Sprint 1.44.0 1/2 - Jan 9 to Jan 20

[timgl]

Global Sprint Planning

3 things that might take us down

1. https://github.com/PostHog/posthog/issues/13534

Retro: Status of Outcomes from Previous Sprint

1. Data exploration: insights in the new system @thmsobrmlr & @mariusandra (tables cont, insights help) > There is one, we need to do the others to tbc. Tables is released internally.
2. Yeet AntD from all insights-related components, building a few replacements @Twixes > Deprioritised in favour of person properties timeline, will work on it this sprint.
3. Performance: @macobo create new tooling for benchmarking and exposing pain, validate moonshot alternative schema (posthog with no sharding). https://posthog.slack.com/archives/C0368RPHLQH/p1670363579097329 for more context > Done(ish), always more stuff to do
4. Web Performance - @pauldambra Paul & Ben fun time in Lisbon. Data Exploration in, Web Performance out. > Released for our team, will roll out to other teams
5. Make growth team happy running experiments: https://github.com/PostHog/posthog/issues/10426 @neilkakkar > Raquel is 11/10 happy so done.
6. https://github.com/PostHog/posthog/issues/13147 fixing @EDsCODE > Did some cleanup tasks, but didn't get to the ideal state. Table this so we don't get stalled on the current feature flag stuff.
7. persons-on-events @hazzadous - Done: implementation to resolve pending issues in review Todo: implement solution for onboarding/debugging events in realtime. Review increase of buffer. Backfill person_id i.e. run migration 0007 again.
8. snowflake re-enabling @fuziontech > not done, going to take a bit longer. We have good ideas on how to do this.
9. performance on capture @xvello > Investigation, adding instrumentation. No quick wins. Closed for now, going to discuss options as a team next week.
10. data integrity problems for priority customers @tiina303 > Done except for someone's prod instance.
11. "Pinned recordings" to S3 finalisation @alexkim205 > Very close. Part 1 is merged, s3 persistance stuff is very close.
12. Network logs alpha @benjackwhite > Alpha will be done, more follow up for internal testing
13. Infra hero, see the board for work planned @ellie > First infra hero, went well. Finished most of the tickets. Clickhouse 22.8 almost complete.
14. Look deeper into AWS costs and find low-hanging fruits to reduce the cost @danielxnj > Investigated, some low hanging fruit. Hoping to roll out a change with impact by end of week.
15. Have the plan to spin up a new automated ClickHouse cluster on the US AWS account, and replicate to it @danielxnj > no progress, also part of our OKRs this quarter
16. Improve new billing page further to recover lost conversion rate @raquelmsmith > Done for now, hooking it up to billing performance.
17. Support work to be able to launch new pricing with PostHog Lite / Scale / Enterprise @kappa90 > Still a WIP, main focus for next sprint.

Retro: What can we do better next sprint?

1. Holiday: we had year in review. We could plan this better.
2. Holiday: infra was super stable, no pages during key days

Support hero this sprint

Week 1: Karl Week 2: Paul

Plan: Proposed Goals for Next Sprint

Each goal should have a single owner. Owner can only be an engineer.

1. Data Exploration - get events table live to real users. Get pivot tables out for internal testing. Finish the last insight types. @mariusandra Why? Leftover from last time, blocker for PH3000, people want to explore data in ways we don't support.
2. Break down PostHog 3000 into next steps, and solve prerequisites (antd). @Twixes Why? PostHog 3000 is our Q1 OKR, and required to nail slick mode. To create an interface better suited for power users.
3. Performance: Property definitions, filters and data types @macobo Why? Event property definitions load slow, and person property definitions lack type information (e.g. string vs datetime), making some queries impossible for a few users.
4. Internally test and then finish up Unified Network panel to gradually rollout to customers @alexkim205 why? - This rework brings lots of 3000-esque improvements and is a pre-cursor to Performance panel
5. iOS Recording groundwork - project setup, working example recording to file @benjackwhite why? - Get a head start on our hardest goal and answer the unknown questions
6. Hook up pricing pages to billing service for faster pricing iterations @kappa90 why? So we can show different pricing to different cohorts and have faster pricing iteration
7. @ellie: Productionize US postgres replica, explore cutting over to it why? Unify infrastructure
8. @ellie: Work with @kappa90 to improve scheduled billing jobs why? Allow billing to run scheduled task with more visibililty/reliability
9. @danielxnj: NAT gateway per AZ, saves $$$ why? save $$
10. @danielxnj: Clickhouse backups in S3 to save $$$ why? Save $$
11. Feature Flag resiliency https://github.com/PostHog/meta/pull/74/files @neilkakkar why? If our DB is down, feature flags still return something
12. JSON Flags, allow users to configure flag responses https://github.com/PostHog/posthog/issues/13144 @EDsCODE why? People want to use feature flags for more things. Requested a lot.
13. Offsite @fuziontech why? Make sure we carry momentum from offsite.

Team sprint planning

For your team sprint planning copy this template into a comment below for each team.

