Sprint Planning Meeting 2021 10 27

Sprint Planning Meeting, SecureDrop, 2021-10-27

Sprint timeframe: Beginning of Day (PDT) 2021-10-27 to Beginning of Day (PDT) 2021-11-10

1) Retrospective

Previous sprint priorities:

• QA and release SecureDrop 2.1.0
• Finish key SecureDrop Client bugfixes for 0.5.0 release
  • Spacing issues fixed
  • Message/reply/file counter bug fixed
  • Other fixes still pending
• Complete first round of candidate review for open positions

Other accomplishments since then:

• Hired Gonzalo & Cory! Lots of SDW on-boarding/pairing w/ Gonzalo
• Supported Outreachy contribution period & helped two contributors land three PRs:
  • https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop-client/pull/1321
  • https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop-client/pull/1318
  • https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop-client/pull/1319
• Landed Whonix-16 migration
• Fixed SecureDrop Client test flake
• Completed mypy type hinting for SecureDrop Client
• Updates to i18n docs
• Dependency updates across the board (some more painful than others)

Release-related observations & other comments:

What worked well:

• smooth adjustment of schedule based on projected workload/capacity

• Unexpected pip update didn't break flow

• Increased use of gitter.im (+1)

• Pairing sessions are proving to make Allie more productive :) =D

• Supporting alternative schedules (3-10s for example) and different timezones

  • First experimental async meeting!

• Impressive engagement via community, both via Outreachy and forum research inquiry

• Team is growing!

• Thanks for flagging LE root cert issue early! It does seem to have affected a couple of instances.

• Excellent collaboration: lots of backup and advice on LM duties, a bit of dogpiling on 6137 (unfortunate to duplicate effort, but we got it done under a deadline)

• Good turn around from learning experiences, folding into documentation updates very quickly

• "Cory's first QA" ;-)

What can be improved:

• Relationship with LL needs some investment. Some churn on both sides. We had a good start to rebuilding with a group call between SD & LL, and now have a dedicated channel on their chat system to coordinate more closely going forward.

  • +1; worth documenting this division of labor explicitly.

  • Potential ACTION: For next release (or SD Client translation rollout), let's prepare responsibilities chart ahead of time and share it w/ L10NLab. More generally, outlining boundaries at a high level can be done in our public docs. (cfm has this planned but not recorded anywhere as a public GitHub ticket.)

• Separate but related to the above: LM duties for release operations need a bit more coverage.

• Once escalated to critical release-blocker, #6137 (https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop/issues/6137 circular dependency issue) warranted (in my opinion) a single document/pad where we were tracking all our different approaches and their statuses, in addition to checking in synchronously throughout the day.

  • should we have been capturing this more in the issue itself? +1

  • Tracking spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1M4Fa59rkfuTpOPjE52NloOybnnVk0xyzYMJUTBcdkFU/edit

  • Ideas for structure:

  • When there's an explicit decision to escalate something to multiple people, use that as the point when you create a synchronous place (e.g., spreadsheet, pad) to track shared state.

    • If we do use non-GitHub tooling, let's sync back to the issue once decisions are made.

    • Could assign a coordinator for complex issues (like incident response).

• A11Y-related changes modified quite a few strings w/o any textual changes needing translation. For bulk changes like this, can we do this for translators?+1 +1

  • We'll consider this in the context of the Journalist Interface changes

• Team can grow even more!

• Figure out a way to block out consecutive hours on a weekday so that I can fix bugs and stuff

What's still a mystery:

• Process for managing languages that aren't yet supported (strings weren't updated in Weblate - should they be?)

  • Prioritization of supported languages now addressed here: https://github.com/freedomofpress/securedrop-docs/pull/265/files#diff-2c758825635525aabb31f86272ec285745aadf7ee4c9c16ea1683dc9b7c6967cR414-R419

  • Erik to open ticket

• Do we want to use continuous translation workflows for SD, as we're planning for SD Client?

• need to address async concerns if we're gonna support folks working globally/on different scheds

  • +1 although i loved Kev's attempt at async planning! +1

Memories of learning time:

• (Erik) Slow burn Rust reading
• Cory plans to return to Rust in November!

2) Key dates and time commitments

General work schedule notes:

• Monday-Thursday: Erik (410 or using PTO), Cory (4asymptotic10)
• Monday-Wednesday: Allie (3*10)
• Monday-Wednesday: Gonzalo (3*8)
• Part-time throughout (10-20 h): Nina

This week               : SecureDrop Workstation RPM release
2021-10-28              : PTO: Conor
2021-10-29              : PTO: Conor (half-day)
2021-11-01              : cfm off Mon; working Tue–Fri instead
2021-11-02              : Tails 4.24 release
2021-11-11              : US/Canada holiday: Veterans Day / Remembrance Day
2021-11-08 to 2021-11-12: PTO: Erik (Victoria, BC trip :-)

After sprint:

TBD                     : SecureDrop Client release
2021-11-15              : Ro returns from break
2021-11-25 to 2021-11-26: US holiday: Thanksgiving

3) Sprint priorities

Top 3 sprint priorities:

• Release SecureDrop Workstation RPM & get SD Client release-ready
• Test OpnSense firewall as potential alternative recommendation to SG-3100
• Get feature-complete PR for semantic HTML5/ARIA page structure in JI to "Ready"

4) Select and estimate tasks

https://github.com/orgs/freedomofpress/projects/1