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This are some suggested approaches to leading the Development Prioritization subteam - they definitely can and should be adapted and refined!

Table of Contents

Monthly Dev Pri meetings

Creating Agendas

Sample Agenda: 2019-12-18 Meeting notes

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Sign to create the agenda under the appropriate year header (the year must be selected in order for the agenda to be created nested within it)

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Select “meeting notes” for the page style

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Set the calendar view to the proper date (it autofills the current day)

Copy over the zoom call info from previous agenda

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Scheduling Meetings

  • Item/Who [the reason to combine them is to not get the board too wide]

  • Tickets

  • Recommendations

  • Decisions

8. Meetings typically have the following elements:

  • Roll call

  • Announcements/Discussion

  • Tickets

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Copy over the participants from the roster

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Add the follow links: Kanban boards:

Link to ArchivesSpace sandbox: http://test.archivesspace.org/

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Suggested column names:

Creating Agendas

Sample Agenda: 2023-03-07 Meeting notes

  1. Make a copy of the prior meeting’s page

  2. Rename page with appropriate date

  3. Update date in agenda

  4. Update participants list if necessary

  5. Delete resolved tickets from agenda

  6. If all tickets assigned to a person were resolved, move them to the end of the list to make sure we cycle through everyone over time

  7. Assign new tickets as necessary so that everyone has 3 tickets to report on

Tip: To tag a person, use the @ symbol and select begin to type their name.

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  • TagsLabels: you can select tickets by themes by clicking on the tags labels 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.

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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

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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.  

Ticket “assignments” should be are suggestions.If a team member doesn’t want to address a ticket, they should be able to swap out that ticket for a different one.

In general, assign 3 -5 tickets to each member each month for an estimated 30-60 minutes of work outside of the 1.5 hour meeting.

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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 The ArchivesSpace program team are technically not a part of Dev. Pri. but are there attend 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” , do not assign them tickets, unless they have agreed to look into a ticket at a prior meeting.

  • This approach of the Lead assigning tickets is only one way to do it. Other Another possible arrangements approach could include having have 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.

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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. Send a reminder to the team a

One week before the meeting and include the following information:

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The link to meeting agenda with ticket assignments

Ask that the team members add their notes before the meeting

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, share the agenda with the TAC and UAC listservs to allow those who may be interested in particular tickets to join. This also serves as a reminder to Dev/Pri members.

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.  

If the meeting is running over, people may need to only present one or two of their tickets in order for everyone to speak at least once during the meeting.  Unaddressed tickets can be carried forward to the next meeting.

The leaderThe Lead/facilitating person should try to summarize the opinions that others share and suggest (or echo the person presenting the ticket’s) recommendation.  The leader Lead should never unilaterally decide on a ticket against the opinions of the rest of the subteam. If it’s a hotly contested ticket, the ticket should be shared on the member list for additional commentary and possibly a formal vote.If the leader has prepared a “quick list” of tickets to possibly close, they still need the support of the rest of the subteam before closing those tickets.  This approval can be conducted via email or at the meeting, but never unilaterally by the leader without others’ input.

Notes:

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  • 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 Lead changes the tickets on the board ' status a few days after the Dev. Pri. meeting.  This  This gives the subteam members time to comment and follow up on their tickets.  

Dev. Pri. leaders Lead need permissions granted by the Program Manager to move the cards on the board.  This can be a tricky process, so be in touch with Christine if there are any technological hiccups. 

Update ticket statuses either by dragging tickets on the Kanban board into the appropriate columns or by updating the status on the individual tickets (this may be better, to avoid accidentally dragging and dropping the ticket into the wrong column).

Screenshot of changing the status in the ticket view:

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When closing tickets, leave a comment on the rational and end the message “on behalf of Dev. Pri.” so that ticket reporters have a rationale and know who is making this decision.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.

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Metadata Standards and Usability subteam workflow integrations

Some tickets will need input and expertise from the other subteams. The kanban boards currently have “swimlanes” for both Metadata Standards and Usability.

To assign a ticket to Metadata Standards or Usability, add the label “metadata_standards_subteam” or “usability_subteam.”

The Metadata Standards subteam can work fairly autonomously, beyond having tickets assigned with a metadata tag to their swim lane. . They may move any tickets assigned to them to the “Ready for Implementation” status without sending them back to Dev/Pri.

The Usability subteam, because of the interconnectedness and complexity of updating the program, will need to function has historically functioned as a vetting group. Once Usability tickets have been discussed and have recommendations from the subteam, those tickets should be added to the next Dev. Pri. meeting. It would be is helpful to have a representative from Usability and, to a lesser extent, Metadata Standards on the roster for Dev. Pri. , or at least make sure the leadership of these subteams keep in touch to ensure that tickets route back to Dev. Pri. for final approval in a timely manner.With the institution of open invites to the TAC/UAC membership during the 2022-2023 term, this is less critical.

Reporting out

Progress updates in TAC and UAC meetings

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“Dev. Pri. met once since the joint TAC/UAC meeting in January and addressed 18 13 tickets at the meeting .”

It has been challenging to quantify the work of Dev. Pri. because tickets keep coming in. It can look as if we’re not doing anything because the kanban stats will always be high, even as we pass tickets. It’s uncertain how effective listing the kanban stats [below] are, but this was the precedent established by Dev. Pri. leader Jason Loeffler pre-2016.

Kanban stats:

Feature Requests:

  • Awaiting prioritization: 107

  • Awaiting More Info: 58

  • Ready for Implementation: 72

Bug Reports: 

  • Awaiting prioritization: 13

  • Awaiting More info: 11

  • Ready for Implementation: 56

(6 ready for implementation, 5 awaiting more information, 2 closed).”

Use this opportunity at the council meeting to bring attention to tickets needing more information or discussion.

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The Technical and User Advisory Council chairs will ask the Dev. Pri. leader(s) Lead for reports to add to the council reports four times a year.

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There are many, many different types of reports. The Created vs. Resolved tickets report might be the most applicable. This is an example of a report spanning the last five years.

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The red is the number of tickets created, the green is when the ticket is closed. Dev. Pri. operates somewhere in the middle.

Reports for Average Age and Resolution Time might also be helpful. As one can see, tickets can take a long time to work through the system - hence it is important to be efficiently address a lot of ticket in each Dev. Pri. meeting.

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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.

, but Dev/Pri has made limited use of them to date.

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.

Leads and Vice-Leads

As with the rest of the advisory councils' subteams, Dev/Pri switched to a Lead/Vice-Lead model during the 2021-2022 term. The division of responsibilities between the two people can be handled in many different ways, but as of the 2022-2023 term, the Vice-Lead is responsible for taking notes during the meeting and covering for the Lead if they are unavailable. The Lead is responsible for the rest of the work outlined in this document.

Having the Vice-Lead take responsibility for one of the last meetings of the term is helpful for making sure they are confident in managing the process after the leadership transition.

It is ideal if one of the two is from TAC and the other from UAC. If that is not possible due to a lack of volunteers, some arrangement for reporting to the other advisory council during their meetings must be made.