Roadblocks to Productivity Survey Results

An affinity mapping exercise led us to these 9 groups.

ENGINEERING

FIREFOX OS DEVELOPMENT

• Too many variations of Firefox OS; different devices, Gonk types (proprietary drivers), Gaia branches, Gecko versions, desktopb2g/Devices, nightly builds too many combinations for our small team and too many barriers to engage community. 27 votes
• FirefoxOS development hurts. There is a massive barrier to entry, the Right Way seems to change every few months (rendering most documentation broken), and even successful builds take a very long time. 22 votes
• The expectation that I fix bugs on hardware I don't have. 17 votes
• Having to deal with completely nonsensical B2G deadlines from partners. 1 vote.
• Building firefox is slow. 10 votes

DEVELOPER QUALITY OF LIFE

• Half my bugs fall through the cracks unless I spend an inordinate amount of time and emotional energy advocating for them to be fixed. 55 votes
• Very little time to address technical debt in code bases and bring them up to standard until it gets too bad, then just enough is done. 37 votes
• Undated documentation (lots of docs, but the status is not always clear). 29 votes
• Slow reviews. 26 votes
• Lack of documentation. 25 votes
• Documentation that doesn't exist, is out of date, or is difficult to find. 24 votes
• Lack of infrastructure integration: Code review, building, testing, integration horribly disjointed. 22 votes
• Try pushes take a very long time to complete. 20 votes
• No team dedicated to creating tools to improve developer's lives leading to developers doing it themselves. 15 votes
• Intermittent orange tests - if we could clear those out and work to re-integrate them when no longer intermittent we could have straight forward pass/fail on builds, better regression finding. 15 votes
• B2G and Gecko essentially being different projects causing differences development model that are counterproductive to our goals. 12 votes
• C+ 9 votes
• Not giving enough priority to the quality of tests run in automation. Slow and flaky tests lead to more backouts and waiting a long time to get results from your push. 7 votes
• Finding out "what is needed to move this bug forward?" requires looking at many fields. This may contribute to bugs falling through the cracks. http://www.squarefree.com/2009/04/20/getting-bugs-done/. 7 votes
• Systematic and pervasive unwillingness to prioritize paying down tech debt; workarounds include hiring more people to prop up unwieldy systems or building new half-baked tools because the old half-baked tools "suck". 7 votes
• Fighting with git. 7 Votes
• Inconsistent test results of Travis, try server and local environment. 6 votes
• Incoherent and disjoint tools situation for building and testing. 5 votes
• Lack of unit tests, staging environments for many tools/services makes changing them more difficult. 4 votes
• TBPL's job-oriented display hides what's really interesting: which individual tests failed, and how. 4 votes
• 300 devs in large interdependent legacy codebase = slow feature development. 3 votes
• Poor tools for internal developers. On a macro scale, we have very little investment in bugzilla, no one is full time on the build system, tbpl needs an overhaul, and often I have to print to debug. 3 votes
• Complete lack of process/documentation. 2 votes
• BUGZILLA
  • Bugzilla searches are slow. 25 votes
  • I have not found a way to quickly respond to needinfo requests that does not involve reading bugmail threads multiple times and out of order. 11 votes
  • Mid-air bugzilla collisions that require you to re-change flags, etc. 3 votes
  • Thunderbird does not show subjects for encrypted bugmail. 2 votes

BROKEN OR TOO MANY COMMUNICATION CHANNELS

• Excessive amount of communication channels. 133 votes
• Finding information on the multiple intranets and wikis. 104 votes
• A not anonymous survey about removing roadblocks to productivity. Something we would never speak out is really hindering us, but it needs basic anonymous protection to publish. 65 votes
• Far too many communication channels to keep up on, requiring an inordinate amount of time reading, responding, and chatting at any given moment. 32 votes
• Mailing lists and newsgroups are terrible. As a result, we turn to even worse forms of communication, such as CCing four employees on an email. 21 votes
• MediaWiki (wiki.m.o, intranet) vs MANA -- why 2? We should prefer internally the tools we use with the community. 10 votes
• Scanning 100s of bugmail, mailing lists and newsgroups to try and keep abreast of the projects I'm involved in. 10 votes
• Intranet vs Mana: why 2? 7 votes
• We often don't even believe on our own tech that we try to push. FirefoxFlicks requiring Flash and or non-free video. Not using webrtc even a little, etc. 7 votes
• No clear communication channels on a per-project basis. 4 votes
• Yammer. 2 votes.

