Retrospective notes 2021.05.05

Items from last retro

Managing security issues - current org. concern because of many different types of security vulnerabilities
Ticket, PR & Branch clean-up - do a proper cleanup over the shutdown, and as we notice them
Short-staffed when urgent workload is high - point for 4 weeks of work and do Fridays if not doing support
Themed sprints

Used for long-term planning, "idea repository". Should we maintain this?
- people haven't added anything in there recently
- unsure of how to keep track of things in the long term
- good place for things that are nice to do and would like to when we have the time
- great place for tasks for placement/graduates
Keep it

traditionally the selected cards are not anonymous
- would we prefer anonymous, or displaying the vote cast?
No strong opinions, keep it as is

this round has been relatively calm, but it has still had its moments
- there have been discussions in the past, but is it worth thinking about it and revisiting it towards the end of this calendar year?
do deployments much earlier, 2 weeks is too late; can deploy early is release is ready
release was getting pushed back because of MUSR, stop doing that - release for all instruments and do a MUSR patch release late
make sure to tell the scientists that we are deploying to establish hard deadline; scientists also want a window, so they know when to be available
don't delay the release unless it breaks instruments - if not ready before the start of release sprint, don't add it

we should send more technical articles round the group, should we have a channel?
- don't want people to feel obligated to read it
- reading could be allocated as training time
- see if people are okay with 2 chapters in a month, if not maybe 1 chapter
- neutron training course was the same (though it was more on the physics side of things), while this could be more about software
this channel could be good training. Try to pick a book or online articles and discuss it at a code chat, see how it goes

How are we counting support tasks? 0 pointers or not?
- allowed to be 0, but if it takes time it shouldn't be
- burndown chart is -20 because of the support chunk
- decide capacity according to trend and keep to it
carry on with support being 0 as long as it doesn't take too much time

is second week in cycle still too early for a sprint review? still busy on support.
- always going to be hard and there's always the possibility of support calls in the middle of it
- maybe split the meetings to be "less interrupted" if something comes up, instead of having a long meeting
yes, split reviews and retrospectives.