Thanks Luis. I am trying to wrap my mind around the
strategy process and
how it interfaces with the many moving pieces in the Wikimedia universe.
As are we all. I know we've talked about putting some of the timeline
pieces together in a FAQ, but honestly not sure if that has happened yet.
A comment that I've heard from staff is that
strategies and priorities seem
to shift frequently. This results in confusion and lack of clarity. Once
there is a coherent strategy that emerges from this process, will it remain
set for the next 12-24 months? (Even 12 months seems rather short. Perhaps
we could be looking at longer-term horizons and higher aspirations, with
clearly defined intermediate SMART goals.)
I've had those concerns myself :) There's a real tension between being
nimble and reactive (which we need to be) and having ability to do
longer-term planning. We've been talking about this as an 18-24 month
strategy; but inevitably that will be different for different parts of the
org - some parts of product may find it outdated almost as soon as we
publish it (based on the earliest experiments they run as a result of it),
while some parts of the community strategy could conceivably last 3-4 years
(given the inevitably longer time scales for social/cultural work).
Sorry that's not more firm/specific, but inevitably some flexibility is
required here.
Luis
Thanks,
Pine
On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 4:56 PM, Luis Villa <lvilla(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Mon, Jan 18, 2016 at 6:23 PM, Pine W
<wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> 2. You wrote, "This is a major step to help us prioritize the work of
the
Foundation beginning in July 2016 and running for the next 12 to 24
months
thereafter into a strategic plan." It seems
that there will be some
overlap
> in the development of the 2016-2017 Annual Plan, and that the
completion
> of
> the strategic plan process will come too late to significantly
influence
the AP
until after the AP is already being executed. Can you share with
us
> which principles are being used to guide the development of the
2016-2017
Annual
Plan which this document [1] is scheduled to be published for
community review on March 31, 2016?
We mentioned this briefly in the FAQ
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/2016_Strategy/FAQ#Why_this_process.3F>,
but let me elaborate here:
"We also need to finalize the Foundation’s strategy quickly, so that we
can
meet our 2016 Annual Plan deadlines and align our
team and department
strategies with the overall strategy."
In other words, we really are waiting on the results of the public
discussion before making our biggest annual plan choices. :) This is part
of why the process is somewhat rushed; if we planned to use *other*
principles,
we could have had a multi-month process, but we really do want to use the
outcome of this process to help guide the annual plan, so we do have to
make it a bit tighter than we might otherwise have liked.
We're splitting things up into "core" and "strategic" to help
make this
process fit together better: that will allow us to do initial planning on
issues we expect will not be affected by strategy (e.g., "keep servers
on")
while waiting for the outcome of the public
discussion.
(For those who are curious for more details, I also addressed this
somewhat
in my metrics meeting talk
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpZOx1Mzmuk&feature=youtu.be&t=19m34s>
last week, and the question
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpZOx1Mzmuk&feature=youtu.be&t=58m41s>
at
the end of it.)
Hope that helps answer that question-
Luis
--
Luis Villa
Sr. Director of Community Engagement
Wikimedia Foundation
*Working towards a world in which every single human being can freely
share
in the sum of all knowledge.*
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Wikimedia Foundation
*Working towards a world in which every single human being can freely share
in the sum of all knowledge.*