Great question :). I think the best way to answer is by example.
In addition to our mobile projects (which Erik referred to in his original email), the Article Feedback Tool 5 project on the English Wikipedia provides a good example of how the product group works [1]. The goal of this project is to develop the next version of the feedback tool that is currently on the bottom of articles on the English Wikipedia. The basic approach is to test a number of new feedback forms in order to see which one is the best at engaging our reader community to help build the encyclopedia [2].
In this project, Fabrice Florin is the Product Manager, responsible for setting the overall direction for the project, as well as determining which features to prioritize into which releases. He does this in partnership with a bunch of other folks, both at WMF and in our communities. Oliver Keyes, our Community Liaison, is responsible for reaching out to the editing community and getting their input on key product decisions. Oliver has been holding weekly office hours where we review the progress on the project and get input from the community. In this project, input from the community consists not only of input on the designs, but also an evaluation of the quality of feedback/comments left by readers. To get a feel for what is discussed during these office hours, please see the most recent one at [3]. Brandon Harris, Senior Designer, provides design direction for the project. This includes helping the team understand user needs and how they are met from a UX standpoint. Dario Taraborelli, Senior Research Analyst, provides the much needed analytical support for developing the feature (see [4] for the dashboards he developed for the project). The area where this project differs from the ones WMF typically undertakes is that the actual software development is done by an external vendor (OmniTi), vs. WMF staff or volunteer developers.
In short, I would look for this type of general model when it comes to product development -- a heavy emphasis on collaborating with the community as well as analysis on how these features are performing. One more thing I'll also say is that, as Erik mentioned, we are using agile methodologies for software development -- rapid iterations with quick feedback. In many of our features, we've been doing weekly to bi-weekly sprints. We intend to keep rapid cycle of deploy-measure-improve.
Howie
[1] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Article_feedback/Version_5 [2] http://blog.wikimedia.org/2011/12/20/a-new-way-to-contribute-to-wikipedia/ [3] http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours/Office_hours_2012-01-27 [4] http://toolserver.org/~dartar/
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 1:48 PM, Bod Notbod bodnotbod@gmail.com wrote:
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 20:03, Howie Fung hfung@wikimedia.org wrote:
If anyone has any questions about the product group (e.g., what to
expect,
how it's organized, how we work with the community and other groups), please drop me a line.
I'm going to do the unforgivable... OK, what can we expect? :O)
Bodnotbod
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