*Fixing my list addressing errors...*
TLDR: The Foundation will be conducting a retrospective on the Technical Decision Making Process.
To the entire Wiki technical community,
For quite some time now, we have experienced issues with the Technical Decision Making Process (TDMP). Volunteer contributors and staff have asked if we are still operating the Technical Decision Forum (TDF, the member body that participates in the TDMP). Communication about it from the Foundation has been inconsistent, and interest from the volunteer community in joining has been low. Some of our most senior engineers on Foundation staff have expressed that the process is flawed, doesn’t create room for discussion about the technical issues surrounding a decision, and doesn’t ensure participation by all stakeholders who may be affected by the decision. Suffice it to say, the current state of affairs leaves many participants wanting more.
We must also remind ourselves of the purpose of a decision making process. The decisions are not meant to be random or isolated. They should be aligned to our technical strategy, and we should be able to look at the decisions we have made and understand how they advance our progress against that strategy. If the process is working as it should, the decisions that are produced should represent settled wisdom, and not need to be revisited too quickly. The goals for a well-run process include:
-
A straightforward, widely understood decision making process, that -
Facilitates impactful technical decisions to be made in a timely manner, -
Incorporates input from staff and volunteers in our technical community, with -
Decisions that align with accountability for decision outcomes, and -
Clear communication and transparent operations throughout the process.
On examination of the contributing factors that have led us to this point, the factor that stands out to me is the need for clear accountability: accountability for the TDMP itself and accountability for each of the decisions we make. Technical decision making, beyond a certain magnitude, is a core organizational process for any engineering organization. It is therefore important for us to examine and improve this process from time to time to ensure organizational effectiveness. Not unrelated, regular retrospectives are a routine agile software engineering practice to enact continuous improvement. To keep our decision making process effective and efficient, we need to conduct regular retros. Overall accountability for maintaining an effective decision making process should rest with a person who is sufficiently able to marshal resources and address problems at a large scale – here at the Foundation, that resides in the executive level.
The Foundation will be conducting a retro on the TDMP over the next couple of months. Because we don’t yet have a habit of doing retros on this process, and because there is a wide range of stakeholders we seek to hear from, the process will be a bit more structured than an ordinary retro, and will take more time. As we do more of these, we should get better at them. The feedback gathered through the retro will be used to make changes to improve the TDMP.
Foundation staff will follow up with more information about the kickoff of the retro and what steps will follow. I am looking forward to wide participation in this retro.
Here are the links to the relevant wiki page and Phab ticket:
- Wiki page https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Technical_Decision-Making_Process_Retrospective_and_Consultation_plan - Phabricator ticket https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T333235
Thank you! And apologies for all the crossposting.
Tajh Taylor (he/him/his)
VP, Data Science & Engineering
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
Hi Tajh,
On 3/30/23 09:18, Tajh Taylor wrote:
For quite some time now, we have experienced issues with the Technical Decision Making Process (TDMP). Volunteer contributors and staff have asked if we are still operating the Technical Decision Forum (TDF, the member body that participates in the TDMP). Communication about it from the Foundation has been inconsistent, and interest from the volunteer community in joining has been low. Some of our most senior engineers on Foundation staff have expressed that the process is flawed, doesn’t create room for discussion about the technical issues surrounding a decision, and doesn’t ensure participation by all stakeholders who may be affected by the decision. Suffice it to say, the current state of affairs leaves many participants wanting more.
I'm glad to see this stated in the open, I think your summary is a decent starting point of why the TDF never worked. I do think a retro or post-mortem of the TDF from this perspective is needed.
From the talk page:
The intention of the retrospective is to understand the pain points
and the areas to improve the current process.
What from the TDF is worth salvaging to the point that it makes sense to iterate on top of? More importantly, what is the value in putting in this work when we already have a pending Movement Strategy recommendation to establish a Technology Council[1]? Surely that's a better base to start from?
