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#Disco…
[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-spri…
[6]
https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/discovery-analysis-sprint/
Kevin Smith
Agile Coach, Wikimedia Foundation