Team Practices Group/Strategy Process FY2016/Improved Status Quo

The Team Practices Group (TPG) was dissolved in 2017.

This document describes the “Improved Status Quo” option that has been TPG’s operating strategy since mid-2016.  TPG conducted a strategy process from late 2015 to 2016 in order to figure out how to address our biggest strategic problem, which was: “How do we support the organization to be effective and sustainable, while maturing to the next level and maintaining its core values?”  

The team considered many new strategies, some based on the existing way  TPG worked and some novel.  Ultimately, the group committed to the strategy described as “Improved Status Quo”, which comprises:

• Continue to provide embedded process support to some teams, but to periodically review and consciously renew the engagements
• Continue, and do more of, shorter and smaller engagements
• Experiment with some promising aspects of the rejected strategies

Fundamental Services

The TPG supports WMF teams by offering the following services

• Providing dedicated resourcing for a team's Scrum Master (or similar) role.
• Periodic or one-off collaborative engagements for individuals and teams.
  • These are most frequently either process improvement engagements or facilitation (such as offsite planning and execution)
• Mentorship and support for people in the Scrum Master or other team or process roles.

TPG uses the Agile Coaching Lifecycle to guide all of the engagements, especially to get clearer on why we start engagements, what engagements are for, and how we may reduce and end engagements.

Rejected Strategies, and what to experiment with

Bumblebees

What it is: Watch for communication gaps between different teams that TPGers work with and coordinate with TPG counterparts to fill the gaps as they arise.  While this is already a side effect of Scrum Masters and coaches meeting as a team, this strategy would focus on aggressively creating more opportunities for this to happen, while reducing other kinds of work to free up time.

This is already a component of the Status Quo approach, and can be expanded in Improved Status Quo.

Things to try:

• Coach leaders of cross-functional teams such as New Readers and Annual Report for better cross-team communication.
• Help plan and facilitate more cross-functional events, such as Collab Jam and Product & Technology onsite.
• Service Level Understanding exercises between pairs of teams.

Trust, Communications, and Culture Focus

What it is: Work closely with teams, management, and executives, to build trust, improve communications, and cultivate shared values and norms. Support people and teams to improve their relationships, trust levels, emotional management skills, etc.   While this is already part of ScrumMastering and coaching, this strategy would make it the primary focus of TPG’s work.

Things to try

• Continue supporting this indirectly in the course of facilitation, off-site planning, and similar engagements where we can practice this.
• Develop a clear boundary between a) emotional labor as part of helping and coaching versus b) Talent and Culture or manager responsibilities.

Swarming

What it is: Disembed from current teams.  TPG focuses on one high-priority practice at a time and works with the whole Foundation to adopt that practice.

Things to try

• Mini-swarming: developing TPG expertise (with multiple TPGers) on a specific topic and bringing it to multiple teams.
  • Offsite planning
  • Collab Jam
  • Coaching Clinic

Team Metrics

What it is: Stop embedding.  Design metrics to meet management-driven metrics reporting and management use cases.  Work with teams to help them implement these metrics.

Things to try

• CSAT and Light Engagement survey improvements (to support TPG and TPG’s relationships)
• Quarterly Check-in deck improvements (to support C-levels)
• Packaging Phlogiston for Phacility (to support the org over time, through official adoption by the owner of the org’s primary task’ing tool)

Annual-plan-driven need for metrics is much more custom and team-specific, so there is no request for high-level metrics like this.  Also, invested a lot of time in Phlogiston project for Phabricator reporting on velocity and other metrics, with limited interest.

The Phlogiston project to develop and promote Phabricator-based reporting tools was a major Team Metrics-style effort, and is currently on deep freeze pending more demand.  No other follow-ups.

Agile Promoters

What it is: Work intensively with all teams to help them adopt consistent, Agile-based processes.

Little to no demand or support for this within the Foundation.  No follow-up.

Focus on Open Source

What it is: Work with MediaWiki developers and the volunteer contributor community to promote and expand the open-source-software-creation aspect of the Foundation’s work.

Things to try

• Work with the new Platform team
• Offer a “coaching clinic” at the Developer Summit

Verticalization

What it is: Disband TPG and have all TPGers work directly for verticals or other departments in the Foundation.

No follow-up.

Who

The people primarily affected by this strategy are:

• TPG
• People doing ScrumMaster or equivalent but not in TPG
• Existing TPG clients within the Foundation
• Potential TPG clients within the Foundation, including teams outside of Product and Technology.
• Other members of the movement, such as WMDE and community members at mixed events such as the Dev Summit.

Background and Rationale

TPG started the strategy process in reaction to several triggers:

• An inability to meet internal demand for TPG services at current staffing levels, suggesting a need for a more efficient model
• Inconsistent deployment throughout the organization
• Need to adapt to a changing organizational culture

Key reasons to commit to Improved Status Quo over the other considered strategies included:

• TPG has experienced success and customer satisfaction with the Status Quo strategy, and there is no compelling reason to abandon that
• None of the other options had consensus support within TPG
• Status Quo still doesn’t fully meet Foundation demand for TPG services, so the team should keep looking for ways to scale, eliminate waste, and otherwise add more value.
• It is consistent with team culture of learning and improvement