svn commit: r49082 - head/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/news/status

Sat Jul 9 14:00:33 UTC 2016

Author: dru
Date: Sat Jul  9 14:00:31 2016
New Revision: 49082
URL: https://svnweb.freebsd.org/changeset/doc/49082

Log:
  Add the issue triage team's report submitted by vlad-fbsd at acheronmedia.com.
  
  Reviewed by: wblock
  Sponsored by: iXsystems

Modified:
  head/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/news/status/report-2016-04-2016-06.xml

Modified: head/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/news/status/report-2016-04-2016-06.xml
==============================================================================

--- head/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/news/status/report-2016-04-2016-06.xml	Sat Jul  9 13:11:12 2016	(r49081)
+++ head/en_US.ISO8859-1/htdocs/news/status/report-2016-04-2016-06.xml	Sat Jul  9 14:00:31 2016	(r49082)
@@ -1444,4 +1444,131 @@
 	  Implementation of the 4.3BSD UNIX Operating System</i>.</p>
     </body>
   </project>
+
+  <project cat='team'>
+    <title>&os; Issue Triage Team</title>
+
+    <contact>
+      <person>
+	<name>
+	  <given>Vladimir</given>
+	  <common>Krstulja</common>
+	</name>
+	<email>vlad-fbsd at acheronmedia.com</email>
+      </person>
+
+      <person>
+	<name>
+	  <given>Kubilay</given>
+	  <common>Kocak</common>
+	</name>
+	<email>koobs at freebsd.org</email>
+      </person>
+
+      <person>
+	<name>Bugmeister</name>
+	<email>bugmeister at freebsd.org</email>
+      </person>
+    </contact>
+
+    <body>
+      <p>Since the Triage Team was introduced in the October-December
+	2015 report, it has been working on the following three major
+	aspects of issue triage:</p>
+
+      <ul>
+	<li>Recruiting and educating more users to assist in issue
+	  triage.</li>
+
+	<li>Identifying problem areas, especially from the fresh eyes
+	  perspective, revealing issues not immediately obvious to
+	  contributors with experience.</li>
+
+	<li>Proposing changes to improve the issue triage
+	  process.</li>
+      </ul>
+
+      <p>Our efforts have almost exclusively focused on issues in the
+	"Ports & Packages" component as that is the easiest
+	starting point.  Other categories like "Base System" require
+	more knowledge and experience with problem content and
+	workflow.</p>
+
+      <p>During this time, Rodrigo was inactive due to lack of
+	available time and Vladimir was unable to commit enough time
+	during the first quarter of the year, but provided active
+	contribution during the second.  It became obvious that the
+	Issue Triage Team must concentrate on additional recruitment
+	in the coming quarter.</p>
+
+      <p>In the last two quarters, several problems were identified
+	and the formulated solutions will be published on our upcoming
+	Wiki page.  A summary of those issues is given here:</p>
+
+      <ol>
+	<li>Issue triage, defined as "ensure an issue is summarized,
+	  classified, and assigned to appropriate people", is too time
+	  consuming.  Bugzilla automation through auto-assign helps,
+	  but is insufficient.  If the triage process is extended to
+	  include "track the issue through its entire life to
+	  resolution", the time and effort required grows
+	  exponentially.  Fortunately, there are many things the
+	  community can do, with minimum effort, that help greatly.
+	  Part of the recruitment and education process is educating
+	  users on how to properly treat their own issues and issues
+	  they interact with in order to maximize the efficiency of
+	  issue tracking and problem resolution.</li>
+
+	<li>Various timeouts are inadequate.  For example, the
+	  maintainer timeout is too long and does not differentiate
+	  between classes of issues, such as a non-security and a
+	  security timeout.  Other timeouts are not covered, such as
+	  assignee timeouts, when an issue has been assigned with no
+	  follow-up activity.  Another example is a timeout where
+	  additional information was requested but never provided.
+	  We will be recommending several changes and documenting
+	  these in our Wiki.</li>
+
+	<li>Partially as a consequence of inadequate timeouts and
+	  inadequate ability to efficiently track issues through their
+	  entire lifecycle, a great number of issues are open for too
+	  long.   We have identified several classes of those issues
+	  and will document the solutions to each in the near
+	  future.</li>
+
+	<li>Bugzilla is not perfect and at times it can hinder the
+	  ability to properly track issues clearly and accurately, in
+	  order to resolve them quickly.  However, changing bug
+	  tracking software is a tremendous effort, so we will instead
+	  recommend technical and workflow improvements in order to
+	  improve the user experience as much as possible.  For
+	  example, we identified additional saved searches to help
+	  track and quickly find issue categories and, more
+	  importantly, their <strong>states</strong>.  Another example
+	  is ensuring that various flags and keywords are unambiguous
+	  and well understood.  For instance, "patch" and
+	  "patch-ready", can often be misunderstood or
+	  misapplied.</li>
+
+	<li>Issue statistics are lacking and for the next quarter we
+	  intend to change that.  Statistics help to provide insight
+	  into potential bottlenecks and inform the priority of
+	  improvements to the issue tracker and workflows.</li>
+      </ol>
+    </body>
+
+    <help>
+      <task>Recruit more suitable triagers into the team, both
+	committers and community members.</task>
+
+      <task>Gather and present some interesting statistics for the
+	next report.</task>
+
+      <task>Set up the Wiki page with identified problems and
+	recommended guidelines and policies.</task>
+
+      <task>Find common use patterns and add more saved searches to
+	Bugzilla.</task>
+    </help>
+  </project>
 </report>
