This are some suggested approaches to leading the Development Prioritization subteam - they definitely can and should be adapted and refined!
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Creating Agendas
Sample Agenda: 2019-12-18 Meeting notes
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Note: all tagged people will be emailed every single time the page is updated and saved. To avoid this when making minor updates (for example, saving in-progress meeting notes) use the publish without notifying watchers.
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Selecting Tickets
Helpful Jira views
New bug reports: https://archivesspace.atlassian.net/secure/RapidBoard.jspa?rapidView=15
New feature requests: https://archivesspace.atlassian.net/secure/RapidBoard.jspa?rapidView=16
The Dashboard shows the latest activity in Jira and also provides a quick overview of tags
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Tags: you can select tickets by themes by clicking on the tags in the Dashboard view. Obviously, this works only as well as tickets are tagged, so keyword searches are also helpful. Pay attention to their status or scope out any completed/closed/in development tickets.
Old ticket view is a scoped overview of unresolved tickets according to when they were last created. You can scope searches of Jira tickets by navigating from the Dashboard to Filters to “Search Issues” and scope through all of the drop down options.
If you like, you can “Watch” a ticket by pressing the “eye” icon on a ticket. This way, you are emailed every time there is activity on the ticket. You probably don’t want to do this regularly, since you might get a lot of emails, but it’s just another option if you’re interested.
Look completely over both the Bug and Feature Request Kanban boards for tickets that are glaringly urgent. It’s not clear whether tickets are arranged on the boards in any particular order, so it’s important to not only pick from the top or bottom of the lists.
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When tickets are first made, their status is “Newly Added.” The Program Manager makes the first pass at vetting tickets, mostly making sure that institution-specific support requests don’t end up in our queues. Dev. Pri. looks at the Awaiting Prioritization and Awaiting more Information queues. Have a mix of both.
Caution: Awaiting more Information queues can become a “purgatory” if the reporter or other people don’t provide more information. It may be worth doing a scoped search to devote a few meetings to the Awaiting More Info tickets to close unresponsive/outdated tickets.
Look at the priority symbols on the cards, but don’t rely on this too much. Keep in mind that priority is a subjective ranking, which should be reassessed as part of the meeting discussion.
Note: Lydia Tang changed the default priority to “minor” in 2019. Previously, the default was “major.” Take both statuses with a grain of salt.
Selecting tickets by themes can be fun and also helpful to making sure that tickets compliment and don’t conflict in recommendations
Assigning Tickets
Ask team members to add any strengths/interests to the roster. Members with technical coding expertise and or cataloging expertise are especially important to note. If expertise in these areas (or others) are not on the team, be sure to prepare a slate of tickets to share on the member list and potentially invite external experts or the original ticket reporter to discuss the tickets at the meetings.
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Make sure to match tickets to expertise as much as possible.
Don’t assign more than 2 extremely involved/complicated tickets to a single person during a given month.
Laney and Lora are technically not a part of Dev. Pri. but are there for their expertise and feedback. Assign up to 2 tickets (1 each) to them only if their particular expertise is required.
This approach to “assign tickets” is only one way to do it. Other possible arrangements could include having subteam members sign up to assign tickets for a given month. This actually might be a more equitable way to distribute the task and would succeed in involving the team more. This initial approach was done primarily to save the time of subteam members from trying to figure out how to select their own tickets each time. Regularly ask the subteam members for feedback on the approach and if they have other ideas.
Before the Meeting
A new agenda with ticket assignments should be sent out to the team shortly after a given meeting. This allows the team members a nearly full month to investigate their tickets.
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The link to meeting agenda with ticket assignments
Ask that the team members add their notes before the meeting
Encourage team members to comment on the tickets ahead of the meeting if they have any questions, this way the ticker reporter or someone else can provide more information.
During the Meeting
Keep the meeting focused - Dev. Pri. needs to cover a lot of tickets. If discussion of a particular ticket is getting too bogged down, perhaps the ticket needs to be moved to “Awaiting More Info” and/or added to the next month’s meeting. Consider having a 5 minute limit for each ticket.
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It may be worth considering alternating people when presenting tickets, as opposed to having a single person present all of their tickets at a time. Often, the team member would need to follow up on the ticket with a note, and it may be best to skip temporarily to someone else’s tickets while that team member leaves the follow-up text on their ticket.
Reassess the priority ranking and labels on tickets. Adding/clarifying labels on tickets can help the program team identify related tickets during a development sprint.
After the Meeting
The leader/co-leaders move the tickets on the board a few days after the Dev. Pri. meeting. This gives the subteam members time to comment and follow up on their tickets.
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After updating ticket status, refresh the agenda and to make sure that all statuses have been updated and are correct according the to “Decision” column in the meeting notes (VERY IMPORTANT).
Note: Sometimes it’s not possible for a ticket to move form one column to another. If that’s an issue, move the ticket first back to “Awaiting Prioritization” and try it again from that status.
TAC/UAC updates
Sample Council update:
Provide a statement on how many times Dev. Pri. met since the last update and how many tickets the team addressed (count on the Decisions column of each meeting agenda)
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[list tickets needing larger group input]
Quarterly Board Reports
The Technical and User Advisory Council chairs will ask the Dev. Pri. leader(s) for reports to add to the council reports four times a year.
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We look forward to continuing to meet on a monthly basis to continue to review and prioritize bug reports and feature requests
Generating Jira Reports
From one of the kanban board views, expand out of the side menus and click on “reports”
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Note: these reports may be sobering but can be helpful for visualizing the sheer amount of bug and feature requests that Dev. Pri. wades through.
Special Projects
Dev. Pri. may want to consider special projects that align with its mission including creating surveys, calls for feedback on selected tickets, or recommending Task Forces to address areas of need to Council leadership and the Program Manager.
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