Input: 2014q4 quarter in review

Note: This is an old post in a blog with a lot of posts. The world has changed, technologies have changed, and I've changed. It's likely this is out of date and not representative. Let me know if you think this is something that needs updating.

What is it?

The purpose of Input is to collect actionable feedback from our user base across each channel of our software development process. The application collects feedback and offers a set of analysis methods for looking at the resulting data.

Project site.

This is my 2014q4 retrospective on Input.

2014q4 was interesting. Between the faux all-hands, holidays and production freezes, it was essentially a two-month quarter. I literally raced through the quarter getting things done as quickly as I could do them opting for the minimal viable implementation wherever possible. That's not a great thing, but so it goes.

Things to know:

  • Input is Mozilla's product feedback site.

  • Fjord is the code that runs Input.

  • We maintain project details and plans at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Input.

  • I am Will Kahn-Greene and I'm the tech lead, architect, QA and primary developer on Input.

Bugzilla and git stats

I rewrote my script and the data is richer now.

Quarter 2014q4 (2014-10-01 -> 2014-12-31)
=========================================


Bugzilla
========

Bugs created: 95
Creators:

         Will Kahn-Greene [:willkg] : 85
                                 me : 1
     Nicolas Perriault (:NiKo`) — n : 1
                David Weir (satdav) : 1
                       Mark Filipak : 1
                           vivek :) : 1
               Laura Thomson :laura : 1
      Swarnava Sengupta (:Swarnava) : 1
                             [:Cww] : 1
                         deshrajdry : 1
              phaneendra.chiruvella : 1

Bugs resolved: 89

                            WONTFIX : 13
                         WORKSFORME : 4
                          DUPLICATE : 5
                              FIXED : 67

                         Tracebacks : 1
                           Research : 4
                            Tracker : 7

Research bugs: 4

    788597: [research] Should we use a stacked graph on the dashboard?
    792976: [research] swap jingo-minify for django-compressor and
        django-jingo-offline-compressor
    889370: [research] morelikethis for feedback responses
    1048459: [research] check if updating from a tarball in a virtual
        environment with peep removes files

Tracker bugs: 7

    964260: [tracker] overhaul mobile and desktop feedback forms
    985645: [tracker] Upgrade to Django 1.6
    988612: [tracker] product dashboards
    1040773: [tracker] dashboards for everyone
    1042669: [tracker] reduce contributor pain
    1052459: [tracker] heartbeat v1
    1081412: [tracker] add tests for fjord_utils.js functions

Resolvers: 7

         Will Kahn-Greene [:willkg] : 75
                             aokoye : 7
                          lgp171188 : 4
                                cww : 1
                    bhargav.kowshik : 1
      Rehan Dalal [:rehan, :rdalal] : 1

Commenters: 27

                             willkg : 420
                             aokoye : 7
                            mcooper : 6
                            padraic : 6
                MarkFilipak.mozilla : 5
                              hwine : 4
                             rdalal : 4
                     stephen.donner : 4
                          nigelbabu : 3
                         deshrajdry : 3
                    bhargav.kowshik : 3
                         david.weir : 2
                            mgrimes : 2
                       dron.rathore : 1
                         lorenzo567 : 1
                            senicar : 1
                     viveknjadhav19 : 1
                         nperriault : 1
                                cww : 1
                   swarnavasengupta : 1
                          mozaakash : 1
                        me+bugzilla : 1
              phaneendra.chiruvella : 1
                                 me : 1
                             fbraun : 1
                vivekb.balakrishnan : 1
                           rrosario : 1

git
===

Total commits: 241

      Will Kahn-Greene :   210  (+28586, -11298, files 866)
            Adam Okoye :    15  (+128, -38, files 39)
         L. Guruprasad :    10  (+195, -21, files 14)
       Bhargav Kowshik :     3  (+127, -13, files 14)
            Gregg Lind :     1  (+9, -8, files 3)
         Deshraj Yadav :     1  (+1, -1, files 1)
                aokoye :     1  (+2, -2, files 1)

Total lines added: 29048
Total lines deleted: 11381
Total files changed: 938


Everyone
========

    Adam Okoye
    Bhargav Kowshik
    cww
    David Weir
    Deshraj Yadav
    deshrajdry
    dron.rathore
    fbraun
    Gregg Lind
    hwine
    L. Guruprasad
    Laura Thomson :laura
    lorenzo567
    Mark Filipak
    mcooper
    mgrimes
    mozaakash
    Nicolas Perriault (:NiKo`) — needinfo me if you need my attention
    nigelbabu
    nperriault
    padraic
    phaneendra.chiruvella
    Rehan Dalal
    Ricky Rosario
    senicar
    stephen.donner
    Swarnava Sengupta
    vivekb.balakrishnan
    viveknjadhav19
    Will Kahn-Greene

Code line counts:

2014q1: April 1st, 2014:        15195 total  6953 Python
2014q2: July 1st, 2014:         20456 total  9247 Python
2014q3: October 7th. 2014:      23466 total  11614 Python
2014q4: December 31st, 2014:    30158 total  13615 Python

Nothing wildly interesting there other than noting that the codebase for Input continues to grow.

Contributor stats

Adam Okoye started as an intern through OPW on December 9th. He's contributed to Input in the past through the Ascend project. Over the course of the OPW internship, he'll be working on Input bugs and the Thank you page project.

L. Guruprasad spent a lot of time working on pre-commit linters, Vagrant provisioning and generally improving the experience contributors will have.

We had a few commits from other people, too.

Thank you everyone who contributed!

Accomplishments

Python 2.7: Input is now running on Python 2.7. Thank you, Jake!

Remote troubleshooting data capture: The generic feedback form which is hosted on Input now has a section allowing users to opt-in to sending data about their browser along with their feedback. This data is crucial to helping us suss out problems with video playback, graphics cards/drivers and malicious addons.

This code is still "alpha". We'll be finishing it up in 2015q1.

Remote troubleshooting data capture project plan.

Heartbeat v1 and v2: People leave feedback on Input primarily when they're frustrated with something. Because of this, the sentiment numbers we get on Input tilt heavily negative and only represent people who are frustrated and were able to find the feedback form. Heartbeat will give us sentiment data that's more representative of our entire user base.

As a stop-gap to get the project going, Input is the backend collecting all the Heartbeat data. We rewrote the Heartbeat-related code for Heartbeat v2 in 2014q4.

Heartbeat v2 project plan.

Feedback form overhaul: We rewrote the feedback form to clean up the text, reduce confusion about what data is made public and what data is kept private, reduce the number of steps to leave feedback and improve the form for both desktop and mobile devices.

Feedback form overhaul project plan.

We also fixed the form so it supports multiple products because we're collecting feedback for multiple products on Input now.

Multiple products project plan.

Summary

2014q4 was tough because of the limited time, but it was a good quarter and we got a lot done.

The faux all-hands involved a bunch of discussions related to Input development. 2015q1 is going to be busy busy busy.

Update April 21st, 2015

LGuruprasad found a bug in the script that caused commits-by-author information to be wrong. Fixed the script and updated the stats!

Want to comment? Send an email to willkg at bluesock dot org. Include the url for the blog entry in your comment so I have some context as to what you're talking about.