Hello all,
It’s with great pleasure that I announce the promotion of Howie Fung to the position of Director of Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation, effective February 1.
Howie joined us in October 2009 as a consultant for usability projects, and became a permanent staff member in May 2010. Prior to Wikimedia, Howie was Senior Product Manager at Rhapsody, where he helped grow the music site's traffic five-fold within the the first year on the basis of extensive customer research, including web analytics, focus groups, user testing, and customer surveys. Prior to that, Howie was Product Manager at eBay, prioritizing features based on business objectives, usability studies, and economic impact. He has an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University.
I’m really proud of all the work Howie’s done for Wikimedia since he’s joined, calmly and rationally introducing method where there was madness, always challenging us to increase our understanding of our communities and to use our limited resources for the projects that are likely to have the highest impact. In addition to the work he’s done on the Usability Initiative, he’s worked on a variety of projects, including the Editor Trends Study, the Former Contributors Survey, the Article Feedback Tool, Moodbar, and the Feedback Dashboard. We’re very lucky to have him in this new role.
This announcement also means that we’re formally establishing a Product Development department at Wikimedia, which is part of the larger Engineering department. Product, in our context, means really digging into what we want our projects to look like in a year, in two years, in three years, and working together with software developers and architects, as well as across Wikimedia, to make that vision a reality. Our work will be organized along the following product areas: Editor Engagement, Mobile, Analytics, and Internationalization/Localization.
The following staff and contractors will be part of the Product group, going forward: Phil Chang, Brandon Harris, Fabrice Florin, Diederik van Liere, Siebrand Mazeland, Dario Taraborelli, Oliver Keyes, and the new Interaction Designer, when hired.
The Mobile team, which works on both mobile apps (such as the Wikipedia Android app) and the mobile web experience, is a good example of how this works in practice. It has Phil as a product owner (reporting to Howie), Tomasz as a scrum master and engineering director, and Patrick, Arthur, Max, and Yuvi as engineers (reporting to Tomasz). The team itself is the most important unit here: it drives the success of any given initiative. The connection into the Product Development group helps to ensure we follow a consistent strategy and coordinate efforts across the board. [1]
This is an important step in our organizational development and will help us parallelize and coordinate product and engineering work more effectively.
Please join me in congratulating Howie, and WMF. :-)
All best,
Erik
[1] In case you’d like to learn more about agile product development and software engineering, this presentation is a good intro to scrum, a specific methodology we've started to use on a couple of teams: http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/presentations/30-an-overview-of-scrum
-- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
_______________________________________________ Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
Congrats, Howie!
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello all,
It’s with great pleasure that I announce the promotion of Howie Fung to the position of Director of Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation, effective February 1.
Howie joined us in October 2009 as a consultant for usability projects, and became a permanent staff member in May 2010. Prior to Wikimedia, Howie was Senior Product Manager at Rhapsody, where he helped grow the music site's traffic five-fold within the the first year on the basis of extensive customer research, including web analytics, focus groups, user testing, and customer surveys. Prior to that, Howie was Product Manager at eBay, prioritizing features based on business objectives, usability studies, and economic impact. He has an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University.
I’m really proud of all the work Howie’s done for Wikimedia since he’s joined, calmly and rationally introducing method where there was madness, always challenging us to increase our understanding of our communities and to use our limited resources for the projects that are likely to have the highest impact. In addition to the work he’s done on the Usability Initiative, he’s worked on a variety of projects, including the Editor Trends Study, the Former Contributors Survey, the Article Feedback Tool, Moodbar, and the Feedback Dashboard. We’re very lucky to have him in this new role.
This announcement also means that we’re formally establishing a Product Development department at Wikimedia, which is part of the larger Engineering department. Product, in our context, means really digging into what we want our projects to look like in a year, in two years, in three years, and working together with software developers and architects, as well as across Wikimedia, to make that vision a reality. Our work will be organized along the following product areas: Editor Engagement, Mobile, Analytics, and Internationalization/Localization.
The following staff and contractors will be part of the Product group, going forward: Phil Chang, Brandon Harris, Fabrice Florin, Diederik van Liere, Siebrand Mazeland, Dario Taraborelli, Oliver Keyes, and the new Interaction Designer, when hired.
The Mobile team, which works on both mobile apps (such as the Wikipedia Android app) and the mobile web experience, is a good example of how this works in practice. It has Phil as a product owner (reporting to Howie), Tomasz as a scrum master and engineering director, and Patrick, Arthur, Max, and Yuvi as engineers (reporting to Tomasz). The team itself is the most important unit here: it drives the success of any given initiative. The connection into the Product Development group helps to ensure we follow a consistent strategy and coordinate efforts across the board. [1]
This is an important step in our organizational development and will help us parallelize and coordinate product and engineering work more effectively.
Please join me in congratulating Howie, and WMF. :-)
All best,
Erik
[1] In case you’d like to learn more about agile product development and software engineering, this presentation is a good intro to scrum, a specific methodology we've started to use on a couple of teams: http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/presentations/30-an-overview-of-scrum
-- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
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On 30 January 2012 18:26, Patricia Pena ppena@wikimedia.org wrote:
Congrats, Howie!
