Technical decision making/Technical Decision-Making Process Retrospective and Consultation plan

The general goal of this process is to revise the Wikimedia Technical decision-making process to ensure that it:

1. involves relevant stakeholders
2. results in long-term productive technical decisions
3. decisions are documented

The process will run in two phases: consultation, and design and implementation.

Phase 1 - Consultation

Objectives

The objectives of this retrospective and consultation are to:

• Understand what are the expectations and needs of stakeholders from a decision-making process
• Figure out who are the relevant stakeholders
  • WMF staff
  • WMDE and other affiliate staff
  • Volunteer developer community
• Determine what type of decisions involve specific sub-groups of stakeholders
• Design consultation with stakeholders to collect their expectations from technical decision-making
• Distill the results of the consultation to a set of conclusions that lead to actionable changes in the decision-making process

Consultation Steps

• These are the steps the core team perceives will be needed to engage with stakeholders. These steps may change as the process develops over time.

Activity	Status
Public communications - Kickoff	March 30, 2023
Validating stakeholders and questions	June 20, 2023
Public consultation	July 19, 2023
Summarization of consultation	in progress (per September 19, 2023) November / December 2023 Summarization and analysis of the data Writing of the report and summary January / February 2024 Leadership review before publication
Public report back on what was found	Results and Analysis
Feedback from stakeholders
Summarize the entire consultation with the next steps
Publish recommendation for the new process(es)

Phase 2 - Design & Implementation

Objectives

The current phase of the consultation is to gather input and summarize it.

In a follow-up phase 2:

• Develop an actionable plan based on the consultation
• Implementation of the Decision-Making Process plan

The process

The process should be collaborative and inclusive, while also productive and focused. It should result in a decision-making process that reflects the vision of the executive leadership on our culture of technical leadership and decision-making.

The process (components) are as follows

• Executive Ownership - Tajh Taylor - Oversight of the milestones and approval of key steps towards the results.
• Executive Sponsorship - Mat Nadrofsky - Communication to stakeholders, representing executive interests. Communication and updates to upper management
• Core team - Design, lead and facilitate the consultation process. Composed of engineers from WMF
• Advisory / Consultant Team - Dedicated group that provides relevant expertise for the core team for designing an inclusive consultation
• Communications channels and responsibilities - Details the communication requirements
• Working agreements for participants - Working agreements and expectations for the core group, the advisory team, and stakeholders

The consultation plan

The core team is working out the details and will ask for feedback as the team solidifies plans. It will tentatively include:

• Identifying stakeholders
• Survey
• Public meetings/listening groups
• A place to share comments on-wiki in long-form format
• Listserv discussion

The core team

The core team is responsible for leading, facilitating, and designing the consultation and analysis processes.

The core team is responsible for finding ways to represent the opinions and concerns of the stakeholders, analyze the information, find common concerns, and present a summary for the next steps.

Core Team

Role/Skill	Task	Name
Engineering	Plan and facilitate the consultation process Represent workflows and expectations from WMF tech and product departments, as well as from WMDE and community developers	Daniel Kinzler, Chris Danis, Kosta Harlan
Systems architecture	Represent system-wide decision-making and overarching strategy	Moriel Schottlender
Chair	Liaise with the executive sponsor Facilitate conversations in the group Flag potential problems to the leadership	Moriel Schottlender
Project management	Keep the group moving and meeting milestones Keeping the group accountable	Temilola Adeleye

Executive Support

Role/Skill	Task	Name
Executive Ownership	Oversight of the milestones and approval of key steps towards the results.	Tajh Taylor
Executive Sponsorship	Communication to stakeholders, representing executive interests. Communication and updates to upper management	Mat Nadrofsky

Working Agreements

Participants in the process must agree to these set of expectations:

• Code of Conduct - the Technical Code of Conduct
• Time commitment - Participants are expected to commit a certain time to the process. If this commitment cannot be fulfilled for any reason, the participant is expected to notify the core team’s chair so it can be resolved.
• Work commitment - Participants will be expected to fulfill tasks, collaborate with each other and adhere to agreed-upon deadlines. If this commitment cannot be fulfilled for any reason, the participant is expected to notify the core team’s chair so it can be resolved.

Questions and contact information

• Contact the core team at tdf-retro-2023@lists.wikimedia.org
• Follow the Phabricator ticket task T333235
• More forms of contact are coming soon!