Strategy Phase One Retro edit
In attendance: Brian G, Bryan D, Kaity, Kristen, Moushira, Josh, JK, Adam Baso, Anne G, Toby
Worked Well edit
- 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 edit
- 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 ++