Hi everyone, This cycle, the OpenStack Infrastructure team forewent having an in-person midcycle sprint and has instead taken advantage of the new #openstack-sprint channel for specific sprint topics we wished to cover.
So far there have been 3 such virtual sprints. Two were completed by the Infrastructure team, the first in December and focused on fleshing out our infra-manual[0] and the second in January where we completed our Spec to split out our Puppet modules[1]. The third was also in January, hosted by the Third Party CI Working Group focused on improving documentation for rolling out external testing systems [2]. For each of these sprints, we created an Etherpad which had links to important information related to the sprint, details about what where we currently were work-wise and kept a running tally of the flow of work. Work was also tracked through near continous chat on #openstack-sprint, just like you might find at a physical sprint. We found these virtual sprints to be incredibly valuable for knocking out work items that we'd defined at the Summit and in Specs. By focusing on specific work items we were able to spend just a day or two on each sprint and we didn't have the travel time (and jet lag!) penalty that physical sprints have. They were also relatively easy to schedule around the particularly active travel schedule that our team members have. Virtual sprints in the #openstack-sprint channel are reserved much like project IRC meetings, pick a time and update to the wiki page at https://wiki.openstack.org/wiki/VirtualSprints Some lessons learned: * Schedule as far in advance as you can, taking into account the core people needed to complete the task * Block out time for the sprint in your schedule Just like being at a physical sprint, ignore much of the rest of IRC, mailing lists and other meetings and be present at the virtual sprint. Continous presence in channel helps the team tackle problems and coordinate work. * Consider other timezones by having hand-offs Not everyone on our team is in the same timezone, so to help folks who join later in your day by giving a quick summary of work done and next steps they may wish to focus on * Have sprint participants sign up for specific tasks during the sprint Use an Etherpad and bugs to track overall sprint progress and have contributors sign up for specific work items so there isn't overlap in work. Though it's still in heavy development and not ready for most projects to use yet, I'll also mention that Storyboard has the ability to create and assign "tasks" to individuals, this helped us tremendously during our Puppet Module sprint, where a lot modules were being created and we wanted to make sure we didn't overlap on work. Something to look forward! * Use a common Gerrit topic for the sprint In order to help others in the sprint review changes, use a common topic in Gerrit for all changes made during the sprint, this can be set upon submission to Gerrit with: git review -t sprint-topic-here, or afterwords by the owner in the Gerrit UI. * We'd like to bring in the Gerrit bot for future sprints Due to the way the Gerrit bot is configured, it takes a change to the global bot config via Gerrit to update it. We're looking into ways to coordinate this or make it easier so you can also see patchset updates for projects you wish to track in the sprint channel. [0] http://docs.openstack.org/infra/manual/ & event wrap-up blog post with some stats at: http://princessleia.com/journal/?p=9952 [1] http://specs.openstack.org/openstack-infra/infra-specs/specs/puppet-modules.html [2] https://etherpad.openstack.org/p/third-party-ci-documentation -- Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph || Lyz || pleia2 __________________________________________________________________________ OpenStack Development Mailing List (not for usage questions) Unsubscribe: openstack-dev-requ...@lists.openstack.org?subject:unsubscribe http://lists.openstack.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/openstack-dev