roadmap/2021.md

+This page documents a general plan for the year 2021.
+
+A first this year, we did a survey at the end of the year 2020 to help
+us identify critical services and pain points so that we can focus our
+work in the coming year.
+
+# Overall goals
+
+## Need to have
+
+## Nice to have
+
+## Non-goals
+
+# Quarterly breakdown
+
+## Q1
+
+First quarter of 2021 is fairly immediate, short term work, as far as
+this roadmap is concerned. It should include items we are fairly
+certain to be able to complete within the next few months or
+so. Postponing those could cause problems.
+
+## Q2
+
+Second quarter is a little more vague, but should still be
+"plannable". Those are goals that are less critical and can afford to
+wait a little longer or that are part of longer projects that will
+take longer to complete.
+
+## Q3
+
+From our experience, after three quarters, things get difficult to
+predict reliably. Last year, the workforace was cut by a third some
+time before this time, which totally changed basic assumptions about
+worker availability and priorities.
+
+Also, a global pandemic basically tore the world apart, throwing
+everything in the air.
+
+## Q4
+
+Obviously, the fourth quarter is sheer crystal balling at this stage,
+but it should still be an interesting exercise to perform.
+
+# 2020 roadmap evaluation
+
+The following is a review of the 2020 roadmap.
+
+## need to have
+
+ * [x] decommissining of old machines (moly in particular)
+ * [x] move critical services in ganeti
+ * [x] buster upgrades before LTS
+ * [x] within budget
+
+Comments:
+
+ * critical services were swiftly moved into Ganeti
+ * moly has not been retired, but it is redundant so less of a concern
+ * a lot of the buster upgrades work was done by a volunteer (thanks @weasel!)
+ * the budget was slashed by half, but was still mostly respected
+
+## Nice to have
+
+ * [ ] <del>new mail service</del>
+ * [x] conversion of the kvm* fleet to ganeti for higher reliability and availability
+ * [ ] <del>buster upgrade completion before anarcat vacation</del>
+
+Comments:
+
+ * the new mail service was postponed indefinitely due to workforce
+   reduction, it was seen as a lesser priority project than
+   stabilising the hardware layer
+ * buster upgrades were a bit later than expected, but still within
+   the expected timeframe
+ * *most* of the KVM fleet was migrated (apart from moly) so that's
+   still considered to be a success
+
+## Non-goal
+
+ * [x] service admin roadmapping?
+ * [ ] <del>kubernetes cluster deployment?</del>
+
+Comments:
+
+ * we ended up doing a lot more service admin work than we usually do,
+   or at least that we say we do, or at least that we say we want to
+   do
+ * it might be useful to include service admin roadmapping in this
+   work in order to predict important deployments in 2021: the GitLab
+   migration, for example, took a long time and was underestimated
+
+## 2021 preview
+
+Those are the ideas that were brought up in 2020 for 2021:
+
+### Objectives
+
+ * **complete puppetization** - complete Puppetization does not seem
+   like a priority at this point. We would prefer to improve the
+   CI/CD story of Puppet instead
+
+ * **experiment with containers/kubernetes?** - not a priority, but
+   could be a tool for GitLab CI
+
+ * **close and merge more services** - still a goal
+
+ * <del>**replace nagios with prometheus?**</del> - not a short term
+   goal
+
+ * <del>**new hire?**</del> - definitely not a possibility in the
+   short term, although we have been brought back full time
+
+### Monhtly goals
+
+ * **january: roadmap approval** - still planned
+ * **march/april: anarcat vacation** - up in the air