As much as I respect the people listed on the "Core team", I'm pretty concerned that they're all WMF staff, given that we're talking about performing a retro on a body that explicitly excluded volunteers for most of its lifetime and as you said, weren't interested in joining once that option was given to them.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Initiatives/Technology_Council
Thanks, -- Kunal / Legoktm
Hi Kunal,
Thank you for the feedback. To address your question about the relationship between this work and the Movement Strategy recommendation to establish a Technology Council, I will say that I do not believe they are addressing the same set of needs, but I can see how the work of each body will be related. What is proposed as the purpose for the Technology Council is "to oversee the process of *developing new technical features*" (emphasis theirs). Though the words in the recommendation do not describe it this way, I see this as a product development and management function. My perspective on the purpose of the TDMP is somewhat different: in the pursuit of ongoing product development or operations support, we need to make decisions in an engineering capacity, and those decisions have consequences for system architecture, operational outcomes, and paths of software development. It isn't a way to make product decisions, and it does have to reflect and consider the operational responsibilities that reside with Foundation staff. That said, I can see a possible scenario where many of the same volunteers are interested in both functions, though I do not think that will be true of all volunteers, and it is likely not the case that Foundation staff participants would be the same in both cases, as our roles are more sharply defined. I will be watching to see how the Movement Strategy recommendation is moved forward, to continue to verify that my understanding remains accurate, and to see what impact that may have on our work.
On the matter of the "Core team", I have given the task of planning and running the retro to staff members whose work I can direct. The retro has been planned from the beginning to be inclusive of as wide a range of volunteer voices and perspectives as we can manage within the scope of the work. In this way, it is not really different from any other operational process that the Foundation runs, where volunteer voices may be included but volunteers don't have the responsibility of managing the processes. The retro itself is not a governance process, and it won't involve making decisions of consequence. It is an information gathering process, to build a broad and comprehensive perspective on the TDMP. Reflection on the information we have gathered should inform decisions we can make, particular decisions to change or adjust the TDMP itself, but those decisions are not themselves part of the retro.
I'm looking forward to your participation in the retro activities!
Tajh Taylor (he/him/his)
VP, Data Science & Engineering
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 2:56 AM Kunal Mehta legoktm@debian.org wrote:
Hi Tajh,
On 3/30/23 09:18, Tajh Taylor wrote:
For quite some time now, we have experienced issues with the Technical Decision Making Process (TDMP). Volunteer contributors and staff have asked if we are still operating the Technical Decision Forum (TDF, the member body that participates in the TDMP). Communication about it from the Foundation has been inconsistent, and interest from the volunteer community in joining has been low. Some of our most senior engineers on Foundation staff have expressed that the process is flawed, doesn’t create room for discussion about the technical issues surrounding a decision, and doesn’t ensure participation by all stakeholders who may be affected by the decision. Suffice it to say, the current state of affairs leaves many participants wanting more.
I'm glad to see this stated in the open, I think your summary is a decent starting point of why the TDF never worked. I do think a retro or post-mortem of the TDF from this perspective is needed.
From the talk page:
The intention of the retrospective is to understand the pain points
and the areas to improve the current process.
What from the TDF is worth salvaging to the point that it makes sense to iterate on top of? More importantly, what is the value in putting in this work when we already have a pending Movement Strategy recommendation to establish a Technology Council[1]? Surely that's a better base to start from?
As much as I respect the people listed on the "Core team", I'm pretty concerned that they're all WMF staff, given that we're talking about performing a retro on a body that explicitly excluded volunteers for most of its lifetime and as you said, weren't interested in joining once that option was given to them.
[1] < https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/Initiatives/Technology_Cou...
Thanks, -- Kunal / Legoktm _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l.lists.wikimedia.org/
Hi,
The retro itself is not a governance process, and it won't involve making
decisions of consequence.
This seems kind of at odds what is written on wiki. To quote the opening paragraph of https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_decision_making/Technical_Decision-... : "The general goal of this process is to revise the Wikimedia Technical decision-making process...The process will run in two phases: consultation, and design and implementation."
The on wiki page seems to imply the primary output of this process will be to decide what needs to be changed, and make those changes. Doesn't get much more consequential than that.
I think this is something that should be clarified at the get-go to align expectations. I think its really important to know what the expected outputs are when designing a process like this.
