Metrics/Telemetry Jan 17, 2013

Process review

Annie

-much better process, useful for planning, great to know what is happening in client side telemetry so that we can be proactive

Daniel

-much better than earlier last year, validation was much more complicated than we thought -tied down with non telemetry work that has taken a lot of time -wants to look at new features in q1

Lawrence

From the engineering perspective, there are 3 key issues:

1. ad-hoc process from the beginning of 2012 was working better in that we seemed to be making more progress working directly with the engineers. There seems to be some communication issues from passing information through Annie and Daniel (broken telephone).
2. our feeling is that telemetry is not a high priority for metrics as work takes a long time to complete and work is closed without our agreement (METRICS-333, METRICS-829, STATMOD-22)
3. more generally, we are not making the progress that we need to make on Telemetry, this is getting in the way of improving Firefox

Annie: closed 50% in Q4, validation took longer than we thought and there were lots of incoming issues during the quarter that took time to resolve Lawrence: we should deprioritize other work when this comes in

Annie: won't say that telemetry is not a priority

Gilbert: put together goals, always have something about telemetry, there is the scientific way of looking at things and the engineering way of looking at things

Taras: communication is important, getting notified when things are seemingly fixed is vitally important

Gilbert: I'm open to changing process except for going back to irc communication exclusively

Taras: we don't have a good view of the work coming from engineering Daniel: most questions are about telemetry, analysis Taras: talos? Gilbert: investment in talos is almost 0 now, also don't invest much in crash statistics. telemetry is 90+% of engineering ask for metrics

Gilbert proposes that we continue with the current process for two more cycles to try to work through the issues. We will reevaluate in 4 weeks time on Feb 14, 2013.