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Clean up Traffic tag/workboard
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Description

This is a Q1 KR worded as "The Traffic subteam has a phabricator workboard which succinctly tracks active, ongoing work and current issues".

The basic (but still slightly evolving) plan is to create a new tag named "traffic-icebox", move most of our stale tasks there and at least loosely organize them by category columns reflecting the nature of the stale ticket, and have our primary "traffic" tag contain only a relatively small set of tasks which includes both active incoming triage issues for the team as well as all of our planned work that's active and actionable or in near-term planning, all organized in a more Kanban-ish style rather than by-topic/nature as in past efforts.

The mechanics of the changes are still in flux. We'll aim to minimize disruption via either silent bulk moves, or by simply renaming the existing "traffic" tag to become "traffic-icebox" directly, and then creating a new fresh "traffic" tag and moving the smaller active set back into the new version of the traffic tag. After the basic tag split, as part of this KR we'll do a relatively-lightweight review of all icebox tasks for any that can be quickly resolved/closed or need pings to figure out any remaining steps.

In future quarters, beyond this KR, we'll look at various ways we could better-organize the remaining important information from these icebox tasks for future planning.

Event Timeline

BBlack triaged this task as Medium priority.

I'm sorry if it sounds stupid or you already considered it but for the sake of being consistent with most other teams. You can have Traffic-team for tracking the ongoing work and Traffic staying as it is (which would make the transition much easier, you probably need to change to project to tag-type though). If you think this doesn't sound good, sorry for spamming here.

I'm sorry if it sounds stupid or you already considered it but for the sake of being consistent with most other teams. You can have Traffic-team for tracking the ongoing work and Traffic staying as it is (which would make the transition much easier, you probably need to change to project to tag-type though). If you think this doesn't sound good, sorry for spamming here.

Thanks for the suggestion! Our intent is that the "icebox" solution isn't permanent. "Traffic" is the name of a team, and doesn't (IMHO) make sense as a topic or tag outside of the team's own context. The current thinking (subject, I'm sure, to ongoing evolution, especially once our first pass triage is completed this Q and we have a better picture of things) is that the icebox backlog can probably be triaged and hopefully (mostly?) cease to exist within a couple of quarters. Some of the tasks can be resolved or dropped (many are basically invalidated by the passage of time and/or superseded by other plans, etc), and that the remainder of the icebox which contains good ideas and/or half-implemented things which have lacked priority to drive to completion can migrate to some as-yet-undecided place (but perhaps on a wiki?) dedicated to organizing, discussing, vetting, and planning future potential OKRs (or for pickup by other willing and able teams where that makes sense!).

Sure. Let me know if I can help with anything!

Traffic-Icebox now exists as a new tag with a process-informative description (click it and read!). I've bulk (+silent) moved all open Traffic tickets which had no activity for >= 6 months over to it as a first easy step, which moved 232 of the 379 open tasks (~61%). The moves contained an automated comment to help reduce any confusion, I hope. See example here: T81605#7327085 .

Next step is quick manual triage of the remainder of Traffic, just for whether they seem Icebox-appropriate or not. We'll follow that with the workflow/column re-org of the main Traffic board, and then go back to the Icebox list and do a more-thorough triage/followup/organizing cycle on all that landed there by the end of the month.

Half a year later, is there more to do here? Anything I could (maybe) help with?

Lots left to do here, we've just been pummeled by several layers of ever-increasing high-priority things that take precedence over each other. What we're blocked on here is making time to do the triage of the entire bulk of the icebox list. We're assuming the bulk of them can be closed with some disposition at the phab level, as they're clearly not ongoing, timely, planned, relevant, resourced, etc - but the important thing in the triaging process is that we extract all the information for future planning to Elsewhere (probably a wiki page!). In other words: convert the data in this backlog into a set of future ideas documented on a wiki, from which we can do planning for future years/quarters. The goal is to keep the phab task set short and active, rather than documenting wishlists that are un-resourced/planned. I think the team itself will have to do this Triage, though. Thanks for the offer of help!

I think that part of the effort of getting our board(s) under control is redefining a ticket's anatomy. I believe this ticket is too broad and more appropriately belongs in as OKRs or general planning. Broad tickets tend to stay open since nobody's ever really comfortable marking them as done. Keeping tickets lean and actionable would help prevent "vagueness" sprawl.

To that end, I would propose the (controversial?) closing of this ticket: We're well-aware of the mess and are actively trying to clean it up!

To clarify, I can understand the usage of encompassing, "epic"-style tickets; I view those as separate functions than orphaned mega-tickets.

BCornwall changed the task status from Open to In Progress.Mar 30 2023, 9:14 PM
BCornwall claimed this task.
BCornwall raised the priority of this task from Medium to High.

Since there wasn't any feedback on this, I guess I'll claim this ticket since I'm actively trying to fix this. I'll ask meta questions on this ticket. Prioritizing as "High" since the mess actively hinders from proper prioritization of other work.

For lack of a response, I'm going to Be Bold and close this since it's not exactly something we can measurably "resolve". Indeed, one could say that this has already been resolved based on bblack's icebox work :). We've made some strides but more general issues need resolving (such as T228759, which brings up the bigger question of how to triage/define priorities).

We will, of course, continue to improve the situation and clean up even more.