Quim, thanks for writing that. I am happy about the conversations that are
happening about this, and I'm finding people's thoughts and input useful.
There have been (and are being) lots of face-to-face conversations as well
as the ones on the lists and in other venues: it's all good.
There is of course no perfect ideal solution --it's a balancing-act among
multiple considerations-- and there is zero likelihood that we'll come up
with a result that is understandable for everyone, and fits their ideal
version of how the org should work. That's okay: we don't need to be
perfect (and there is no "perfect") --- we just need to be always
evolving-towards-better, as the org grows and changes. I'm glad Erik kicked
this off with a request for input: the input is useful :-)
Thanks,
Sue
On Nov 9, 2012 11:05 AM, "Quim Gil" <quimgil(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you for the explanations.
On 11/07/2012 11:47 AM, Terry Chay wrote:
It turns out we use a lot of industry
terminology, without realizing that we are poorly communicating what
that means to most people.
Actually I'm familiar with industry terminology, and also with the wrong
assumptions and prejudices it carries many times. I know *you* get it right
but a basic goal of any reorg is that *everybody* gets it right now and in
the future.
While it makes total sense to organize Product Management, Design and
Analytics under "Product Development", it feels old school and odd to leave
out the software engineers fully dedicated to product development. It
enforces the old vision that software development is something that comes
apart and after the product definition. But being Erik (a software
developer himself) the proposed VP in that area I don't need to insist in
this point.
The current proposal of having software developers working on products
(Language, Mobile, Platform...) together with Operations (sysadmins, not
directly involved in product development) feels just as old school and odd.
The common denominator seems to be "teams that know to code", "the
command
line dudes", etc. I might be mistaken, but it feels as consistent as a VP
of Presentations overseeing Marketing, Analytics, Design and other teams
with high communications skills and able to produce great slides. :)
And whoever leads the proposed "Engineering" team still would need to deal
at a high level with two very different agendas: those from teams actually
developing software features and those from the operations teams, the
latter probably still complaining that they don't get as much attention at
the top level.
So...
If the goals are "narrowing focus" + "scale the dept, and take seriously
our identity as a tech org (as stated by Sue)" (Erik says) then why not
flattening more all this tech structure?
Something like
- Product Management.
- Design.
- Software development.
-- Features
-- MediaWiki.
-- Language.
-- Mobile.
- Operations.
- Analytics.
This would mean 5 tech managers (already leading their teams) where now
you have Erik alone, 4 of them focused on product development + Operations.
Erik himself could act as EVP overseeing the product development
activities, since this is the narrowed focus now. He should focus on
vision, strategy and glue between the tech teams and with the rest of WMF.
The reporting and leadership of each team would be done by those 5
managers, now interacting with Sue & "non-tech managers" more often.
Doesn't this sound like a more flat and scalable org, with a clearer tech
org identity?
PS: yes, it's easy for an outsider to shuffle proposals without much
background and knowledge of the day to day. :) But since you asked for
feedback... I hope it's useful, regardless of what you decide at the end.
Thank you for listening!
--
Quim
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