[teampractices] "Roadmap" project in Phabricator

[James Forrester]

On 19 February 2015 at 23:47, Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> I propose a "Roadmap" project in Phabricator. Tasks in this project would
> be typically epics with rough anticipated calendar-level delivery dates and
> clear, understandable task descriptions.
>
> Tasks would be arranged on a Phabricator workboard like so:
>
> January 2015: Features
> January 2015: Platform
> January 2015: Apps
> February 2015: Features
> February 2015: Platform
> February 2015: Apps
> etc.
>
> This could ultimately replace some of the detail in the on-wiki goals
> pages, and ensure we have a single calendar type view into expected
> deliverables. We could iteratively move our work into this new format if it
> works.
>
> If we play our cards right, we can reduce duplication and bring the
> roadmap and goalsetting "closer to the metal" so to speak.
>
> Thoughts? If we try this, any guinea pigs? Or feel free to point me to a
> much more sophisticated version of this idea :)
>

​I'm willing to try this, to replace​ the existing on-wiki VisualEditor
roadmap https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/VisualEditor/Roadmap.

​It has some advantages:

   - As a Wikimedia user, I now have a single view of all changes which
   could impact me.
   - As a Wikimedia user, I now don't have to have a mental model of what
   tasks are which teams' responsibilities.
   - As a product manager, I now can more trivially free-lance on
   bigger-picture issues which touch lots of teams' responsibilities and none
   without duplicating others' work.​


​It has some downsides from a user perspective, though:

   - As a user who cares about a specific outcome in VisualEditor, I no
   longer have detailed "blocked because of Xyz" explanations around the
   outcome in which I'm interested.
   - As a Wikimedia user who care​s about editing tools, I no longer have
   somewhere to keep track of bigger planned changes to editing things, and
   have to pick them out of other changes to e.g. Apps or Search which I don't
   care about.
   - As a non-Wikimedia MediaWiki sysadmin who wants to upgrade
   VisualEditor-MediaWiki locally, I no longer get a view
   - As a non-MediaWiki developer who uses VisualEditor, I no longer can
   see planned long-term changes in one place and it's more difficult for me
   to find somewhere to lobby for changes.


​Also, the VisualEditor roadmap explicitly doesn't use dates, as it
cover speculative ideas of several person-decades worth of work that may
never happen.​ I'm not sure where we'd put things like that, even if (per
Gilles) we show a board based on quarters.

Finally, ideally the apps/features/platform changes would be vertically
separated in a grid rather than repeating quarterly columns, but I know
that Phabricator doesn't support that (yet). Worth trying out, though.

​J.
-- 
James D. Forrester
Product Manager, Editing
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

jforrester at wikimedia.org | @jdforrester
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