Wikimedia Discovery/Meetings/Analysis retrospective 2016-05-31

Covering whatever has happened related to the team since the last retro (2016-04-20)

  • Ongoing hiring for new analyst
    • Some task submissions have really impressed me!
  • Tomasz leaving, Katie announced to be the new head of Discovery
  • Data mapping

Review action items from before

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  • Dan: Publicize the data guidelines more widely
    • No action. Apparently not that important, so we'll drop it

What went well?

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  • Query features & ZRR report (with positive feedback from the Search team!)
  • Qualtrics survey started and finished and got maps and quick reviews from Mikhail
  • Descriptive text analysis completed for Portal team
  • Good, constructive discussion about documentation and communicating changes in schemas and data collection more widely
  • Mikhail's first proper candidate interview! (yay!)+1
  • Worked well with Editing to coordinate which candidate(s) would be a better fit for which department
  • Data mapping - Discovery perceived as being very knowledgeable of its datasets
  • Mikhail is handling juggling the jobs of two analysts very well!+1

What could have gone better?

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  • The good, constructive discussion about documentation and communicating changes in data widely ended with a very open-ended "We'll just think about it more and be sure to talk to Mikhail" rather than anything concrete
    • Mikhail: Just raising awareness seemed helpful; it should encourage everyone to take small steps to help avoid future problems
  • Hiring is going slower than hoped, and is about to probably be even slower with Dan being on vacation
  • More coordination between Editing and our JD would have been better, but that's more on recruiting's side. We did pretty well. +1

What else should be noted?

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  • Mikhail might possibly be needed for some side work outside of Discovery at some point in the near future

Action items

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  • Dan: Circulate a specific plan for handling hiring while Dan is out