[Foundation-l] [Wikimedia Announcements] Announcing Howie Fung as Director of Product Development

[Thehelpfulone]

On 30 January 2012 18:26, Patricia Pena <ppena at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> Congrats, Howie!
>
> On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 10:07 AM, Erik Moeller <erik at 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
> >
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>
>
> --
> Pats Pena | Global Fundraising Operations Manager
> Wikimedia Foundation
> office +1 (415) 839 6885 x6764
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> fax: +1 (415) 284 9511
>
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Congratulations Howie, and Happy
Birthday<http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_Wikimedians_by_birthday&diff=35118&oldid=34909>
Erik!
:)
-- 
Thehelpfulone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Thehelpfulone
English Wikipedia Administrator
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