Do people find the "needs discussion" column useful? I haven't used it much, but I can see the argument for it (it'd go between "to triage" and "backlog" as I see the backlog as "valid issues with a plan (or a plan for a plan)). /me shrugs

In T131568#2173183, @greg wrote:

Do people find the "needs discussion" column useful?

Personally: No. We just killed it in Developer-Relations as we didn't see a need to differentiate from Backlog...

/me nods

That was my thinking. If it still "needs discussion" then it's not triaged (is how it was in my head). If it's triaged then it goes into the backlog and doesn't really "needs discussion" in any real sense (other than maybe implementation things, but it's generally agreed that it's an acceptable thing to do).

Maybe merge "needs triage" and backlog into backlog? For example, if a take a look at Cloud-Services for example, 'to triage' is the biggest column, and we can move it mostly into backlog.

I like the separation of "To Triage" and "Backlog" (see my previous comment for why). "To Triage" is very different than "Backlog". And if we get rid of "needs discussion" some of those would go into "backlog" while others (with less clear reasoning) would go into "to triage" (I obviously volunteer to do that reorganization).

Luke pointed out on IRC that in Cloud-Services most tasks go to the to triage column and never get out.

Luckily Phabricator has <50 tasks while Cloud-Services has >700 and with that number (<50) I can manage the inflow of new tasks and categorize accordingly.

BTW: My reasoning for using columns as categories instead of state-tracking is that, predominately, state is best tracked in team or project specific 'sprint' (loosely defined) boards. (from what I've seen in practice at least)...

@Danny_B I saw you added the "Herald Rules" column in the Phabricator project; good idea. What do you think of the other columns I suggest adding and removing here? Generally, using the columns for categories instead of work status (needs discussion, ready to go, stalled, doing).

I don't see usefulness of work status columns in this project (if somebody really needs them, we may create the extra work-status sorted board), so I support getting rid of them.
Regarding other columns - I'll get to that later, it's on my cleanup radar. Herald was quite obvious and outstanding so I boldly created it.

Unless someone is going to oppose it, I am going to create VPS-project-Phabricator to move all Labs-Phab tasks off the Phabricator board since in fact it is Labs project at first.

+1

+1.

Personally I don't have a need to differentiate between "To Triage" and "Backlog" when it comes to workboard columns.

Created.

Moved some tasks there, feel free to re-tag other should you find any.

List of instances would be handy in VPS-project-Phabricator description, somebody can do that please?

I have added (well, renamed old unused column) "Upgrades" column and put all tasks regarding Phabricator upgrades to it.

Otherwise ATM I'm just removing from Phabricator board tasks which belong to Project-Admins or VPS-project-Phabricator.

Further ideas coming next...

Having the Phabricator (Upstream) as a milestone instead of subproject or standalone project causes loosing of the Phabricator (Upstream) tag when moving task to another milestone (upgrades) as task can be only in single milestone. It should be reconsidered whether is the best choice to have it as a milestone.

After some digging through this and relevant related projects, I am in favour of creating of some new projects (basically subprojects of Phabricator) and retagging relevant tasks. Phabricator board should serve for backlog of unsorted incoming tasks, task related to Phabricator generally and update milestones (including Upstream). The latter (handling of update tags) may even be reduced, but I haven't got that far yet.

In T131568#2550011, @Danny_B wrote:

After some digging through this and relevant related projects, I am in favour of creating of some new projects (basically subprojects of Phabricator) and retagging relevant tasks.

What would those be, generally speaking (if you don't have a specific list in mind yet, if you do, list that :)) ?

Hmm, what exactly is left in this task to do? Or is this resolved by now?

To go with the proposal in the description, at least:

• deleting "needs discussion" and putting the tasks in there into "to triage"

Other actions? Well, there's what @Danny_B mentioned above in T131568#2550011 (sub-projects), but I don't know which ones he's thinking yet.

