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-OdD…
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