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hello all,
It’s with great pleasure that I announce the promotion of Howie Fung to the position of Director of Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation, effective February 1.
Howie joined us in October 2009 as a consultant for usability projects, and became a permanent staff member in May 2010. Prior to Wikimedia, Howie was Senior Product Manager at Rhapsody, where he helped grow the music site's traffic five-fold within the the first year on the basis of extensive customer research, including web analytics, focus groups, user testing, and customer surveys. Prior to that, Howie was Product Manager at eBay, prioritizing features based on business objectives, usability studies, and economic impact. He has an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University.
I’m really proud of all the work Howie’s done for Wikimedia since he’s joined, calmly and rationally introducing method where there was madness, always challenging us to increase our understanding of our communities and to use our limited resources for the projects that are likely to have the highest impact. In addition to the work he’s done on the Usability Initiative, he’s worked on a variety of projects, including the Editor Trends Study, the Former Contributors Survey, the Article Feedback Tool, Moodbar, and the Feedback Dashboard. We’re very lucky to have him in this new role.
This announcement also means that we’re formally establishing a Product Development department at Wikimedia, which is part of the larger Engineering department. Product, in our context, means really digging into what we want our projects to look like in a year, in two years, in three years, and working together with software developers and architects, as well as across Wikimedia, to make that vision a reality. Our work will be organized along the following product areas: Editor Engagement, Mobile, Analytics, and Internationalization/Localization.
The following staff and contractors will be part of the Product group, going forward: Phil Chang, Brandon Harris, Fabrice Florin, Diederik van Liere, Siebrand Mazeland, Dario Taraborelli, Oliver Keyes, and the new Interaction Designer, when hired.
The Mobile team, which works on both mobile apps (such as the Wikipedia Android app) and the mobile web experience, is a good example of how this works in practice. It has Phil as a product owner (reporting to Howie), Tomasz as a scrum master and engineering director, and Patrick, Arthur, Max, and Yuvi as engineers (reporting to Tomasz). The team itself is the most important unit here: it drives the success of any given initiative. The connection into the Product Development group helps to ensure we follow a consistent strategy and coordinate efforts across the board. [1]
This is an important step in our organizational development and will help us parallelize and coordinate product and engineering work more effectively.
Please join me in congratulating Howie, and WMF. :-)
All best,
Erik
[1] In case you’d like to learn more about agile product development and software engineering, this presentation is a good intro to scrum, a specific methodology we've started to use on a couple of teams:
http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/presentations/30-an-overview-of-scrum
-- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- Pats Pena | Global Fundraising Operations Manager Wikimedia Foundation office +1 (415) 839 6885 x6764 cell: +1 (415) 816 3349 fax: +1 (415) 284 9511
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Congratulations Howie, and Happy Birthdayhttp://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikimedians_by_birthday&diff=35118&oldid=34909 Erik! :)
Thanks everyone! I'm really looking forward to continuing to work with the community & Foundation on some cool and important stuff!
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.
Howie
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 10:32 AM, Thehelpfulone <thehelpfulonewiki@gmail.com
wrote:
On 30 January 2012 18:26, Patricia Pena ppena@wikimedia.org wrote:
Congrats, Howie!
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Hello all,
It’s with great pleasure that I announce the promotion of Howie Fung to the position of Director of Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation, effective February 1.
Howie joined us in October 2009 as a consultant for usability projects, and became a permanent staff member in May 2010. Prior to Wikimedia, Howie was Senior Product Manager at Rhapsody, where he helped grow the music site's traffic five-fold within the the first year on the basis of extensive customer research, including web analytics, focus groups, user testing, and customer surveys. Prior to that, Howie was Product Manager at eBay, prioritizing features based on business objectives, usability studies, and economic impact. He has an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University.
I’m really proud of all the work Howie’s done for Wikimedia since he’s joined, calmly and rationally introducing method where there was madness, always challenging us to increase our understanding of our communities and to use our limited resources for the projects that are likely to have the highest impact. In addition to the work he’s done on the Usability Initiative, he’s worked on a variety of projects, including the Editor Trends Study, the Former Contributors Survey, the Article Feedback Tool, Moodbar, and the Feedback Dashboard. We’re very lucky to have him in this new role.
This announcement also means that we’re formally establishing a Product Development department at Wikimedia, which is part of the larger Engineering department. Product, in our context, means really digging into what we want our projects to look like in a year, in two years, in three years, and working together with software developers and architects, as well as across Wikimedia, to make that vision a reality. Our work will be organized along the following product areas: Editor Engagement, Mobile, Analytics, and Internationalization/Localization.
The following staff and contractors will be part of the Product group, going forward: Phil Chang, Brandon Harris, Fabrice Florin, Diederik van Liere, Siebrand Mazeland, Dario Taraborelli, Oliver Keyes, and the new Interaction Designer, when hired.