Right now (20161001T1430UTC) the columns on Phabricator are a mix of everything:

So I'd personally say:

• Kill "Stalled" column. Doesn't make sense to me. Can be expressed via "stalled" status instead.
• Merge "To Triage" and "Backlog" into "Backlog". It's not a great use of my time to move tasks one column further after reading them and wondering "anything left to triage here?". I do prefer to set a priority value instead of dragging from "Triage" to "Backlog" to communicate expectations, really.
• Merge "Need discussion" into "Backlog". Because if something needs discussion and is not ready to go, it's not ready to go. CC random stakeholders or (ab)use the RfC tag if you want more discussion input on a task.
• I can understand why to maybe keep "Ready to Go" and "Doing". Personally I don't care about them. Maybe because the Phabricator project feels less of a "real" team board.
  • I don't know if anyone really looks only at the "Ready to Go" column and says "Oh, whatever the topic of this task is, now that it is listed under ready to go I will suddenly pick it up" instead of "Interesting task topic no matter which column it's in. Let's check the discussion in that task and whether it's ready to work on it or if I need to help push it".
  • When I'm "Doing" something or plan to do something, I simply assign the task to myself. Enough for me and hopefully also enough for others who want to know what I work on or follow it.

@Danny_B wrote:

In words, my proposal is to use categories of tasks instead of tracking state.

To Triage (default)	Backlog	Administration	Phab on Labs	Milestone: Phabricator-Upstream

So I'd personally say:

• Merge "To Triage" and "Backlog" into "Backlog". See above.
• "Phab on Labs" already exists separately as VPS-project-Phabricator (and I do not see reasons to change that).
• "Administration" - I wouldn't know for sure where to draw the line on that one. What's not administration anymore? Isn't updating/creating Herald tasks also administration? :)
• (@Danny_B: This proposal should probably be updated in the task description to include "Herald rules", as you created it?)

In T131568#2681683, @Aklapper wrote:

So I'd personally say:

• Kill "Stalled" column. Doesn't make sense to me. Can be expressed via "stalled" status instead.

+1 (columns as groups of tasks, not status tracking)

• Merge "To Triage" and "Backlog" into "Backlog". It's not a great use of my time to move tasks one column further after reading them and wondering "anything left to triage here?". I do prefer to set a priority value instead of dragging from "Triage" to "Backlog" to communicate expectations, really.

That's fine, except not all tasks are only in one project and someone watching another project can set the priority before someone from Phabricator sees the task. In my mind, "to triage" was because we have other "types of tasks" columns and if I can't quickly see what to triage I won't know which ones *might* need to be moved. Explicitly moving them ensures that. I won't block on this though :)

• Merge "Need discussion" into "Backlog". Because if something needs discussion and is not ready to go, it's not ready to go. CC random stakeholders or (ab)use the RfC tag if you want more discussion input on a task.

+1

• I can understand why to maybe keep "Ready to Go" and "Doing". Personally I don't care about them. Maybe because the Phabricator project feels less of a "real" team board.

Not a team board, so don't have status tracking columns.

@Danny_B wrote:

In words, my proposal is to use categories of tasks instead of tracking state.

To Triage (default)	Backlog	Administration	Phab on Labs	Milestone: Phabricator-Upstream

So I'd personally say:

• Merge "To Triage" and "Backlog" into "Backlog". See above.
• "Phab on Labs" already exists separately as VPS-project-Phabricator (and I do not see reasons to change that).

It didn't when I made that suggestion originally back in April (it was created in July) :) That can be removed (and those tasks removed from Phabricator (if needed). It might make sense to make that one a sub-project?

• "Administration" - I wouldn't know for sure where to draw the line on that one. What's not administration anymore? Isn't updating/creating Herald tasks also administration? :)

As the proposer, it was mostly things that fit within the Project-Admins scope, really. Those should get out of the backlog to not muddy it, as much as possible.