Open Stack

On Tue, 2018-09-25 at 18:40 +0000, CARVER, PAUL wrote:
[...]
> There is certainly room for additional means of juggling and
> discussing/negotiating priorities in the stages before work really gets
> under way, but if it doesn't eventually become clear
> 
> 1) who's doing the work
> 2) when are they targeting completion
> 3) what (if anything) is higher up on their todo list

Its entirely possible to track these three things in StoryBoard today, and
for other people to view that information.

1) Task assignee, though this should be set when someone actually starts
doing the work rather than being used to indicate "$person intends to do
this at some point"
2) Due date on a card in a board
3) Lanes in that board ordered by priority

The latter two assume that the person doing the work is using a board to
track what they're doing, which is probably sensible behaviour we should
encourage.

Its admittedly difficult for downstream consumers to quickly find the
board-related information, but I think that is a discoverability bug (it
doesn't currently become clear where exactly these things can be found)
rather than a fundamental issue which means we should just abandon the
multi-dimensional approach.

> then it's impossible for anyone else to make any sort of plans that
> depend on that work. Plans could include figuring out how to add more
> resources or contingency plans. It's also possible that people or
> projects may develop a reputation for not delivering on their stated top
> priorities, but that's at least better than having no idea what the
> priorities are because every person and project is making up their own
> system for tracking it.

I would argue that someone who wants to make plans based on upstream work
that may or may not get done should be taking the time (which should at
worst be something like "reading the docs to find a link to a
worklist/board" even with the current implementation) to understand how
upstream are expressing the state of their work, though I can understand
why they might not always want to. I definitely think that defining an
"official"-ish approach is something that should probably be done, to
reduce the cognitive load on newcomers.

- Adam