Open Stack

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