Improving Communication Feedback Report

[Ara Pulido]

Hello all!

During UDS Maverick we had a session about improving the communication
channels in the Ubuntu QA team. It was more about improving processes,
and using better and more often the channels that we already had.

Now that the Maverick cycle is finishing is time to look back and see
what work well and what didn't work that well, so we can discuss it
during UDS Natty and keep improving our processes.

*The meetings*
One of the main outputs of that session was about the weekly meetings
the we have on IRC. People found that the meeting times were too fixed
and that the meeting minutes were not always sent and stored. Some of
the actions items to improve this situation were:

 * A rotating chair
 * A rotating time of the meeting, to accommodate more people
 * The chair was going to send a summary to the mailing list

The feedback collected from the survey I sent a week ago is very positive:

 * 84.6% of the people that replied the survey thought that the rotation
of time is useful
 * 50% increased their participation thanks to the rotation
 * 100% of the people read the summary sent to the list!

One of the main concerns about the rotation of the meeting is the
predictability. People sometimes are surprised about the time, and can't
make it to the meeting. One possible solution would be that the chair,
instead of sending the reminder the same day or the day before, sends
the reminder on Monday, first thing, so people have a couple of days to
read the email and organize their week.

Another issue related to meetings that I have observed during the
Maverick cycle is that, the chair, if it is the first time that he or
she chairs the meeting, has a very hard time trying to find
documentation on how to chair the meeting, where to get the logs
afterwards, where to put the summary and logs and when to send them. To
solve all of these issues, I have created a small documentation on the
Meetings page to help new people who are chairing to find their way:

    https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/Meetings/Chairing

*The Launchpad Team*
In the Maverick cycle the Ubuntu Testing team got 46 new members and 20
membership expired. That's an increase of 26 members this cycle, which
is an 8.4% increase.

*The Mailing List*
During the Lucid cycle, 404 messages were sent to the mailing list.
During the Maverick cycle 274 messages were sent. We have to take into
account that I counted from May 1st until 30 September (5 months)

That makes an average of 67 messages per month in the Lucid cycle and
68.5 messages per month in the Maverick cycle. Numbers are very similar,
but subscribers have increased a lot in the last cycle, from 703 at the
end of the Lucid cycle to 970 readers subscribers right now. That's an
increase of 37.98%!!

*The IRC channels*
We have three channels QA-related in use: #ubuntu-bugs, #ubuntu-testing,
#ubuntu-quality. These are the results from the survey when I asked the
question "Are you familiar with the following IRC channels?"

 * #ubuntu-testing: 91%
 * #ubuntu-quality: 50%
 * #ubuntu-bugs: 50%

The channel #ubuntu-quality seems to be in need of some rethinking. Less
people knows it, very few people actually use it. We should rethink the
way we use this channel and explain better what's its purporse. Any ideas?

Also, although the #ubuntu-bugs channel is used, only half of the people
subscribed to Ubuntu QA is familiar with it. Pedro, can you prepare an
email to Ubuntu QA explaining #ubuntu-bugs channel and other resources
for triagers?

*The new landing page*
We have created a new landing page at http://qa.ubuntu.com but, as the
page just went live a couple of weeks ago, we would gather information
at UDS and we might as for feedback at the end of the Natty cycle, when
we have enough data about it.
One of the suggestions that I got in the survey is that, now that we
have increased participation, it is time to improve the documentation. I
couldn't agree more. I am working with the Community team with their
Community Review project [1] to try to understand what issues the new
contributors have to face before they feel confident contributing.
Improving that new contributor first experience is going to be one of my
goals during Natty cycle.

To sum up, I think that the balance of these changes has been positive.
Let's work together again during Natty UDS and cycle to keep the
improvements and build a great Ubuntu QA community!!

Thanks all!
Ara.

[1] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CommunityReview/Sep2010