[maemo-community] Sprint Task Status Update SSO

[From: Jeremiah Foster]

On Nov 6, 2009, at 16:31, penguinbait wrote:

> I have to somewhat agree with Andrew Flegg, as I did not intend to  
> make more work for anyone.  And these adults with jobs don't need to  
> tell me every task they are doing.  This all stemmed from MY  
> confusion over the sprint process.

The process has evolved somewhat organically in an ad-hoc fashion - no  
surprise that any new council member might be confused.

> I did not realize the tasks were supposed to be completed by the end  
> of each month.  Which is why I was looking for status updates.  
> However without a detailed project plan, updates of what the person  
> is working on really means little to me as I don't have the big  
> picture.  To me deadlines and schedules are more important.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me.

> It's just some tasks take less than one month, some take more and  
> some people are working on multiple tasks within a sprint month.   
> Well I still think that estimated delivery dates would be nice, and  
> a way to see if the date is slipping, are important I am not sure if  
> this is necessary since the way the sprint process is managed.

There is also a 'backlog' that old tasks get put onto, so the whole  
sprint system sort of boils down to a set of prioritized tasks with an  
implicit due date. Some tasks have to be done on time: MUSTs, some  
SHOULD be done on time, but can be carried over, some COULD be done on  
time or not, no big deal. Those three capitalized words are the  
prioritization of the tasks, its called the MoSCoW system.

> The suggestions I have seen so far seem like common sense to me.   
> Add some tags to Qaiku and maybe the search links in the notes for  
> each task.  A way to be able to see if one task is waiting on  
> another.  If anything I was looking for a way to look at the sprint  
> wiki and determine when something may happen, and it turns out its  
> not exactly that simple.

Yeah, unfortunately its 'predictive' power is limited.

> I do not think that task owners whether paid or not need to report  
> daily, but perhaps a couple sentence blurb once per week in Qaiku  
> may be useful whether there is progress or not.

I try and report in everyday.

Jeremiah

>
> Thanks to everyone for all the useful comments.
>
> Matt Lewis
>
>
>
> On 11/06/2009 10:13 AM, Randall Arnold wrote:
>>
>>>
>>> ext Valerio Valerio wrote:
>>>
>>>> I trust people, as long they report back in the end of the month is
>>>> enough for me, besides that I can found any of the task owners in  
>>>> IRC
>>>> and ask about the tasks. We really want more than that ? Would  
>>>> people
>>>> care about other kind of reports ? Don't think so.
>>>>
>>> Considering that most of these contributors are getting paid for  
>>> doing
>>> their work yes, we want to know as much as possible as long as they
>>> don't end up investing more time reporting than working. :) A  
>>> couple of
>>> lines a day is not too much to ask when you're getting paid n€ the  
>>> hour.
>>> It really makes the difference between knowing that someone is  
>>> working
>>> that day on maemo.org or doing something else, specially if the  
>>> person
>>> is not regularly active in other channels.
>>>
>>> About 100% volunteers sure enough, that's a different question and  
>>> it's
>>> totally fine not to demand the same frequency and level of  
>>> reporting.
>>>
>>> -- 
>>> Quim Gil
>>> open source advocate
>>> Maemo Devices @ Nokia
>>>
>>>
>> I have to agree, and in fact I am paying the price currently for  
>> lack of reporting in my current employment.  My boss will work on  
>> things and not tell me, leading me to start working on the same  
>> items, wasting time.  Even worse, that same scenario plays out  
>> across the entire organzation, to where I can safely say that 50%  
>> of anyone's time is utterly wasted.
>>
>> Let's try to avoid that.
>>
>> But to Valerio's point, reporting CAN consume an unreasonable  
>> amount of a person's time IF it isn't automated as much as  
>> reasonable possible, or requires too many hoops.
>>
>> To that extent, I think the suggestions so far are reasonable.  It  
>> would be great if more automation could be implemented, but in some  
>> cases it's sheer human judgment (like in my current task) so in the  
>> end we depend on people taking a brief moment to update things.   
>> Ultimately it serves everyone, even the reporter, because you can  
>> save time downstream by not having to answer so many questions.  ; )
>>
>> Randy
>>
>
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