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Meeting Notes/2016-01-04 Core Fraction

In attendance

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Joel, Kevin, Kristen

Discussion

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TPG Goal 1 - STRENGTHEN: Engineering teams can communicate their capacity for core vs new work (multi-quarter)

Measures of success:

  • Documented and agreed upon definition of ‘core work’
  • Agreed upon method for tracking data
  • Audience-facing product teams able to produce evidence-based data about the proportion of time spent on core vs. non-core work

Kevin and Joel have started breaking this out into smaller milestones but need to go and find the etherpad (or whatever) that has this work. (n.b.: now stored here: Engineering teams can communicate their capacity for core vs new work)

Kevin: Wes/Joel/TPG is on the hook to finalize a definition of core this week. Managers should be able to use this definition in their Q3 planning. Kristen: where did this requirement come from? Lila/Wes/the annual strategic planning process needs. First heard of it week of Dec 20th.

Do we feel okay about this? Kevin: we can meet the letter of it, but what we have now isn't a collaborative effort. Kristen: there's an unconference session or something to help with that? Kevin: email, probably. Joel: Worried that teams might not fully invest in this because timelines aren't realistic and groundwork isn't complete. Kevin: danger is more from teams reacting "that's not collaborative, I didn't agree to that" Joel: Worried that data will be junk because teams won't have in-depth understanding of how their specific circumstances fit into the definitions. Kristen: We already did some collaborative work in Q2, so we are building on that, right? Joel: not totally: we started the definition work but didn't meet to reconcile issues; started the groan zone but never did any convergence. Kevin: And that was focused on Maintenance, not Core, so not quite the same thing. not even agreement on what we are defining. Kristen: that's helpful; if we state that in tl;dr format, would help give the sense that this isn't top-down.

Kristen: should we send this to the audience heads first to give them a heads-up? Maybe Wes has already done that? Kevin: Sure. And, yes but I'm not sure they should get special access/go first. Kristen: okay, maybe that's Wes's job, not TPG's.

Kevin: who are we announcing this to? What channel? WMF-all? Kristen: our goal is for "audience-facing", so them. Who are you sending the broad strategy updates to? Kevin: Some to Platypus, some to WMF-all. Joel: It seems like we should work backwards from, who is going to have to report this data? Could write up our milestones as SPDPP milestones, do the RACI work, and then know who and when. Kevin: This is sort-of Strategy, sort-of Annual Planning. This is a bit different because it's externally imposed on TPG - well, we were going to do it anyway, but the timing is externally accelerated. Kristen: Is there someone on Strategy or Annual Planning who should be sending this out and leading it, or TPG? Kevin: I think it should be Wes, and Wes thinks it should be TPG.

Joel: what exactly is the next step? Work out our milestones and work breakdown? Kevin: Yes, but we need to get the definition announced by tomorrow. Joel: simply announcing it isn't very helpful; we really need to meet with the people who are supposed to use the information we will announce. Should we include the roadmap in the announcement? At some point we need to start getting everybody to reconcile the gap between the amount of work nominally asked for, and what is possible. Kevin: it muddies the waters - the announcement should just be the definition and the next step (feedback by this week). Kristen: Agree, not relevant to most people that would see it.

Kevin: Should we treat followup with a timeline as the next step?

Joel: there are at least three timelines:

(1) the WMF timeline that Wes described, for meeting Annual Planning;

(2) a hypothetical timeline based on our thorough work breakdown (of which we have a 1st draft) for MF definition and implementation;

(3) a timeboxed version of (2) that is possible and may be acceptable to Wes et al.

(And our vision, (4), the timeline to help WMF engineering teams do full evidence-based planning, including enumerating and estimating backlogs, forecasting, prioritizing, etc)

Next Steps:

  1. Kevin makes announcement of Core definition
  2. Joel/Kevin get drafts of Milestone Roadmaps (2) and (3) as defined above (plus outlines of (1) and (4) for comparison) ready to share with TPG and Wes ASAP (this week?)
  3. Wes has provided a working definition: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Team_Practices_Group/Tracking_core_and_strategic_work

There is an action item (noted in https://office.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016_Strategy/Detailed_timeline) for TPG to announce this definition

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