[maemo-community] May 2009 sprint meeting

[From: Quim Gil]

Hi,

ext Andrew Flegg wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm unable to chair a sprint meeting next week, so Ryan has kindly
> volunteered (*cough*) to organise it on my behalf.
> 
> Some thoughts on the April 2009 sprint[1]:
> 
>  * With less than a week to go before a month has elapsed, there are
>    a frustrating number of tasks which are at 0% progress, have "?"s
>    still in their row and have generally been unmaintained - despite
>    them being committed to within the sprint process.

Proposal: no more than 3 tasks per person in a single sprint:

- 1 MUST at most.
- 1 SHOULD at most.
- 1 COULD at most.

If someone is done after 2 weeks he can help another tasks strucggling
in the sprint. And there is always a backlog to keep you going.

Not coompleting more than 50% of a committed sprint doesn't feel good,
and it's like this almost every month.

> 
>  * Emails requesting that this chart get updated generally went
>    unheeded by almost everyone who had committed to tasks.

And there is no good justification for that. I think we should be
pushing each other to report. I would understand if you push me for not
having done it regularly.

>  * Only one person reporting activity during the period referenced
>    a task ID, despite a perfectly reasonable request from the
>    community that that be done. It would not have caused _any_
>    (let alone significant) overhead.

Talk.maemo.org is a good benchmark of reporting vs not getting help and
even getting flames because they don't know that what they miss is being
worked on.

Proposal: every committed task has a corresponding thread in
talk.maemo.org. The owner of the task can subscribe to it and get emails
whenever someone comments anything. No comments, no harm. But at least
people had a clear and easy chance.


>  * At least one "must" task (which was "definitely" committed to
>    in April) is listed as at 0%. Despite concerns being raised
>    about the feasibility of the task.

If a task gets concerns in the panning meeting it shouldn't be
committed. The owner can always push it from the backlog, if he really
thinks this is the right thing to do.

> I would *much* rather things were debated when suggested rather than
> just flat-out ignored. I would hope that people would come to the
> sprint planning meeting in the next period with a fleshed out,
> concrete proposal (as per the process[2]). Anything which is clearly
> not achievable within 4 weeks should be challenged, and anything which
> can have a note against it of "other than that this is [mostly] done".

Definitely. Opening the gateway to tmo might help combining the silence
in the sprint (a problem) with the yells in tmo (another problem),
getting as a result more fruitful information and discussion in both areas.

> Let's have discreet tasks at different priorities. If something *must*
> be done, let it be registered as a task with that priority. If
> something *should* be done, but it's not the end of the world if it
> isn't: that's a different task.

Fully agreed.

Proposal: sort the tasks of the sprint per priority instead of per date.
This way it's easy to see how the sprint evolves and where to
concentrate the attention: get the green on the top.

> Thanks in advance,
> 
> Andrew
> 
> PS. Please forward this to anybody you know who committed to a task
>     but is not subscribed to maemo-community.
> 
> PPS. Resending as there seems to be a "maemo-community at lists.maemo.org"
>      in my address book; which doesn't work.
> 
> [1] http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo.org_Sprints/April_09
> [2] http://wiki.maemo.org/Maemo.org_Sprints#Tasks
> 

-- 
Quim Gil
open source advocate
Maemo Software @ Nokia