Wikimedia Technology/Goals/2017-18 Q2/Process

Overview

Traditionally, teams have set quarterly goals. Starting this quarter, the goals will be tracked per program. Each program owner is responsible for working with team leads (or whoever else) to gain agreement on the quarterly goals for their program. Any dependencies should be aware of and agree to their responsibilities.

The goals will incrementally become more and more firm, passing through "rough draft", "final draft", "approved by CTO", and then "final" stages.

Timeline

Dates	Who	Activity	Quarterly planning pages (on mediawiki.org)	Check-in Deck (in Google Office)	Deadline
mid-Aug – Aug 28	Kevin	Prepare the quarterly planning wiki pages	Tech Q2 goals page ready for content		Aug 28 Done
late-Aug	Kevin	Publish the process and timeline (this page)			Sept 1 Done
Aug 29 – Sept 11	Owners	Program owners populate the wiki page	Populated with rough draft Q2 goals		Sept 11 Done
Sept 1 - 11	Kevin	Create program-centric check-in deck, populated with with Q1 goals		Populated with Q1 goals	Sept 11 Done
Sept 11 – 18	Owners	Review draft Q2 plans, confirm dependencies (both within Technology and with other departments)	Populated with final draft Q2 goals		Sept 18 Done
Sept 20-22	Victoria, Owners	Meetings with CTO to approve proposed goals			Done
Sept 18 – Oct 2	Owners	Program owners populate Q2 portion of checkin deck		Populated with Q2 goals	Oct 2 Done
Oct 2	Q2 starts. New goals in effect
Oct 2 - 5	Owners	Program owners determine and document Q1 results		Populated with Q1 results	Oct 5 Done
Oct 10	Kevin	Share draft check-in deck		Link sent to C-levels	Oct 10 (according to office wiki) Done
Oct 16	Everyone	Check-in meetings		Presented	Done
Oct 17 - 24	Owners	Update wiki planning page to reflect any changes made after the final draft was posted	Updated to reflect "final" Q2 goals		Oct 24
Oct 24	Joel	Publish to meta		Published on meta, along with notes from the meetings	Oct 24
Oct 24 - Nov 1	Kevin/Joel	Conduct an asynchronous retrospective of this planning process, and write up results			Nov 1

Guidance for goal-setting

As you plan your goals, consider:

This quarter (October-December) will generally be less productive for most teams, because of fundraising campaigns, and holidays. Each is likely to slow or block deployments, and holidays will affect not only your own team, but teams and individuals that you depend on. Don't build a plan that relies on deploying new features in December.
- Planned no (non-emergency) deployment weeks: Week of Nov 20th (Thanksgiving), December 18th and 25th (End of year holidays).
Each goal should tie to an annual plan outcome and one or more of its objectives (or milestones). In rare cases, the work on a goal might serve multiple outcomes, so that can be handled on a case-by-case basis.
By the end of Q2, we will be halfway through the fiscal year. Look at all the annual plan objectives for your program, and consider how well you are positioned to complete all the goals.
Speaking of the annual plan, look ahead to work that will happen in Q3, and make sure any preparatory work is planned, to avoid bottlenecks and blockers later.
Talk to your dependencies early and often! Don't assume they know what you are expecting of them. When appropriate, account for reviews by Security, Performance, Legal, etc.
Team leads need to balance all the demands on their team's time. In addition to various program goals, the team may have its own internal work, as well as unexpected emergencies.

Presentation slots

Sustaining/Foundational

Sustaining

TP1 Availability, Performance & Maintenance (R, C, K)
TP3 Addressing Technical Debt (R, C, K)
TP8 Multi-datacenter Support (R, C)

Foundational

TP2 Mediawiki Refresh (C, R, K)
TP6 Streamlined Service Delivery (C)
PP1 Discoverability (C)
X-SPDM Security, Privacy & Data Management (C)
X-SDC Structured Data on Commons (C, K)

Community/Tech Community

Community

TP5 Scoring Platform (ORES) (R, C, K)
TP9 Growing Wikipedia Across Languages via Recommendations (R, C, K)
TP7 Smart Tools for Better Data (C, R)
TP11 Citations/Verifiability (K, C)
TP12 Growing Contributor Diversity (R, C, K)
X-CH Community Health/Anti-harassment (R, C)

Tech Community

TP4 Technical Community Building (C, R)
TP10 Public Cloud Services & Support (K, C)