Moving the Vacation Checklist (for developers) to Process Street

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Hi @team,

We’ve moved the Vacation Checklist (for developers) to Process Street, and want to make sure it’s ready to be added into the handbook.

Please will you go through the checklist and make sure there are no usability issues or missing steps. It would be great if you could suggest improvements too! Even if we can implement them now (because of Process Street’s limitations), we can always consider them for the Workflow Manager.

Please add your comments to this thread by the end of the upcoming sprint. You can log your time on this Jira card.

Thanks! I appreciate the input. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Thank you for preparing this, @Ali! The checklist looks really nice.

Nit: the “Add your vacation to the calendar” step is missing the clarification, in which cases you should use your full name in the calendar event’s name. It might also make sense to mention that the event should be added to a cell-specific calendar, if applicable.

Also, would it make sense to link the checklist in the forum post, so it can be easily accessed later? I see that these checklists have unique links, but I don’t see a way to list them later (other than in the browser’s history). Some of these points need some turnarounds with other cell members, so it might not always be possible to complete the whole checklist at once.

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Hello @Ali, first of all, the checklist is pretty cool!

My feedback about it:

Time off

Run this checklist a few weeks before your vacation. There are a number of tasks that should be completed, by the latest, the sprint before your vacation begins

This is partially true. There are cases when announcing a vacation could be 2-3 days before the actual time off. The handbook says:

Make sure to book your vacation:
For 1 day off, 3 days in advance
For 2 days to 1 week off, by Thursday evening of the week preceding the sprint in which time off starts
For more than a week off, two weeks in advance.

Availability

If you decide to travel and still work, it’s useful to let everyone know, but it’s not necessary to go through the vacations process. As long as you have a good internet connection and maintain work hours and communication / reactivity levels, you can work from anywhere

Although this is correct - as far as I remember correctly - it would be great to mention updating the contact sheet’s availability graph. That helps a lot sometimes.

Ownership

This is probably an issue in the handbook as well because I cannot see it mentioned, but I believe that besides epic owners this checklist item should be duplicated for client owners as well.

Confirm that the epic reviewer is willing to manage the epic while you’re away

Here, an action item could be to ping the backup person and discuss the time off with him on the epic. That way we could ensure that this point is not missed and the other person is aware of the time off.

Transfer any applicable knowledge to the epic reviewer

We could mention that it should be done on the epic itself in a form of a comment, or shared google doc(s), or similar.

Select the roles and rotations you’d have if you were not on vacation

  • Code Reviewer - Actually this is everyone’s responsibility, so it is not needed I think.
  • OSPR Liaison, Community Liaison, DevOps specialist, Official Forum Moderator, Ops Reviewer, and Business Development Specialist are missing from the list if I did not miss any.

Misc

  • “Set a reminder for the sprint before you leave to check if there are newcomer reviews assigned to you while you’re away” and " Check if there are newcomer reviews assigned to you while you’re away" are kind of duplication.
  • “Are there newcomer reviews assigned to you while you’re away?” - To me it is weird we could set “yes” and the checklist item can be marked as done. I would assume that the only acceptable answer is “no” since we have to have a reviewer replacement :sweat_smile:
  • " Check if there are any outstanding tasks or reviews assigned to you while you’re away" - same as above

Besides the above, it is a really nice work! Thank you for this, it is awesome! :tada:

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Hi @Agrendalath,

Thanks for your feedback! You brought up some really useful points.

I have a few questions about one thing you mentioned; specifically, your note about adding the event to the calendar:

  1. Firstly, did this link in the checklist open the team calendar for you? (I don’t have permission to view the calendar so I can’t check that the link is correct)

  2. Do you have a link to each of the cell-specific calendars that you could share with me, please? Thanks for the suggestion to mention them!

Also, would it make sense to link the checklist in the forum post, so it can be easily accessed later?

Hmm, I’ll need to look into this to see what’s possible with Process Street. Thanks for the idea!

