- A technical planning meeting (TPM) is an informal discussion aimed at streamlining our development processes and agreeing on a technical solution and/ or next steps
- They can be as short or as long as necessary
- They should be requested by engineers
- When starting a new project
- When adding new features or functionality
- When the technical implementation is not clear for the next iteration of a feature
- When undertaking work that requires multiple teams to collaborate on a technical solution
- High level documentation of the business problem, the technical solution and/ or next steps and the business impact (at a high level, it should be established how complex the task is in order that we can analyse the business impact)
- Engineers should have a clear understanding of what is expected moving forward
- What the next steps are, this could be a set of Jiras for Pod Leads to prioritise
- A definition of done/ acceptance criteria
- Pod Leads or Stakeholders should be clear what Tech Debt there is with any MVP (Minimum Viable Product)
- Engineer(s) with a technical challenge
- Engineer(s) to support the discussion and agree a technical solution/ next steps
- Database gurus (if data engineer required. If so, ask in #pod-data for a rep)
- UXUI gurus (if frontend work will be required. If so, ask in #pod-uxui for a rep)
- Business owners (if the business requirements are sufficiently complex and to assess the business impact)
- Testers (if there is a large testing requirement. If so, ask in #testers)
- Project gurus (engineers might require additional technical assistance - if INF required, invite Damien Turner and if Multimedia required, invite Jess Everton)
- Make a copy of the TPM template. Part 1 is completed and to increase visibility that the TPM is taking place, notification of the TPM is posted with a link to the document in the Slack Channel #tpm
- At the TPM, the engineer explains the business problem they're trying to solve and open it up for discussion (if there is no technical proposal, otherwise:)
- The developers explain their technical solution and open it up for discussion
- We exchange thoughts and ideas, fill in any blanks and compromise where necessary to reach a good solution - using the TPM template agenda as a meeting guide
- We break the work down into small chunks
- If the chunks of work are not small enough to begin work, arrange for future TPMs to dig deeper into the problem (an example of when this might be necessary - "We want to start selling Coach")
- Following the TPM, the engineer discusses the outcome with the Pod Lead and/ or key stakeholders to agree next steps and confirm business impact
- Pod Leads prioritise the work as appropriate
- Once the TPM template has been completed in full, circulate a link with the TL;DR section to relevant groups (e.g. webit email group)