On Tue, Aug 20, 2019, 17:32 Dusty Mabe <dusty@dustymabe.com> wrote:


On 8/20/19 10:18 AM, Clement Verna wrote:
> On Tue, 20 Aug 2019 at 15:30, Dusty Mabe <dusty@dustymabe.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> On 8/19/19 6:09 PM, Kevin Fenzi wrote:
>>>
>>> Well, this I think is related to our "agile transformation" (or if you
>>> prefer "reorganizing how we work"). Right now, you find it hard to get
>>> stuff done because everyone is busy on other things, so you have to nag
>>> us to get stuff done which makes things worse for us, etc.
>>
>> Right. It has been this way for a long time. It's not your fault and it's
>> not my fault, but both of us feel like we've got the short end of the stick.
>>
>>>
>>> Ideally I think we can get to a place where we do a lot more scheduling
>>> and a lot less having to yell for cycles. You note a few things were
>>> just 5 min for someone to do... but the way we are working now someone
>>> does that thing for you finally, but then goes back to the other stuff
>>> they were working on, meaning in 30min you need another thing... repeat.
>>>
>>> If you can come to us and say "hey, this is my project, I need it
>>> deployed by X" we can look at it, gather info we need, put it in our
>>> queue and then tell you "hey, we can work on that next tuesday". Then
>>> next tuesday we can devote a block of time to getting everything done. I
>>> think thats a win for everyone in the end and I would really like to get
>>> there. Can we? I sure hope so
>>
>>
>>>
>>> In fact perhaps we could start doing this now somewhat: block off say...
>>> wed into 2 hour blocks. Sign up people who have projects or pet
>>> bugs/issues they want to get solved for those blocks and work on them?
>>
>>
>> I think blocking off time and doing some scheduling is a great idea. My advice
>> here is that we have a shared calendar with blocks that people can sign up for
>> automatically (i.e. if the block is open anyone can reserve it as long as they
>> have a FAS account).
>>
>> The only counter point that I have is that sometimes a "block of time" isn't
>> always what's needed. Sometimes it will be something very small, but rather
>> fundamental, that requires quite a bit of rework by the end user. For example,
>> you and I have a 5 minutes session where some revelation comes to light and I
>> need to go rewrite a portion of my application. I then spend two hours doing
>> that and have to wait a week for the next block of time.
>>
>
> I think this is the symptom of a lack of upfront cooperation and
> design. This is what we are currently putting in place, if you need
> something consequent from us you come up with a spec that explain the
> WHAT and the WHY.  Then we work together on the HOW and WHEN, once we
> have a good idea of the HOW and WHEN the work will be prioritized on
> our side (might have a dedicated team assigned to it) which I think
> will make cooperation easier.
>
> It is never too late to start, so maybe we should spend some time to
> write down everything that is needed for Fedora CoreOS, write down HOW
> this will be done and what the work being Done means. That way we
> could probably dedicated a few people to focus on that work until
> completion.
>
> How does that sounds ?

We certainly haven't done as good as we could here but we have written down
our overall design [1] and had several sessions with core members of releng and
infra (mohan, patrick, kevin) to discuss the feasibility of it all. Once we
got to a point where we were ready to formally ask for help we have done that
in tickets to the infra repo [2-6]:

We're definitely not doing the best job here, but we have done some communication.
I do want to say that I'm not complaining about the job anyone has done! Just
trying to find a better move forward for everyone.

Yes just to make sure there is no misunderstanding I am not trying to blame anyone too and I am also keen on finding a better ways for these work to move smoothly without the need for you to bug someone every day and without having someone bugging us every day :-D.

I think in that particular case, the problem is that your needs went under our radar, and the work that you needed was not visible, hence not prioritized at our team level. This means that we have been busy with X other initiatives (Rawhide Gating, EPEL-8, Community OpenShift, + usual keeping the lights on work). Unfortunately it is almost impossible for you to see how busy we are and what are our current priorities and work in progress. We hope to improve in that area, so that I believe it would be easier for you to see what the team is busy with. Then it should be easier for you to raise your hand  and say that you have something urgent coming in.
In the same time we don't really have visibility to your planning and to your milestones, so it is also difficult for us to make a good call without knowing the expected timeline and what is your critical path.

All that to say I think the main problem here is lack of communication and lack of sharing information.


Dusty

[1] https://github.com/coreos/fedora-coreos-tracker/blob/master/stream-tooling.md
[2] https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issue/7884
[3] https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issue/7870
[4] https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issue/7821
[5] https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issue/8064
[6] https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issue/7997
[7] https://pagure.io/fedora-infrastructure/issue/7719