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Hi @gabor,

Thanks for your detailed feedback. It’s really helpful! You mentioned a lot of things that I didn’t think of, or even know about, so thank you very much! I’ve left a few notes below:

The reason I suggested the checklist be completed a whole sprint before the vacation begins, is because it would allow the person enough time to complete any outstanding work, or find replacements. It would also give the rest of the team more time to prepare. Do you think this is overkill?

Good idea! I didn’t even know this sheet existed.

I see what you’re saying. I was trying to ensure that if someone goes through the checklist long before their vacation, they remember to check for newcomer reviews (and outstanding tasks) just before they leave as well (in case they have been assigned any reviews or tasks since they last checked). But I can see how this could be unnecessary. Perhaps I should just remove the “set a reminder” steps. Let me think more about this. Thanks for mentioning it.

Thanks for bringing up all the missing roles and rotations, as well as your ideas for the other sections. I will be updating all of them based on your suggestions. :slight_smile:

I appreciate the help!

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This is great! It makes a simple task with many small steps really easy to check everything. :smiley:

I do have some general feedback/suggestions:

  • It would be cool to link to jira with the appropriate filters on steps like “Confirm that the epic reviewer is willing to manage the epic while you’re away”
  • We could remove the back-and-forth between the calendar and the forum by making the forum post first, copying the link, then creating the calendar event and pasting the forum link.
  • For 1-2 days off, most of the checklist items aren’t necessary (finding epic reviewers, members to cover for roles, etc.). Perhaps these could be hidden in this case, but then again, perhaps it’s best to always show these steps for in case a day off does coincide with something important.
  • What is the purpose of entering the vacation type and dates off in the checklist? I didn’t notice anything that referenced them later in the checklist (I was hoping for something like a pre-filled vacation forum post template, or link to auto create the calendar event).
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Yep, it opens an OpenCraft (whole team) shared calendar. However, it’s an embed view and it’s read-only, so it could be better to simply link https://calendar.google.com instead.

Huh, that’s odd. I can see your email ali@opencraft.com on the “Share with specific people” list there. I’ve removed it and added it back. Maybe this will fix it.

I’ve added you to all cell-specific calendars. You should be able to go to:

  1. https://calendar.google.com
  2. My Calendars → OpenCraft (or Opencraft - $Cell) → Options (on the left side of the page)
  3. Integrate calendar → Public URL to this calendar

However, this is also an embed view, so you cannot create new events from there (or at least it doesn’t work for me).

+1 to this, I forgot to add it to my feedback. This would be really cool and would resolve all concerns about things like keeping the proper event syntax, linking proper calendars, etc.

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This is a good initiative; I’m realizing checklists are essential for our processes to work. Thanks @Ali.

I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but I have to ask: we just moved to Monday.com for checklisting everything else. Is there a particular reason why this isn’t there, too?

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I worked through this checklist to trial things for my 1 day off next sprint, and it worked fine. (Had a lot of “N/A” comments, since 1 day isn’t a big deal, but was good to work through it anyway.) Thanks for your work here @Ali!

:+1: to these – also missing Cell epic planning manager . And I don’t think we need “Cell manager” either?

Yep, I think this is overkill. So long as the steps are followed, and we’ve followed the timing rules in the handbook, that’s enough. No need to introduce even more deadlines :)

Yep, those steps are unnecessary. Everyone has their own way of remembering all the steps required, and so no need to explicitly require reminders.

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Hm, I see your point here. I think 3 days would be overkill, but 2 may be logical, especially for someone who has multiple clients or bigger epics.

Again, the checklist is awesome!

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Hi @anon46505572,

Thanks for your feedback. :slightly_smiling_face: You brought up a number of things I hadn’t thought of.

  • It would be cool to link to jira with the appropriate filters on steps like “Confirm that the epic reviewer is willing to manage the epic while you’re away”

This is a cool idea! I don’t work in Jira often, so I’m not sure how the filters work. Could you please send me an example of a link with the appropriate filter selected so I can figure out how to incorporate it into the checklist?

  • We could remove the back-and-forth between the calendar and the forum by making the forum post first, copying the link, then creating the calendar event and pasting the forum link.

I thought about this but was concerned that 2 team members might be planning vacation over the same time without knowing it (especially over busy holiday seasons). That’s why I thought the calendar event should be created as early as possible without having to wait until all the requirements for the forum announcement were completed. However, maybe this isn’t the best approach, as many people have brought up the fact that you have to go back and forth between the two steps.

  • For 1-2 days off, most of the checklist items aren’t necessary (finding epic reviewers, members to cover for roles, etc.). Perhaps these could be hidden in this case, but then again, perhaps it’s best to always show these steps for in case a day off does coincide with something important.

Hmmm, thanks for bringing this up. This is definitely something to think about. :thinking:

  • What is the purpose of entering the vacation type and dates off in the checklist? I didn’t notice anything that referenced them later in the checklist (I was hoping for something like a pre-filled vacation forum post template, or link to auto create the calendar event).

The “Select your vacation type” step is mainly a way to ensure that the user knows what the different types of vacation are. It also gave me space to include the content from the handbook (since this checklist will replace that section of the handbook). BUT, I now see that I could perhaps remove this step and rather include more info in the “Announce your vacation on the forum” step. Thanks for pointing this out!

And you’re right, neither the vacation dates, nor the vacation type steps have any impact on the rest of the checklist. The good news is that the Workflow Manager will offer this type of automation! But maybe it makes sense to remove these steps from the Process Street checklist. Thanks for bringing it up.

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Hi @Agrendalath,

Thanks for sharing those calendars with me. I actually did have access to the team calendar and to the Serenity calendar, but not to the others.

Thanks for mentioning this too. I’ve responded to Samuel above, but it’s good to know that we’re on the right track with out ideas for the Workflow Manager!

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Hi @adolfo,

Haha, don’t worry about raining on my parade; it happens all the time! :upside_down_face:

The reason we chose Process Street over monday.com is that most users we spoke to during usability testing preferred the user experience of Process Street. They liked the simplicity of a list of items with checkboxes.

We are trying to emulate this simplicity with the Workflow Manager too. Eventually, it will replace the Process Street checklist.

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Thanks @gabor, that’s helpful to know!

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Thanks @jill!

I hadn’t actually thought of making the checklist work well for short holidays, so this is something I should keep in the back of my mind when I work on the updates.

Thanks for confirming the missing roles and rotations that Gabor mentioned, and for the further suggestions. That’s makes my life easy! :grinning:

Good point. I forgot that the timing rules would still be available for reference in the handbook.

Yeah, it feels a bit like “babying” the user too, which could be irritating.

Thanks so much for the help!

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@Agrendalath @gabor @anon46505572 @adolfo @jill

I have finally updated the Vacation Checklist based on everyone’s feedback! I have simplified the checklist quite a bit as well.

The next step is to add it to the handbook, but I’d like to make sure that there are no errors or missing pieces of information before I do that. If you, or anyone else on the @team has time, it would be great if you could run through the checklist one last time.

The checklist:

Keep the following in mind:

  • Process Street offers limited automation. We will need to reserve anything fancy for the Workflow Manager
  • There is a comment section at the bottom of checklist item, but it is not possible to ping other team members (because it is a public link)
  • You may notice some back-and-forth between the calendar and forum announcement. This is to ensure that people enter their vacation dates on the calendar as soon as possible to prevent various people booking vacation over the same dates.

You can log time on this ticket.

Thanks for your help again! :slightly_smiling_face:

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@Ali Awesome work on this! I just reviewed and I think everything is great! :tada:

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Thanks @gabor!

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Hi @antoviaque

Is the above feedback about the Vacation Checklist sufficient? Shall I go ahead and update the handbook?

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:+1: from me :) The new checklist is great.