[maemo-community] Sprint meeting & process

[From: Dave Neary]

Hi,

Andrew Flegg wrote:
>>> Proposed sprint process:
>>>    * Pre-meeting distribution of final task statuses, along with
>>>      whether it is complete.
>> Who will do this? It seems like a cumbersome issue for the person that
>> does it, when it is more or less a copy & paste of part of the wiki page
>> with "what's holding you up?"
> 
> Well, you've just done it above, so it's not that onerous. I've also
> seen circumstances where the sprint meeting starts with "oh, yes,
> that's finished" when going through a task which is listed at 0% on
> the wiki page.

Ah! I see what you mean. Something like a mail that gets sent a week 
before the meeting, with "Please report status of your tasks", to which 
everyone should reply with their tasks.

What happens if someone doesn't reply?

> The existing process is broken. *Something* needs to change. I don't
> trust the wiki to accurately reflect any particular task's status at
> any time.

I just think that fundamentally the problems we have right now are not 
so much technological as human. Part of the issue might be that there 
are no consequences to not updating status, so it isn't a high priority. 
But then, you can't have all stick, no carrot, you need to set the 
incentives right.

> That could also include a micro-blogging/quick task update UI. But how
> do we ensure that people _are_ going in to update them on a daily
> basis? By being pushed out on maemo-community, it acts as a reminder
> to send your own updates.

I'm sure if you combined twitter, jaiku and blog feed of the maemo.org 
people, and perhaps mailing list posts from them, you would have a 
really good idea what they're up to on any given day.

Let me ask this question, though: what would get done with the updates 
if they were being made every day? Do you really think it's an issue 
with tasks getting done and not reported? I suspect it's more a question 
of tasks not getting done because "other stuff" gets in the way. So the 
question of what the status reports are for is useful.

Cheers,
Dave.

-- 
maemo.org docsmaster
Email: dneary at maemo.org
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