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Tracking missed deliverables

Introduction

Per the product meeting on 2018-07-10 we need a better way to track work that has slipped from a given milestone.

Meeting notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dAs9HoAbuiRzYYvk-AFMggbN-1Hb1l6L17jMzLePbkA/edit#heading=h.55rfjdebou1g

Problem statement

  • As issues are rescheduled or pushed out of the release, its milestone changes. We need to be able to track how many milestones an issue has slipped.
  • Tracking via issue discussions/activity does not scale. It requires reading through the issue. We need a quick and high-level indicator of the time slide.
  • We need to know what may slip ahead of time. E.g. a temp check should occur around the 7th-8th to groom the current open issues that is scheduled for the current milestone.

This proposal is to come up with a label taxonomy and process to track said workload.

Proposal

Semi-automated process with human in the loop grooming. Have an automated grooming mechanism that notifies each team to triage and apply a missed:xx.x label after code freeze.

  • Automated Use gitlab-bot to flag a generic missed deliverable issue and add the missed-deliverable label after the feature freeze on the 8th. Post a message to tell the people on the issue to add the specific missed deliverable milestone. Detailed criteria below:
    • Criteria for triggering The bot will add the label missed-deliverable on current open issues that has the current milestone and has the Deliverable label.
    • In the message the bot will recommend the current missed:xx.x to use and also mention the respective EM if the issue has a team label assigned.
    • Continous nightly grooming
      • After a milestone has passed. All opened issues Deliverable and with passed milestones will be labeled with missed-deliverable where the milestone value < CurrentMilestone
      • If an issue has missed:xx.x label, the bot will ensure that missed-deliverable is also applied.
      • The variable currentMilestone will be revved up on the 8th of each month.
  • Manual Once the gitlab-bot has flagged down the issue, EMs and the creator of the issue adds the missed:xx.x label manually.
    • If the issue is NOT deemed a missed deliverable e.g. out of scope and etc the missed-deliverable can be removed.
  • Taxonomy Introduce a new label missed:xx.x to build granular taxonomy around specific milestones for missed deliverables.
    • For 11.0 and onwards we will create this label for every release. e.g. missed:11.0 missed:11.1 missed:11.2 missed:11.3 and etc
    • For 10.x and releases prior, we will track at a high level. e.g. missed:10.x missed:9.x missed:8.x
    • The label stays with the issue and is not removed.

The data here will be fed into a release dashboard or a release page later. We will ensure that we have proper data hygine with automated grooming via missed-deliverable vs manual triage into milestone buckets via missed:xx.x

Data slicing with labels

This will also allow us to slice data further on missed deliverables.

Data slice Labels to use
All missed deliverables for the team team_label + missed-deliverable
Missed deliverable for team in a milestone team_label + missed:xx.x
All Engineering missed deliverables missed-deliverable
All Engineering missed deliverables for in a milestone missed:xx.x
All Engineering missed deliverables for 2 milestones missed:xx.x + missed:xx.y

@victorwu @jramsay @rymai @markglenfletcher @godfat Starting with you folks first, what are your thoughts?

Edited by Mek Stittri