2024-05-16 TAC meeting notes

5 min

Attendance ice breaker

@Rachel Searcy

Icebreaker: Spring, Summer, Fall, or Winter?

5 minutes

Program Update

@Christine Di Bella

Most of the team is at Code4Lib this week, which is why we send our regrets for this meeting.

Watch for an announcement very soon about the location and a collaborative effort for the Annual Member Forum on August 14

Team is just about to merge the code for upgrades to Rails, JRuby, Bootstrap and other important components of ArchivesSpace.

15 min

Sub-team Updates

Development Prioritization:
@Matt Strauss

Integrations:
@Elizabeth Dunham

Metadata Standards:
@Kevin Clair

Technical Documentation:
@Jenna Silver

Testing:
@Austin Munsell

• Development Prioritization:

  • Reviewed 7 tickets at May meeting

  • Continued to provide feedback to @Thimios Dimopuloson bug reports/new feature requests

  • Discussed best practices for editing tickets

  • @Brianna McLaughlin agreed to be Dev/Pri Vice Lead for next term

• Integrations:

  • Working on submitting final report and will be wrapping up group

• Metadata Standards:

  • Creating a community survey on community use cases and will be circulating shortly

• Technical Documentation:

  • Discussed changing role of Tech Docs and trying to move more towards an editorial group; working on the updated charge for the group

• Testing:

  • Preparing for full regression testing related system updates (not a new release). Michelle and Austin are working with Thimios to incorporate some behavior scenarios into the testing spreadsheet.

2 minutes

TAC Business

@Rachel Searcy

• Paige Monlux and Liz Caringola have resigned from TAC; we thank them for their service.

• Thank you for your contributions to the most recent quarterly report to the Governance Board.

• Nominating Committee continues their work. Thank you for sharing the call and recommending folks.

5 minutes

It’s Retrospective Time!

@Rachel Searcy

• Sub-team leads/vice leads will present their team’s retrospective at the June meeting. If your sub-team does not meet between now and then, consider rescheduling your meeting. It’s ok if your retrospective is still in progress, but should be finished by the end of the month.

• Things to keep in mind: Considerations for the End of Term

  • 50+ Retrospective Questions for your Next Meeting

  • Retrospectives are for everyone, not just the sub-team lead!

  • Review which members of your sub-team are leaving at the end of the term; record any insights they might have in the retrospective.

  • Document ideas/potential plans for next term – even if a lot of the same people are still returning, you may have forgotten the intention or why you thought it was a good idea.

  • Document pain points so that they can potentially be addressed next year (e.g., meetings were hard to facilitate without a note taker, so next year we want to designate one)

  • Take some time (individually, as a group) to identify what worked well, and make a plan to keep doing those things. Consider too what didn’t work well, or what doesn’t need to be done anymore (but document why).

  • Are there any completed tasks/projects that will require maintenance by next term’s subteam? Document what needs to happen, how often it needs to happen, who should do it, and what that person needs to know in order to do it.

  • Do not stress if you didn’t finish tasks, but ask how you can set achievable goals? Hint: make your goals smaller, increment them from term to term

  • Remember to distinguish between ongoing tasks (things that will always be true) and new projects. Both should be assessed.

  • Remember that leadership has been around for awhile, but every team has new members. Explore motivations anew.

• Last year’s retrospectives:

  • 2022-2023 Integrations Retrospective

  • 2022-2023 Metadata Standards Retrospective

  • 2022-2023 TechDocs Retrospective

  • 2022-2023 Dev Pri Retrospective

  • 2022-2023 Testing Retrospective

15 minutes

End of Term Notes

@Rachel Searcy

• Yearly Timeline of Council Activities

• Considerations for the End of Term

• Task ownership, ticket ownership, and Google Docs ownership

  • Was someone taking the lead on something? Are they here next term? Do they want to continue with that task? If they’re not here next term, who takes it on? Does it need to continue? What knowledge or resources can the old lead pass to the new lead?

  • Does someone who is rotating off own a Jira ticket that needs follow-up? A good solution here is to make sure someone else on your team is watching that ticket.

• Review Google Drive folders

  • Appraise ye archivists, appraise!! Do you really need to keep that draft of a thing in Google Drive? Review existing files for relevance, delete or archive old files, leave comments in files if they need explanation, and organize the space for the next term.

  • This is a good place for individuals to take action and not just leads.

  • Remember: the place of record for council activities is the Wiki and you do not need to keep every working document. If you find an ephemeral document in Google Drive, feel empowered to delete it.

  • Transfer ownership of important files if they are owned by members who are rotating off

  • Members rotating off can transfer ownership to archivesspacehome[at]gmail[dot]com if needed.

• Term Transition Doldrums

  • Term transition is the period after our last official meeting and before the next one. That “next meeting” can be in July, but more often it is in August. Council activities slow but do not stop during this period, and one point in particular is that there is usually a quarterly report due in this transitional time. That means that just when you thought you could go on vacation, someone will reach out to you to contribute to that last quarterly report. Please keep that one last obligation in mind.

  • Another thing that happens in this period is the assignment of new members. Leads will receive word about these assignments; your immediate obligation is to make yourself available for any questions from those new members prior to the next Councils Orientation (July).

    • Suggestion to add an overview of each group’s activities over the past year to the new member TAC orientation

• Next Term

  • It’s never too early to start thinking about next term!

  • Incoming Leads in particular may want to review Yearly Timeline of Council Activities and

    Guidelines for ArchivesSpace Council Sub-Teams

  • Consider keeping the same meeting times next term, since that slot is already taken up in your current schedule and it would only be new members that you’d need to poll for availability.

• What would you add? What are your transition pain points and successes?

Time-permitting

Sub-team breakout rooms

• Start talking about/coordinating your end of term actions.

3 min

Open Mic

2 minutes

Closing Notes

@Rachel Searcy

Next (and last!) TAC meeting: June 20th at 1pm EST / 10 am PST