We need someone to take the Billing v2 epic. Let’s try in Serenity first, but Bebop could be an option.
The epic moves in two directions:
it’s about improving the automation of the billing platform, for OpenCraft. The billing platforrm is what generates our PDF invoices from Jira worklogs every month
at the same time, it’s about building a billing automation product that other companies will use. This will be hosted in our instance.
The epic is paused and there have been discussions to restart it, since many people are looking for tasks recently. However, we need a core team member, not only because only core team members can take epics, but because you’ll need to get access to sensitive servers (billing).
In addition we have client work waiting for us to, so it could make sense to prioritize client work.
See 3 higher priority epics that need to be handled before resuming this one.
So we just need to find an assignee now, but the work itself will wait.
Hi guys, does pausing the epic mean we need to pause the design? We can work on quite a bit without having to involve the development team:
We can design the logo now that the name has been confirmed
We can design the public landing page; to start getting user feedback on the concept. We’ll likely be using Freehive, the new dev contractors, to get this up and running
We’d just need to a reviewer along with @antoviaque, who usually reviews this type of work. I’m guessing this would be the epic owner in the future.
@cassie The steps you mention are indeed separate from technical development, and I don’t see any problem in starting them.
However, the epic is paused for different reasons, some of them about capacity and priorities; see for instance some client epics that should be started first.
But this applies to Serenity/Bebop/Falcon and I don’t know whether it applies to Fixate’s work.
Other points and open tasks in this epic require more development work, to finish defining the new software architecture and workflows. For that we’ll need an epic owner, who needs to be core team, and that’s hard to find since core team members are overloaded.
But for the points you mention you just need reviewers, and I personally think anyone could take the reviews, even newcomers; that could be useful in case newcomers need tasks.
Maybe you (@cassie or @Ali) could become the epic owner of this epic, advance it through the design phase, then look for a next epic owner, when people in Serenity have more place for non-client work.
For simplicity, I think it’s better not to work on epics which are considered paused. If we resume work we must unpause them and allocate time.
It would also be best to wait until we have an epic owner, so that all future reviews can be done by the same person (the epic owner) instead of by many people.
@tikr you already mentioned some epics that Serenity needs to do before; that means this epic is still paused. When do you think we can increase the dedication a bit, to allow Fixate to progress with the design?
Note that the first message in this thread still applies: we still need a new epic owner (core team) from Serenity or another cell.
@cassie@daniel Yes, it would be good to have an epic owner assigned before we continue, including the design – otherwise we would lengthen the feedback loop & iteration time in the design. It’s better when the person who is responsible for the implementation is involved in the design decisions.
@antoviaque Okay perfect, once an epic owner is assigned, we’re ready to jump straight back onto the design (logo and landing page to gather community feedback)
I won’t have capacity to do any dev work on this epic any time soon.
But if there’s no better option, I could be a (temporary?) owner and take care of reviews until we get some new Core members.
Thanks @mtyaka; that could be a backup option. But according to Xavier’s message it’s best if the same person who reviews the design decisions will be active in the implementation. I agree, since the accounting software is disconnected from our other projects and daily tasks, and it requires some onboarding and focus.
So I’ll ping @bebop (core members only): Is there anyone who likes the project (billing/accounting) and wants to be the assignee, to start it when it becomes unblocked?
I pinged you at the task to see if we can sort it out this week. You can also ask me more details about the epic.
@daniel@cassie@antoviaque@kaustav No objections to setting a new epic owner and doing some work on the design for Billing v2 In terms of restarting and ramping up development, though, please see the comment that I just posted on the epic.
(In short: On our quest to make everyone’s lives easier and lean out internal processes, it seems like we would benefit more from prioritizing work on SprintCraft and the Workflow Manager in the short term )
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