Reading/Strategy/Strategy Phase One Retro

Strategy Phase One Retro

In attendance: Brian G, Bryan D, Kaity, Kristen, Moushira, Josh, JK, Adam Baso, Anne G, Toby

Worked Well

breaking into groups
having a framework/model
Flexibility and openness were helpful
TPGEEEENIUS
in-person kickoff +1
Josh's orientation
Adam and Kristen just started it while I was on vacation
Kristen's faciliation -- hard to imagine this working without it +1+1+1
Everyone's openmindedness and effort -- thanks! "no strategy grinches"
Touch points with execs, "taking a step back" (reviewing with stakeholders) <<Could we do this with Community, too?
structure and process were absolutely critical
cross disciplines included
Nice to get some cross-team/cross-discipline time to work together - it was very effective
identifying all problems, even ones we couldn't solve ourselves++++
defining scope of team's reach through process
hard deadlines for cascades was crucial to getting things dun
Video
We actually have a strategy now - it worked
re-using a methodology that is mainly directed for a pure commercial use case, wasn't bad :-)
Community updates +
Kickoff meetings worked well on-site (would like to know how it was for the off-site folks)
Relative to other discussions and processes of this type, this felt pretty collaborative and well-communicated both within and outside of WMF walls - I hope we can continue to build on this and imrpove and learn+
Book grew on me+ (facilitator's guide was lacking in some areas eg time commitments and some discussion pre-reqs, see below)
team members were able to come in and out of process sometimes as needed (and different people led at different times)

Could Improve Next Time

Three days would have been better than two for the onsite
Problem definition could have been timeboxed
Documentation could have been better
- converting in-person and physical artifacts to a coherent narrative was challenging
Jargon/MBA-ness+1 ++(it might help to roll the stages out more slowly, not overwhelming everyone with all the stuff at once)
Hard to track timeline/deliverables - central place for deadlines
Trying different strategies (approaches?) for engagement, for requesting feedback (in hindsight, plan for specific points of engagement)+
- Ask for problems on-wiki up front (as opposed to cascade levels 1-3)
- Try different channels of communications in addition to wikis
- Do have 2-3 community members deeply involved in the process (very cool idea)
- Make better decisions on "document everything" vs "smart messaging"
executive buy-in timing flexibiltiity, coulda used more
more discussion of values up-front (eg privacy vs serving users throguh data analysis)
trim options more up-front
More inclusion of teams/community in brain storming phase (what we did in the on-site meetings)+1
need more skeptics - more community invovlement? (you need measured feedback so would need longer commitment)
Industry analysis should have been done before-hand+
Industry analysis could have been a more explicit focus during onsite
went from super fast cascade drafts with tests to much slower+ more expliicit about who owns what stages
Switch from ideation to reducing possibilites seemed quick and may have missed some ideas from the "big wall of ideas" stage (transition phases were lossy)
Not being there for kickoff (anne)
Calendars accidental exclusion - google group! FTW
having to read a book, whatevs.
Probably this could still happen: We need to transfer the experience to the rest of the teams in WMF.
underestimated cost/size of tests (tried to accommodate them, but in the end, we didn't) - tests are a lot of work, exec pressure led to announcement before testing
Schedule slips - didn't stick to published calendar on wiki, hindered ability to get tests kicked off
seemed very time consuming (but worthwhile?) - challenges of doing this while also continuing business as usual, could we have paused and just focused on strategy?
faciliatator guide weak in important places and unrealistic on timing ++