If you have time, do skim through these docs. I will do the same between today and tomorrow, they are pretty informative as to how annual plan is and what audiences is doing.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jon Katz <jkatz@wikimedia.org>
Date: Tue, Jan 30, 2018 at 8:16 PM
Subject: [Product] Fwd: Session #6 and into all hands
To: WMF Product Team <wmfproduct@lists.wikimedia.org>

Hey Folks,

Annual Planning Context

Last week we came together and, among other things, talked about strategy and annual planning. As I promised when presenting, I wanted to share more context and details about the annual planning process with you. Many of you probably aren't interested in how we honed in on the product principles or annual plan goal, but for those of you who are the process was pretty heavily documented and you should feel free to dig in. If you have specific questions, pinging Danny, Josh or me is probably the fastest way to get an answer. We're also really interested in learning where the holes are, so hearing your questions/feedback is really useful.

Below is an email I shared with the planning group before all hands, but here are some other artifacts you might find helpful:

Preso from all-audiences meeting at all-hands.
Annual planning outcome doc - This document elaborates on what we think the theme means as well as what each of the 'output' groupings mean. It is definitely a living document, and subject to modification.
working doc for the session before all-hands - This is the session where we identified the product groupings
Session notes - Notes from every session of the coordinating group
The emails sent (like the one below) before and after each session
Shared folder with all documentation and output

Next Steps

As far as next steps go, product owners will be working with their teams to identify projects that fit into the core output groupings and that will lead to the impact we've identified.

Once we have a rough sense of the year, if we haven't already, we will need to run it by:
engineering ASAP to assess feasibility and timelines..
adjacent teams and dependencies like CE, data analytics, etc.

In parallel, the data analysts, Danny and I are starting to define the primary metrics we will use to evaluate success--we'll run those by the PO's for approval. The annual plan draft is due Feb 23.

Again, please reach out with any questions or feedback. If you're scratching your head, I've probably done something wrong and should try to fix it :)

Best,

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jon Katz <jkatz@wikimedia.org>
Date: Sat, Jan 20, 2018 at 2:08 PM
Subject: Session #6 and into all hands
To: Dan Garry <dgarry@wikimedia.org>, "ggellerman@wikimedia.org" <ggellerman@wikimedia.org>, Joshua Minor <jminor@wikimedia.org>, James Forrester <jforrester@wikimedia.org>, Ramsey Isler <risler@wikimedia.org>, Toby Negrin <tnegrin@wikimedia.org>, Runa Bhattacharjee <rbhattacharjee@wikimedia.org>, Lydia Pintscher <lydia.pintscher@wikimedia.de>, Charlotte Gauthier <cgauthier@wikimedia.org>, Neil Quinn <nquinn@wikimedia.org>, Corey Floyd <cfloyd@wikimedia.org>, Trevor Bolliger <tbolliger@wikimedia.org>, Danny Horn <dhorn@wikimedia.org>, Roan Kattouw <rkattouw@wikimedia.org>, Amir Aharoni <aaharoni@wikimedia.org>, Nirzar Pangarkar <npangarkar@wikimedia.org>, Olga Vasileva <ovasileva@wikimedia.org>, Joe Matazzoni <jmatazzoni@wikimedia.org>, Anne Gomez <agomez@wikimedia.org>, Amanda Bittaker <abittaker@wikimedia.org>, Adam Baso <abaso@wikimedia.org>

Hey folks,

TLDR: More clarity for 2018-2019! Over the last 2 weeks, the coordinating team better-defined the audience department's impact theme and identified 4 specific project areas (outputs) we think the teams should focus their efforts on to generate that impact. The next steps are to identify the specific projects under those areas and which team is working on them. We should start on this next week with our teams. Reasonable docs to look at: outcome doc, working doc for session #6, notes

Since last communication

The last time most of us met in session #5, we discussed our theme and progress to-date and pointed out the latest research made available to us by the movement direction work.

Leading into session #6, the coordinating team decided that jumping from an impact theme to projects was probably not constrained enough, so we took a stab at identifying project groupings, which we are calling "outcomes", and then narrowing down that list. This way, teams have a lot more focus when they sit down to identify what it is they should work on. By the end of session #6, we had cut that group of themes from 9 into 4. We also did a fair bit of work in refining the overall goal to explicitly answer some of the questions raised in Session #5. The attached preso is one that we walked through in session #6, but I have modified it a bit to show the outcomes and explain why. Our notes from the session might also be helpful if you want to understand a particular bit of context.

Coming out of that meeting, we have a draft of the strategy we hope will provide significant guidance as we plan specifics for the coming year.

This document elaborates on what we think the theme means as well as what each of the 'output' groupings mean. It is definitely a living document, and subject to modification. Please review and comment or suggest changes. The document gets particularly sparse at the bottom of this tree, where the ideas are not as well fleshed out.

Next Steps

The next steps are to identify what the highest priority projects are for each grouping, carve out a subset for 2018-2019 and then align them with resources. As part of due diligence, we will need engineering to weigh in on feasibility and bandwidth and to figure out how we plan on measuring success for each project. Everyone in the coordinating group felt that this was probably best done at the team-level.

However, there will be some coordinating oversight necessary to ensure, for instance, that shared resources like technology team support and community appetite for change are not oversubscribed. There might also potential conflicts or disagreements. For instance, if the mobile web team and the editing team both choose VE on mobile web as a project they want to tackle. For this reason, I suggest each team comes up with >1 set of projects they would be interested in, in case there is a conflict.

Output:

1 annual plan of X projects with 1-2 alternatives for each project proposed.
For each project, please:

explain theory of how it best leads to outcome and impact (taking into account constraints)
explain how you would measure success
identify assumptions/risks

Please reach out on or off-list if you have any concerns or suggestions about any of this.

All Hands Week Opportunities

Many of you are meeting with your teams on Monday - feel free to share this outcome with your teams if you feel comfortable doing so and starting to think about projects. I am also around on Monday if you'd like me to come provide context, answer questions or bounce ideas around.
On Tuesday we will have product day. In the afternoon, we have 2 hours devoted to moving forward on these next steps.
We will be presenting this process/outcome and a few other related things at the all-audiences meeting on Wednesday.
On Wednesday there will be time in the Reading afternoon meeting (60-90 minutes) and (I believe) in the Contributors meeting to discuss further with your teams.

Again, your feedback, communication outward, and help filling in the blanks here is really, really welcome. See you all next week!

Best,

Jon

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