Every week, we name an “exterminator” to own user support triage. They triage and assign bugs, monitor support channels, and manage releases.
First response within 3 hours (during business time):
Within a day:
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Email inbox hi@tilt.dev
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DMs or Mentions to @tilt_dev
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Comments on the Get Tilt YouTube Channel videos
When users request support, they may be reporting a bug, requesting a feature, asking for docs/examples, or vaguely describing a general problem that they're having trouble solving with Tilt.
These user support requests may lead to work that we need to track.
We have two systems for tracking this work:
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GitHub issues for all public, user-reported issues
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Shortcut for internal tracking and prioritization
GitHub issues that we are actively working on should be tracked in Shortcut. The reverse is not true - we have internal work that is not expressed in GitHub issues.
When a user reports an issue, the exterminator should ensure there's a GitHub issue.
The exterminator should confirm with the user that the issue write-up accurately expresses their problem, and ask them to +1 it or comment with additional context.
We use these votes and comments to decide which issues to prioritize. That doesn't mean "the issue with the most votes wins". It's just one variable we use in prioritization.
The exterminator should assign labels to the ticket that match our current work-tracking best practices.
Any interesting new users should be mentioned in #triage-customers. The exterminator should use their best judgment on who is promising enough to DM directly (based on a combination of research on their background and how active they are in the channel).
When a Tilter has a problem with Tilt, they should report it in the #triage-bugs Slack channel.
The exterminator should determine whether the problem belongs in GitHub Issues or Shortcut, based on whether users have noticed and who it affects, and file it in the appropriate place.
The exterminator picks which support requests are high-priority to deserve immediate attention. Factors include:
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Is there a workaround? (If so, the exterminator owns verifying the user is able to use it)
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How bad is the impact? Are there side effects (like data loss in the cluster)
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How common is it?
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Is it blocking a high-priority team?
If you aren't sure, ask a teammate or in #triage-bugs.
For high priority requests, the exterminator should assign someone to start work immediately.
Low priority requests should be tracked in Shortcut. Teams should make their own judgements about how to prioritize them.
If the exterminator sees a request that they know how to fix quickly, they should consider fixing it right away.
The exterminator is responsible for making sure a release happens every non-holiday week.
Each release should have a summary release notes section highlighting major exciting changes, changes that break existing workflows, and upcoming deprecations, in addition to the automatically generated changelog section.
On the last day of the week, the current exterminator is responsible for passing along any important context to the next exterminator. The current exterminator should:
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Fill out the Exterminator Rotation Form
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Meet for 15 minutes with the next exterminator, and ask for clarifying questions on the form results
Over time, we want to be able to track the overall support load on the exterminator so we can adjust the process. We use two main metrics:
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The exterminator handoff form asks for a count of how many unique users filed a Github issue or asked a question in the Slack channel each day. (As the goal of this metric is to track exterminator support load, this number should not reflect Tilter-initiated GitHub issues.)
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For all new GitHub issues that we want to track, the exterminator should run the github -> shortcut import script. The script will add an exterminator label so that we can count the number of exterminator-created tickets each week.
Nick is responsible for tracking these two metrics over time.
We name a “Lead Tracker” to own user support leads triage. They monitor support channels for teams that are asking interesting questions, and might need more support to get set up with Tilt.
Currently, the Lead Tracker is Nick.
When new users ask a question in the Slack channel or GitHub repo, the Lead Tracker should:
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Research who they are and what team they're on
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Enter that info into the CRM
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Decide if it's worth reaching out to them
Either the Lead Tracker or the Exterminator may do the reach out, depending on how much the exterminator has been talking to the user already and how much bandwidth they have.