NGL mion Release Planning for 2021.09

Attending and Roles

• Niamh McNally, Project Manager
• Eilís Ní Fhlannagáin, Lead Maintainer
• John Toomey, Maintainer
• Katrina Prosise, Maintainer

Minutes: Katrina Prosise

Agenda

0. Request for column "Done" on mion GitHub project
1. Discussion on tools and approaches to tracking/quantifying storypoints
2. Assign points to issues for the 2021.09 release
3. Look into older bugs

Keeping The Done Column

It was requested by Niamh that closed issues under "Done" persist between end of release and following release planning. This would enable us to evaluate, discuss, and then learn.

Storypoint and Project Management Discussion

Note: Discussion notes are summaries of what was said, generally not quotes

Niamh:[Topic setting] One way of tracking storypoints is to set up labels with point values for allocation. A manually intensive approach, labels that have been altered are then added up. Browser plugins for GitHub also exist, but that approach doesn't fit the mion project case too well. Another option is Zendesk, which not everyone would need to use, and is more of a project management tool.

Niamh: [Decision] Use storypoint labels for now, but not as a long term approach.

Eilís: [Suggestion] While longer term solution is needed, could insights be exported for now?

Niamh: [Response] We could use Linux Foundation data (insights), but it may be a bit limited. [Screen shared showing insight page] We could go to issue management -> GitHub issues/.... One concern is that private repos don't show up, and it's unsure if this could be modified. When going to backlog --> open issues, data can be exported. Date/age can be used to filter and sort. When pulling LF data insights, it's by specific sets.

John: [Discussion/rhetorical Question] What is the purpose? --To have signifier/metric to order and prioritize

Niamh: [Response] to calculate velocity at individual and entire project level. It's helpful to have metrics to monitor.

John: [Suggestion] We place value between '[ ]' attached to issue title.

Niamh: [Response/comment] No way to extract data easily.

Eilís:[Directive] Start with labels, such as small, medium, large, x-large etc. During the current sprint, send Niamh out to find the best solution. We don't want to create busy work for PM, nor do we want to choose a system where info can't be extracted. As we can't figure out in this meeting, have PM come to the next engineering sync with findings.

John:[Observational comment] While we work on coming to a consensus, we should keep in mind that the act of working on and discussing this can be valuable in-and-of-itself, even if high level data can't be obtained. Coming together to discuss is a good. It may help us arrive at shared definitions.

Eilís: [Suggestion] Let's just size labels for now. First estimations are almost always crap and off anyway.

John: [Response] Not in favor of using size. Using a set derived from the Fibonacci sequence may be a good approach.

Niamh: [Response:response] Not in support of numbers, could we use sizes?

John: [Halting question] Should we do now or do later? The meeting time is already about 50%.

Eilís: lets do this wed.

Assigning Points to Current Issues

For the issues on the project board, The maintainers ranked each issue presented by the Project Manager. The lowest expected effort was "small", followed by "medium", "large", and "extra-large" When needed, short discussions took place to arrive at a single value. The results are on the aforementioned project board.

Niamh: [Opening comment] Over a quarter of open issues are high priority, as well as 14 medium, another 14 for low or not prioritized.

Eilís: [Clarifying Comment] There is a difference between priority and effort labels.

Niagh: [Expanding on Clarifying Comment] Effort levels are S, M, L, and XL, while priority levels are low, medium, high.

Review of Past Issues

Discussion cancelled due to time constraints