REINVENTING THE WHEEL

• No visibility of skills and experiences between teams. We re-invent the wheel in our own silos because we don't know if a neighboring team has skills and experiences that could help. We need domain-based transversal group, that can share things. 44 votes
• So many silos; so many groups architecting projects without coordinating or communicating a common goals let alone a common operational architecture between them. We have such an amazing team, imagine what we could build if we coordinated better. 26 votes
• Lack of communication/cooperation across teams or lack of inter-disciplinary teams. 17 votes
• Lack of visibility into what some teams are working on and the relative priority of their work. 4 votes

STANDARD TOOLS ARE SUBPAR

• Lack of a good email client which enables me to keep up with my email. 32 votes
• Lack of a good search engine for external and internal mailing-lists with stable URIs. 20 votes
• Key comms tools (wiki, Etherpad, discussion forums) don't seem to get much or any MoCo IT maintenance bandwidth. 14 votes
• Lack of a unified search engine for all Mozilla properties with two levels of access: team and team+public (which should remove issues for people not finding information). 11 votes
• Office wifi often has issues. 9 votes
• Lack of access to hardware/software/tools necessary to contribute to projects. 3 votes
• I need 3 different "wiki" syntaxes every day—MediaWiki, markdown for GitHub, & reStructuredText. Thinking about syntax kicks the real subject out of my brain. (In 1984, we had command-B for Bold. Let's have that + command-K for Link.) 3 votes
• Poor network quality in the offices. 1 vote.
• People writing email like it is a web page and Zimbra messing with it (I have a bug open for that). 0 votes
• VIDYO / TELECONFERENCING
  • Poor Vidyo support for Linux (even in Vidyo 3). 42 votes
  • Every meeting starting with 10 minutes of getting Vidyo to work for all participants. 15 votes
  • Lack of a decent tele-conference solution, non flash based, for low bandwidths. 23 votes
  • Audio level problems and lag to the point of unintelligibility on Vidyo and Air Mozilla. I often have to try Skype, then phone, then finally fall back to IRC. (Thank goodness for those excellent Moco meeting notes!). 4 votes

HOW WE WORK TOGETHER

• Too little workweeks where we actually get stuff done (pulled from a pile-on response). 33 votes
• Needless disruption: (e.g. excessive or unfocused meetings, unrelated conversations outside of conference rooms, vidyo with the door open, etc.). 22 votes
• Lapses in self-discipline. 14 votes
• Not enough face-to-face time to kickstart things and push them forward. 13 votes
• Unreasonable or uninformed requests/demands from others pulling time away from achievable objectives. 10 votes
• Lack of resources for getting tools built that would help us do our specific tasks better (paas, while awesome, is not production tier or easy to develop on without significant webdev skills and extra time for learning). 8 votes
• It's hardest to get a new idea off the ground - getting buy-in from other teams, getting resource allocations, and getting past *The stop-energy that comes from fear of change. 8 votes
• Idealistic views on finding "perfect" solutions instead of something "good" and then focusing on continuous improvement. 8 Votes
• Too much churn and bad leadership. Not keeping up with rest of industry. Job undefined and never given anything I ask for. 7 votes
• Getting sucked into reading endless internal arguments and idealistic viewpoints on Yammer. (the virtual water-cooler). 7 votes
• Overworked SecReview people and overworked IT deployment gurus means my things take a long time to launch after code completion. 6 votes
• More learning opportunities and information on continuing education. I've looked many times, but never found much. Ex: business ed courses, inter-company workshops that teach varying levels of coding, non-engineering brownbags from experts, etc. 5 votes
• Too many people trying to get my help instead of other team members. 3 votes.
• Not knowing what/task to cc: (as opposed to who, because people change jobs). 1 vote.
• HOW WE SUPPORT AND BE WITH EACH OTHER
  • Expectations to travel on weekends & frequently with no recovery times, leading to burnout. 19 votes
  • The feeling that other teams aren't behind the work that you do. Ranging from Engineering to HR, a lot of work feels like it's Us vs Them instead of just us. 18 votes
  • People who are unwilling to collaborate. 17 votes
  • Expectations by some for responses at the weekend/during off periods (leading to unfair expectations/burnout). 12 votes
  • Slow or even complete lack of response to requests for help from the people team. 8 votes
  • The "I can do your job better than you" attitude. 7 votes
  • Unwillingness to jump on a quick phone call to answer questions leaves room for miscommunication and hinders ability to move forward on projects (and is a good way to save inbox). 6 votes
  • Unresponsive people (after several attempts). 5 votes
  • Unprofessional or rude behavior with colleagues. 4 votes
  • When people commit to do something but don't actually have time/ability to do it. 2 votes
  • People not taking ownership for tasks and subsequently are not held accountable either. High performers are not recognized, and are often blocked by low performers - eventually sapping their motivation. 1 vote
• EFFICIENCIES
  • Often impossible to focus on individual tasks due to the volume of requests, forcing inefficient multitasking. 43 votes
  • Too much time spent on the 'critical' path negates my ability to work on things that are important to me (like community building). 17 votes
  • Little time allocated to devote to strategic planning, learning, furthering the mission. Too busy completing individual tasks. 5 votes
  • It's a tricky balance keeping my own work moving versus doing reviews (to keep others' work moving). 4 votes
• GEO-DISTRIBUTED PAINS
  • Lack of blocks of time in which I can focus (meetings span the globe and require me to be available at all hours). 48 votes
  • Lot of the stuff is Pacific Timezone centric. 27 votes
  • We have no German speaking HR or WPR in the Berlin office. We often have to take care of WPR, HR & other issues ourselves. 11 votes
  • Collaborating across timezones, multiple roofs leads to slow decision making and actions. 6 votes
  • Having teams in really separated timezones slow downs decision making across the board. 3 votes
  • Communication on teams where members are spread across the globe. I often end up taking calls at midnight (local time) and working hours after that on immediately required deliverables. 3 votes
• EMAIL ETIQUETTE
  • Too many emails. 34 votes
  • Low skills of people with email usage in work environment see http://www.la-grange.net/2014/03/04/You-Got-Mail.pdf. 17 votes
  • People replying to introductory ""welcome X to team Y"" emails. 14 votes
• MEETINGS
  • Minutes of meetings not shared and not archived in a stable URI space. 53 votes
  • Too many meetings (pulled from a pile-on response). 33 votes
  • Meetings seems to default to 1hr increments where 30 mins should be attempted as the max for most. 25 votes
  • Daily meetings during my most productive/busiest hours. 23 votes
  • People generally showing up to meetings a couple of minutes late rather than being there at the meeting start. 14 votes
  • Too many meetings with no clear agenda where the world (read, too many people) is invited. 6 votes
  • Back to back meetings. 3 votes
• LEADERSHIP / MANAGEMENT
  • The potential for great leadership in the company lost in a sea of poor leadership. Instead of creating more leaders, let's create better leaders. 28 votes
  • We are getting better, but in several occasions the ""Peter Principle"" has created a mediocre managers out of amazing engineers. Good managers do not need to equal or better the skills of those they manage, merely be good enough to understand. 15 votes
  • High performers are not recognized, and are often blocked by low performers - eventually sapping their motivation (pulled from pile-on response). 1 vote
• ENVIRONMENT / SPACE
  • Noisy office. 41 votes
  • Offices that are too quiet - When I visit as a remotee, at some offices I feel I can't just go and talk to people (even those next to me) in case I disturb others. 10 votes
  • Terrible glass white boards. They look really cool, but they are an inefficient use of space and markers don't show on them very well. 1 vote