The Mobile team, which works on both mobile apps (such as the Wikipedia Android app) and the mobile web experience, is a good example of how this works in practice. It has Phil as a product owner (reporting to Howie), Tomasz as a scrum master and engineering director, and Patrick, Arthur, Max, and Yuvi as engineers (reporting to Tomasz). The team itself is the most important unit here: it drives the success of any given initiative. The connection into the Product Development group helps to ensure we follow a consistent strategy and coordinate efforts across the board. [1]
This is an important step in our organizational development and will help us parallelize and coordinate product and engineering work more effectively.
Please join me in congratulating Howie, and WMF. :-)
All best,
Erik
[1] In case you’d like to learn more about agile product development and software engineering, this presentation is a good intro to scrum, a specific methodology we've started to use on a couple of teams:
http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/presentations/30-an-overview-of-scrum
-- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- Pats Pena | Global Fundraising Operations Manager Wikimedia Foundation office +1 (415) 839 6885 x6764 cell: +1 (415) 816 3349 fax: +1 (415) 284 9511
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
Congratulations Howie, and Happy Birthday< http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikimedians_by_birthday&...
Erik! :) -- Thehelpfulone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thehelpfulone English Wikipedia Administrator Accounts-enwiki-l Moderator _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
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
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
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
On Tue, Jan 31, 2012 at 04:19, Howie Fung hfung@wikimedia.org wrote:
Great question :). I think the best way to answer is by example.
Thank you, Howie.
Bod.
This is great news. Congratulations, Howie. SJ
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 8:03 PM, Howie Fung hfung@wikimedia.org wrote:
Thanks everyone! I'm really looking forward to continuing to work with the community & Foundation on some cool and important stuff!
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.
Howie
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 10:32 AM, Thehelpfulone <thehelpfulonewiki@gmail.com
wrote:
On 30 January 2012 18:26, Patricia Pena ppena@wikimedia.org wrote:
Congrats, Howie!
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Erik Moeller erik@wikimedia.org
wrote:
Hello all,
It’s with great pleasure that I announce the promotion of Howie Fung to the position of Director of Product Development at the Wikimedia Foundation, effective February 1.
Howie joined us in October 2009 as a consultant for usability projects, and became a permanent staff member in May 2010. Prior to Wikimedia, Howie was Senior Product Manager at Rhapsody, where he helped grow the music site's traffic five-fold within the the first year on the basis of extensive customer research, including web analytics, focus groups, user testing, and customer surveys. Prior to that, Howie was Product Manager at eBay, prioritizing features based on business objectives, usability studies, and economic impact. He has an MBA from The Anderson School at UCLA and a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University.
I’m really proud of all the work Howie’s done for Wikimedia since he’s joined, calmly and rationally introducing method where there was madness, always challenging us to increase our understanding of our communities and to use our limited resources for the projects that are likely to have the highest impact. In addition to the work he’s done on the Usability Initiative, he’s worked on a variety of projects, including the Editor Trends Study, the Former Contributors Survey, the Article Feedback Tool, Moodbar, and the Feedback Dashboard. We’re very lucky to have him in this new role.
This announcement also means that we’re formally establishing a Product Development department at Wikimedia, which is part of the larger Engineering department. Product, in our context, means really digging into what we want our projects to look like in a year, in two years, in three years, and working together with software developers and architects, as well as across Wikimedia, to make that vision a reality. Our work will be organized along the following product areas: Editor Engagement, Mobile, Analytics, and Internationalization/Localization.
The following staff and contractors will be part of the Product group, going forward: Phil Chang, Brandon Harris, Fabrice Florin, Diederik van Liere, Siebrand Mazeland, Dario Taraborelli, Oliver Keyes, and the new Interaction Designer, when hired.
The Mobile team, which works on both mobile apps (such as the Wikipedia Android app) and the mobile web experience, is a good example of how this works in practice. It has Phil as a product owner (reporting to Howie), Tomasz as a scrum master and engineering director, and Patrick, Arthur, Max, and Yuvi as engineers (reporting to Tomasz). The team itself is the most important unit here: it drives the success of any given initiative. The connection into the Product Development group helps to ensure we follow a consistent strategy and coordinate efforts across the board. [1]
This is an important step in our organizational development and will help us parallelize and coordinate product and engineering work more effectively.
Please join me in congratulating Howie, and WMF. :-)
All best,
Erik
[1] In case you’d like to learn more about agile product development and software engineering, this presentation is a good intro to scrum, a specific methodology we've started to use on a couple of teams:
http://www.mountaingoatsoftware.com/presentations/30-an-overview-of-scrum
-- Erik Möller VP of Engineering and Product Development, Wikimedia Foundation
Support Free Knowledge: http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Donate
Please note: all replies sent to this mailing list will be immediately directed to Foundation-L, the public mailing list about the Wikimedia Foundation and its projects. For more information about Foundation-L: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l _______________________________________________ WikimediaAnnounce-l mailing list WikimediaAnnounce-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaannounce-l
foundation-l mailing list foundation-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l
-- Pats Pena | Global Fundraising Operations Manager Wikimedia Foundation office +1 (415) 839 6885 x6764 cell: +1 (415) 816 3349 fax: +1 (415) 284 9511
Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. Help us make it a reality!
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