiving Kartographer and VE/template concerns
- They felt out of the loop from a product/release standpoint
- They have been working on some patches all along; we have gotten good contributions from them
- Yuri did mention upcoming work at SoS
- Need to engage other teams more pro-actively (esp J Forrester)
- Good relation with the Vega team (graphs)
Pinky: A little thing that would be easy to overlook (or was overlooked)
edit- we're bad at integration testing
- Max has started setting up a way to do at least some testing outside production
- GL: I'm not a big fan of integration testing, but it would probably make sense to invest a bit more than we have
- Could use the old map cluster; some vague plans
- some ground work needs to happen (Cassandra upgrade, log cleanup, ...) and needs to be prioritized
- Seeing small things that need to be improved (debt)...hard to get it prioritized
Action items
edit- Yuri: Discuss roadmap with team
- Katie: Will follow up with VE team; maybe define communication norms between teams
- Julien: Will ping people to try to get UI patches unstuck