-- Brian
On Friday, April 14, 2023, Tajh Taylor ttaylor@wikimedia.org wrote:
Hi Kunal,
Thank you for the feedback. To address your question about the relationship between this work and the Movement Strategy recommendation to establish a Technology Council, I will say that I do not believe they are addressing the same set of needs, but I can see how the work of each body will be related. What is proposed as the purpose for the Technology Council is "to oversee the process of *developing new technical features*" (emphasis theirs). Though the words in the recommendation do not describe it this way, I see this as a product development and management function. My perspective on the purpose of the TDMP is somewhat different: in the pursuit of ongoing product development or operations support, we need to make decisions in an engineering capacity, and those decisions have consequences for system architecture, operational outcomes, and paths of software development. It isn't a way to make product decisions, and it does have to reflect and consider the operational responsibilities that reside with Foundation staff. That said, I can see a possible scenario where many of the same volunteers are interested in both functions, though I do not think that will be true of all volunteers, and it is likely not the case that Foundation staff participants would be the same in both cases, as our roles are more sharply defined. I will be watching to see how the Movement Strategy recommendation is moved forward, to continue to verify that my understanding remains accurate, and to see what impact that may have on our work.
On the matter of the "Core team", I have given the task of planning and running the retro to staff members whose work I can direct. The retro has been planned from the beginning to be inclusive of as wide a range of volunteer voices and perspectives as we can manage within the scope of the work. In this way, it is not really different from any other operational process that the Foundation runs, where volunteer voices may be included but volunteers don't have the responsibility of managing the processes. The retro itself is not a governance process, and it won't involve making decisions of consequence. It is an information gathering process, to build a broad and comprehensive perspective on the TDMP. Reflection on the information we have gathered should inform decisions we can make, particular decisions to change or adjust the TDMP itself, but those decisions are not themselves part of the retro.
I'm looking forward to your participation in the retro activities!
Tajh Taylor (he/him/his)
VP, Data Science & Engineering
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/
On Thu, Apr 13, 2023 at 2:56 AM Kunal Mehta legoktm@debian.org wrote:
Hi Tajh,
On 3/30/23 09:18, Tajh Taylor wrote:
For quite some time now, we have experienced issues with the Technical Decision Making Process (TDMP). Volunteer contributors and staff have asked if we are still operating the Technical Decision Forum (TDF, the member body that participates in the TDMP). Communication about it from the Foundation has been inconsistent, and interest from the volunteer community in joining has been low. Some of our most senior engineers on Foundation staff have expressed that the process is flawed, doesn’t create room for discussion about the technical issues surrounding a decision, and doesn’t ensure participation by all stakeholders who may be affected by the decision. Suffice it to say, the current state of affairs leaves many participants wanting more.
I'm glad to see this stated in the open, I think your summary is a decent starting point of why the TDF never worked. I do think a retro or post-mortem of the TDF from this perspective is needed.
From the talk page:
The intention of the retrospective is to understand the pain points
and the areas to improve the current process.
What from the TDF is worth salvaging to the point that it makes sense to iterate on top of? More importantly, what is the value in putting in this work when we already have a pending Movement Strategy recommendation to establish a Technology Council[1]? Surely that's a better base to start from?
As much as I respect the people listed on the "Core team", I'm pretty concerned that they're all WMF staff, given that we're talking about performing a retro on a body that explicitly excluded volunteers for most of its lifetime and as you said, weren't interested in joining once that option was given to them.
[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Strategy/ Initiatives/Technology_Council
Thanks, -- Kunal / Legoktm _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list -- wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe send an email to wikitech-l-leave@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/postorius/lists/wikitech-l. lists.wikimedia.org/
Hi Brian,
I'm not sure I see the misalignment. Let me rephrase here and see if we can reach better wording.
The intent of the first phase is to gather information, summarize the findings and make recommendations. How to act on those recommendations and implement the changes would happen as part of the second phase.
On Fri, Apr 14, 2023 at 3:29 PM Brian Wolff bawolff@gmail.com wrote:
The on wiki page seems to imply the primary output of this process will be to decide what needs to be changed, and make those changes. Doesn't get much more consequential than that.
Based on your summary here I see the current phase is determining what needs to be changed and the second phase to make those changes.
The group running the process of the retro will be sharing at each step and asking for feedback. The idea is to manage the information gathering process with staff-time and shape each step with input from the broader technical community.
-Kate
wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org