A11y publication post-mortem

[zepumph]

This was brought up by @emily-phet today in meetings. Once this sim is published, we should discuss the process we went through, and how we can tweak that to be the most efficient.

@jessegreenberg @terracoda @mbarlow12.

[zepumph]

Once this sim is published, we should discuss the process we went through, and how we can tweak that to be the most efficient.

Seeing that we are ditching this rc for one that will soon be created that has sonification in it, perhaps the time is nigh for this discussion. I'll add it to the dev/design meeting agenda.

[zepumph]

We discussed this today.

It was a good discussion centered around understanding what caused RIAW 1.5 to take so long, and how/if that will apply to future situations.

We saw that the following had an impact on "stalling" and prolonging this QA process:

• No one was the lead in the sim to bring it "to the finish line." Thus it was easy for this to fall off of peoples' (my) plate and be forgotten for weeks at a time
• QA personnel were in a lot of churn. @phet-steele started the process off, then through @lmulhall-phet finishing with @KatieWoe. As a result potentially things were retested. This is not to say that we didn't potentially find more bugs because of it.
• Part of this was during our A11y sprint last spring/summer, and then afterwards @jessegreenberg and @zepumph were very involved at trying to focus on in depth changes to scenery.

Beyond just this QA process, we discussed the general difficulties with RC in general, especially with communication.

Often flow looks like: QA finds bug -> Lead dev thinks about bug and passes it to developer most suited to fix (perhaps themself) -> potentially ask @ariel-phet/ @emily-phet about priority -> implement/wontfix

This means that small issues with potentially simple answers can often take many days to complete because things get locked up in connecting with the right people.

For a11y, we decided we would try "checkin" meetings for a sims similar to RIAW in the future to make sure that everything was being discussed and tended to consistently. For Friction, which may be the next sim, after RIAW with sonification, to go out, we will continue with weekly meetings that are currently carved out on Tuesday to keep communication thorough.

@emily-phet is there anything else to discuss in this issue? Did I miss anything?

[emily-phet]

@zepumph Great summary.

I would add that going forward, we will ideally continue regular team meetings on a sim straight through to publication.

Once RIAW is published, Ohm's Law is the only remaining simulation that is waiting in the wings to be published with A11y features that does not currently, or isn't planned to have by early 2019, regular design team meetings. We'll want to have regular 'check in' meetings for OL.

[terracoda]

I really like the idea of having check-in meetings for Ohm's Law. I'll be watching the RC for that sim.

[zepumph]

Sounds great! I'm going to close this issue, please reopen if anything else is needed.