PROCESSES

• Changing how the comp cycle works every time we go through it and always doing it late. 14 votes
• Onboarding as a remote worker was very difficult and slow. After the initial onboarding website (which was great) it felt like there was a complete void of info or help. 11 votes
• Legal team take too long to respond to requests for assistance. 10 votes
• Long and involved process for organizing work weeks (6 week lead time, etc). 9 votes
• Changes in policies that worked like travel, where booking on egencia was so much easier for the traveler. 9 votes
• Egencia. I can find better rates & options myself. 8 votes
• Continuous problems & long delays around recruiting & contracts. 8 votes
• The purchase process. 4 votes
• No team space I can reserve for long periods of time (a few weeks, a month). 1 vote
• New project form for Legal services. It's WAY better than the old process, but I still need to copy all files to all bugs & keep track of way too many things at one time 0 votes

LACK OF STANDARDIZATION

• Lack of a proper, unified project management system used by all Mozilla teams. This results in poor inter-team coordination, and a poor universal understanding of the relative importance of tasks/projects. 81 votes
• Teams that don't like to use Bugzilla or IRC. 55 votes
• Lack of consistent, repeatable process. 9 votes
• Lack of a team responsible or defined process for driving/prioritizing cross-team collaboration required to launch initiatives. (sometimes called a PMO in traditional organizations). 8 votes
• Lack of total systems view, leaving downstream "work stations" blindsided by new projects. 6 votes
• Trying to test things and get involved with projects that have no specs or established process. Most things are `TBD` and then just get coded, then ultimately rewritten. 4 votes
• The appearance of different priorities in different parts/regions of Mozilla. We are and should be One Mozilla. 4 votes

FOCUS: CHANGING/GROWING PRIORITIES & HOW TO COMMUNICATE THEM

• The Most Important Thing seems to change every quarter, resulting in churn, fire-drills, frustration with incomplete projects, and burnout. 94 votes
• Setting goals that are then thrown away due to new priorities. 47 votes
• Organizational difficulty with saying no, limiting scope, excluding options, focusing. 32 votes
• Uncertainty about which projects or activities will make the best impact. 24 votes
• Spending more time in reactive mode than in any kind of creative/proactive mode. 22 votes
• Not enough focus time, not enough down time. Makes mind blurry. 18 votes
• Visibility into priority order for the work we are doing as a whole. 14 votes
• Fear of project cancellation/changes has created a culture of excessive protection of each owns area of responsibility. 10 votes
• Lack of goals setting and/or visibility into goals for people outside (upper) management. 9 votes
• So many things in flux all the time that it is hard to feel like you really know how everything works. 8 votes
• Too many fire drills, especially in the week before a Firefox tree uplift. 7 votes
• Doing more and supporting product scaling efforts with no additional headcount and less expense budget. 5 votes
• Lack of alignment, consistency and prioritization at the leadership level. 1 vote