Audiences Technology Working Group/Problem Identification

Goal

The idea is to work on our first deliverable: A comprehensive, prioritized list of issues and requirements for our infrastructure

We will do this by defining all of our problems in a systematic way so they can be organized and prioritized.

What

We have several documents of problems and needs (see: here and here). But we need to pull these out in a way that we can begin understanding them and drawing connections. This first part has 3 steps:

1. Collect
2. Group and Dedupe
3. Discuss

How

We need a good way to put all our ideas out on the table and then organize them. This type of problem is usually best suited to an in-person brainstorming session, but as many of us are remote, that would be difficult… So let's try something familiar, but with a twist:

A tried and true way to do accomplish this is through making "sticky notes", followed by grouping and clustering. We want to give this a shot in an asynchronous format. Since we can't have a sticky notes virtually, we will use an etherpad, here:

https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/ATWG-Problem-Identification

When

December 1st - December 11th, 2017

Ground Rules

We have to have a shared understanding of what an issue is in the context of this exercise:

• Issues need to be written succinctly (think "sticky note"). If an issue is too complex to be written in a single sentence, try to break it up into smaller issues
• It is ok for issues to be "opinionated" - these issues should convey perspective
• Issues can cover:
  • technology
  • process
  • communication
  • documentation
  • etc… get it all out on the table

Process

Issue Collection (Async)

The first step is collecting ideas. We are going to do this in a way to make it easier to accomplish the next step of organization:

1. Find an issue
   • Mine the existing documents for an issue, or
   • Think of one of your own
2. State the issue in a single sentence
3. Add the issue to the shared etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/ATWG-Problem-Identification
4. Repeat

Organization (Async)

After we collect these ideas, then we can start the we can start grouping and deduping. We will begin clustering during the week of December 4th as ideas start rolling in and themes develop.

When it looks like we have enough issues to begin clustering, we will update this Wiki and the etherpad with more concrete instructions on how to do this.

Discussion (Meeting)

After organizing the ideas, we will have a meeting to discus the problems we found, look for gaps and resolve any open questions.