Hi everyone,
Here's an attempt at putting together a more sophisticated (though not necessarily correct) goal for 1.19: https://docs.google.com/a/wikimedia.org/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Agte_lJNpi-OdDJ...
The goal was not to make something 100% accurate based on our past record, but to come up with a goal that's informed by our history, but also nudges us a little to get better than before.
During the 1.18 cycle, our goals were based on a linear review rate (same number of revisions every day). That may have been too easy on us in the early going. What was clear looking at the numbers from last time around was that, when focused on code review, the curve looked a lot more like an exponential decay curve (more reviews in the early going, tapering off toward the end). That's assuming that our backlog increase in July was an anomaly that we won't repeat.
So, the 1.19 cycle has new review goals that are based on exponential decay curve, with a linear fudge factor built in so that we don't just approach zero, but make it there. Fixmes, however, did seem to have a linear rate during the 1.18 cycle, so I left our goals linear for this release.
I've accounted for a plateau in the last two weeks of December when many WMF staff will likely be taking holiday vacation.
The goal is to get done with review by January 31, 2012. While this is much later than we were previously hoping for, it's still pretty aggressive given the backlog we have. This assumes that the huge swath of revisions that Hashar marked "deferred" on Friday all stay deferred, for example, and that we'll still find other pockets of revisions that we can use to knock off 50+ revs a day in the early going.
Does this look like a workable goal to everyone? Assuming so, we'll report our progress against this goal, and plan the 1.19 deploy for early February.
Rob