Moderators, Cycles in and state transitions

[jeffreywescott]

Discussion forthcoming ...

[jeffreywescott]

Notes from @tannerwelsh from issue #26 / #29:

In my mind, a cycle is a set of states and state transitions:

goal selection -> project formation -> practice -> retrospective

The transitions between these states (IMHO) isn't time-bound but action-bound. When retrospective is complete, the "board" is clean for a new cycle.

In this way, a cycle object would have the following properties and relationships:

• state
• start time
• end time
• belong to chapter
• have many players
• have many goals
• have many votes
• have many projects

It seems like a cleaner separation between game and support (to me) to let the Moderator be the timekeeper. The "Moderator" can be automated of course, and they can set a cycle time to 1 week, but it is their job to create a cycle, shepherd it through the states, and end it.

[jeffreywescott]

Notes from @jeffreywescott in #26.

A few other questions, mostly related to state transitions:

• Should there be an end-user-facing cycleNumber attribute?
• How does the startTime attribute get set?
  • Do we need an interface for a human moderator associated with a certain chapter to start a new one?
  • If the moderator is automated, how does it know when to start a new one? As soon as the current cycle enters the retrospective state? Do we need a complete state, instead? If so, does a cycle enter the complete state when all players have completed the retrospective?
• How does the endTime attribute get set?
  • Do we need an interface for a human moderator to end it?
  • If the moderator is automated, does a state change in the current cycle trigger the endTime to be filled-in?

[jeffreywescott]

Notes from @shereefb in #26.

@tannerwelsh I really like the separation between "moderator" actions and cycles. It's much cleaner.

@jeffreywescott Here's my crack at answering your questions:

The cycle is a state machine.

• There is a start_time for each state that triggers it.
• There are two states can start before their start time if all players have completed the previous state
  • If all players vote. Project formation state kicks in.
  • If all players are done with their retros. Complete state kicks in.

There should be an end user facing cycle_number There should be an interface for a moderator to set start times for each cycle's states. (text interface should be enough)

We will probably need at some point an auto-moderator, but for now, we can extract all auto-moderator issues to a separate issue to unblock this. Once we have moderated manually for a while, we'll have a better sense of what needs to be automated and how.

[tannerwelsh]

@shereefb's answer looks good to me. A couple additional thoughts for simplification purposes:

• Chapters have a zeroDate or startDate when cycles begin
• Chapters have a cycleInterval when new cycles (automatically) start

New cycles begin every cycleInterval (i.e. 7 days).

[jeffreywescott]

@tannerwelsh -- if we go that route, there's good news ... we already have cycleDuration and cycleEpoch on Chapter. :-)

[jeffreywescott]

The way this epic's title is written, I have a hunch that it might be multiple epics.

[tannerwelsh]

Yeah I'm unclear on what is needed to solve this epic. Proposed split:

• Cycle states and state transitions
• Moderator cycle controls

[jeffreywescott]

I'm going to close this for now. I have a suspicion that this is going to be absorbed into the various other epics that we already have open.