Team ___

## Retro

<!-- Talk about what went well, what didn't go well and any actions to improve next time -->

- 

## Hang over items from previous sprint

<!-- For each item, decide to re-prioritise (and add below) or deprioritise -->

- Item 1. prioritised/deprioritise

## Planning

<!-- Each item should have a single owner. Owner can only be an engineer. -->

### High priority

-

### Bugs

-

### Low priority / side quests

-

[mariusandra]

Team Product Analytics

Support hero first week: @macobo Support hero second week: @pauldambra

Retro

1. Data exploration: insights in the new system @thmsobrmlr & @mariusandra (tables cont, insights help)
   • Still in progress
2. Yeet AntD from all insights-related components, building a few replacements @Twixes
   • Still in progress
3. Performance: @macobo create new tooling for benchmarking and exposing pain, validate moonshot alternative schema (posthog with no sharding). https://posthog.slack.com/archives/C0368RPHLQH/p1670363579097329 for more context
   • Doneish. Benchmarking done. Moonshot alternative schema confirmed to not work. Trends are fasters. Dashboards are faster. We have 2 CH clusters in productions. Cache gets hit 70% -> 95% (huge for p95)
4. Web Performance - @pauldambra Paul & Ben fun time in Lisbon. Data Exploration in, Web Performance out.
   • Still in progress. Might get done this week.

Planning

• Data Exploration - get events table live to real users. Get pivot tables out for internal testing. Finish the last insight types. @mariusandra
  • Why? Leftover from last time, blocker for PH3000, people want to explore data in ways we don't support.
• Break down PostHog 3000 into next steps, and solve prerequisites (antd). @Twixes
  • Why? PostHog 3000 is our Q1 OKR, and required to nail slick mode. To create an interface better suited for power users.
• Performance: Property definitions, filters and data types @macobo
  • Why? Event property definitions load slow, and person property definitions lack type information (e.g. string vs datetime), making some queries impossible for a few users.

[benjackwhite]

Team [email protected] ... ings

Retro

Christmas!

Hang over items from previous sprint

• "Pinned recordings" to S3 finalisation - 1 more day needed
• Network logs alpha - Final PR about to go out and then will be tested internally.

Planning

High priority

• Internally test and then finish up Unified Network panel to gradually rollout to customers @alexkim205 why? - This rework brings lots of 3000-esque improvements and is a pre-cursor to Performance panel
• iOS Recording groundwork - project setup, working example recording to file @benjackwhite why? - Get a head start on our hardest goal and answer the unknown questions

Bugs

Low priority / side quests

• https://github.com/PostHog/posthog/issues/13184 @alexkim205
• Encourage PostHog team to try out Network recordings "alpha" so we can generate feedback for next sprint.
• Analyze data usage for PerfEvents in Clickhouse

[kappa90]

Team Growth

Retro

• Em, support hero, worked on rate limiting organizations based on billing limits & refactor available features
• Raquel, worked on billing page pricing table, demo data stuff, updated pricing on website

Hang over items from previous sprint

• Refactor available_features coming from billing service, to populate pricing page both in product and on website

• Item 1. prioritised/deprioritise

Planning

• Hook up pricing pages to billing service for faster pricing iterations
• Complete rate limiting PRs

High priority

• Hook up pricing pages to billing service for faster pricing iterations

Bugs

• Flickering billing alerts
• Some orgs don't have billing data correctly registered when capturing events

Low priority / side quests

• Complete rate limiting PRs
• Finalize demo data
• Verifying email addresses on signup
• Migrate high paying customers to billing v2

[ellie]

🚀 Infrastructure Team 🚀

Infra hero: @guidoiaquinti

Planning

• @ellie: Productionize US postgres replica, explore cutting over to it
• @ellie: Work with @kappa90 to improve scheduled billing jobs
• @danielxnj: NAT gateway per AZ, saves $$$
• @danielxnj: Clickhouse backups in S3 to save $$$

[EDsCODE]

Team Experimentation

Retro

• Cohort Revamp: Cleanup task is ready. Further refactoring is tabled for now so the new objectives can be pursued
• Make growth team happy running experiments: Mostly happy, last PR is going in

Planning

1. Feature Flag resiliency https://github.com/PostHog/meta/pull/74/files @neilkakkar
2. JSON Flags https://github.com/PostHog/posthog/issues/13144 @EDsCODE

[fuziontech]

🚰 Team Pipeline🚰

Retro

• Overall still feeling a bit like we are firefighting and reacting more than we should, but feeling a little bit better. Our goal should be to really work on being more proactive than reactive.

Hang over items from previous sprint

• Person on events follow up work
  • https://github.com/orgs/PostHog/projects/74/views/1?visibleFields=%5B%22Title%22%2C%22Assignees%22%2C%22Status%22%5D
• Plugin/Snowflake export work
  • https://github.com/orgs/PostHog/projects/76/views/1

Planning

High priority

• Week 1 => 🇫🇷 🥖 Offsite 🥖 🇫🇷
• Week 2 => Follow ups from Hackathon and Offsite tasks!

[benjackwhite]

Team SessiOS Recordings

Retro

• @benjackwhite Felt like we are less "shipping" than before - good to keep an eye on it.
• @alexkim205 Agrees with rolling out Inspector panel speed, Performance is a little more careful regarding ingestion.

Hang over items from previous sprint

• Internally test and then finish up Unified Network panel to gradually rollout to customers (Will be out by end of sprint)

Planning

High priority

• Rollout Network panel to some beta users @alexkim205 why? We have been running it successfully internally last sprint and the final touches are there so lets get it out.

• Turn on Recordings by default @alexkim205 why? Huge number of customers we are missing out on as they don't realise it isn't on by default.

• Mobile Session Recordings published (alpha) why? Makes sense to test what we have ASAP with real apps (e.g. PostHoger's apps)

Bugs

Low priority / side quests

• Network release todo

  • Look into TTL on CH table

• Ingestion rate limiting @benjackwhite @kappa90 See issue