New subject: Office hour inside out (program evaluation)

21 Mar 2013

...
  Date: Wed, 20 Mar 2013 13:31:57 -0700
 From: Frank Schulenburg &lt;frank.schulenburg(a)gmail.com&gt;
 To: wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
 Subject: [Wikimedia-l] Tomorrow: Office hour inside out (program
 	evaluation)
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 	&lt;CAKooBQbK6rCui1BThp41MBvjTdzDQVvsJRLGsFYwXUUoGApSxQ(a)mail.gmail.com&gt;
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 Hi folks,

 Tomorrow at 17:00 UTC, I will be holding an office hour about program
 evaluation on #wikimedia-office. The target audience for this office
 hour will be chapter representatives and volunteers who are currently
 running (or planning to run) programs and programmatic activities.
 You'll find some background information about why program evaluation
 might be worth talking about in my most recent blog post on the
 Foundation's blog:

 https://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/03/01/lets-start-talking-about-program-eval…

 As we all know, most office hours follow a certain rule: there's one
 poor staffer who is getting grilled by the people on the IRC channel –
 people ask a variety of questions and the staff person tries to answer
 every question in a limited amount of time. It's a lot of fun (I
 guess, at least for the people who're asking the questions) and it has
 been a good way of direct communication between WMF employees and the
 community.

 Now, this office hour will be different. Not that I don't enjoy being
 grilled for one hour :-) I've done IRC office hours several times
 before and I always enjoyed answering questions. The reason for this
 office hour to be different is that I want to _listen to you in the
 first place_. I would like to learn more about

 * _your_ thoughts about why evaluation might be important
 * _your_ experiences with making evaluation a part of program design
 * _your_ hopes and fears when it comes to increasingly evaluating
 programs and programmatic activities in the future
 * _your_ ideas and feedback on evaluation practices

 Ideally, we would have some people in the room tomorrow who have done
 some kind evaluation in the past or who are planning to embark on
 evaluation work in the near future. With that said – if you have no
 idea about what program evaluation is and you'd like to learn more
 about it, you're invited as well! Or maybe you're just curious to see
 if this "office hour inside out" is going to play out well ;-)

 I'm looking forward to meeting you tomorrow at 17:00 UTC,

 Frank

I'd encourage people who are interested in this subject
to read up on program management and related subjects. 
This sort of management has been studied extensively in 
academia and in business, and in some ways I feel that
WMF has catch-up work to do and lacks expertise, 
although I'm hopeful that WMF is trying to improve
in this area.

I'd also suggest that people read the report about 
projects that encountered significant problems at 
WMF, particularly the IEP, and a more recent example 
is the mixed reception to AFT5. I hope that program 
managers at WMF learn both good practices and what 
to avoid. I also hope that WMF ties program metrics 
to evaluations for the responsible supervisors when 
considering whether to continue or renew 
employment contracts, as well as when
considering promotions.

Cheers,

Pine

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