This week, the Discovery Department reconfigured its internal teams, to better align with our quarterly goals[1]. This new arrangement is considered experimental and temporary, although we expect it to last through the end of this quarter.
We believe this change will improve our focus on our goals, reduce context-switching by individuals, reduce the total amount of time spent in meetings, and generally improve communication.
The new internal sub-teams are:
"Language Search", focused on our goal of "Improve language support for search". The people on this team include David, Erik, Stas, and Trey. For now, this team will continue to track its work on the Cirrus board[2].
"Portal", focused on our goal of "Make www.wikipedia.org a portal for exploring open content on Wikimedia sites". The people on this team include Jan, Julien, Max, and Moiz. For now, this team will continue to track its work on the UX board[3].
"Maps", which will continue to gather user feedback on our newly-deployed service, as well as doing maintenance and minor enhancements. For now, this will just be Yuri, who is also splitting his time with supporting Zero and Graphs. Maps work will continue to be tracked on the Maps board[4].
As a side note, Wikidata Query Service (WDQS) is in a similar position to maps this quarter, and thus will only receive a fraction of Stas's attention. Work will continue to be tracked on the WDQS board[5].
Product Manager Dan will work most closely with the Language Search team. He will help the other teams as needed, but our intent is that they should largely be self-sufficient from a product standpoint, for this quarter. All the teams will continue to use a Kanban process with a weekly cadence.
The Analysis folks will continue to support the entire department. To ensure coordination, an analyst will attend the planning meetings and standups of each of the two big new sub-teams. Mikhail will work with the Language Search team, and Oliver will work with the Portal team. All analysis work will continue to be tracked on the Analysis board[6].
People from external departments (TPG, Ops, Community Liaisons) will interact with whichever sub-team(s) make sense at the time. And of course everyone in the department will be available to help out other sub-teams as needed.
After each departmental retrospective, we will evaluate the new structure, and will consider changes. Our next retro is 2015-11-02. We expect the structure to change next quarter, when we have a new set of goals to support.
Questions and comments are welcome.
[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2015-16_Q2_Goals#Discov... [2] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-cirrus-sprint/ [3] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-ux-sprint/ [4] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-maps-sprint/ [5] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-wikidata-query-service-sprin... [6] https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-analysis-sprint/
Kevin Smith Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation