< Wikimedia Engineering
FY2013-14 Wikimedia Engineering Goals, FY2014-15 (July-June) FY2015-16

Purpose of this document: Goals for the Wikimedia Engineering and Product Development department, fiscal year 2014–15 (July 1, 2014 – June 30, 2015). The goalsetting process owner in each section is the person responsible for coordinating completion of the section, in partnership with the team and relevant stakeholders.

These goals will be iterated on a quarterly basis. Each quarter, the top priorities for the department as a whole will be elucidated and highlighted.

Top departmental priorities for Q4 (April-June 2015)

Note: The top priorities live on a subpage, but are dynamically loaded below - the content is identical and automatically updated in both places.

Q3 Wikimedia Engineering Top Priorities, FY2014-15, Q4 Q1

Context: Our top objective for the April-June quarter is to progressively release VisualEditor on the English Wikipedia. This is a major software release with significant risks, and consistent with its importance and expected long term impact, we are declaring this as the only top priority for the quarter. Everyone in the engineering/product organization will be called upon to support it as needed.

Objective Key result Dependency ETA Status
Improve the editing experience for new and anonymous users on the English Wikipedia by giving them VisualEditor Maintain VisualEditor production service at our quality criteria:
  • No loss/corruption of existing article data
  • No loss/corruption of the user's contribution
  • No security issues
  • No regression in performance
  • No regression in usability
  • Data Research team
  • User Research team
  • Analytics Engineering team
  • Parsing team
  • Services team
  • Community department
  • Team Practices Group
  • Communications department
 June 2015 Yes Done
Run a test for new accounts on the English Wikipedia, providing VisualEditor by default to measure the impact. April 2015

June 2015

 Yes Done
[Contingent on previous result.]

Gradual ramp-up of VisualEditor availability on the English Wikipedia for new users, starting from 5% increasing to 100%.

 Timing to follow from previous result.

Next quarter.

 N Delayed
[Contingent on previous result.]

VisualEditor default availability on the English Wikipedia for anonymous users.

Timing to follow from previous result.

Next quarter.

 N Delayed

Site Operations and Site Architecture

Goalsetting process owner: Mark Bergsma

QuarterGoals
Jul–Sep 2014
  • Core data backups/replication at codfw Yes Done
  • Migrate application servers to Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty, and assist with HHVM Yes Done
Oct–Dec 2014
  • SSL with PFS Yes Done
  • Varnish 4 in limited production Yes Done
  • codfw fundraising infrastructure fully functional in time for the fundraiser Yes Done
Jan–Mar 2015
  • IPsec on cross-data centre links for private data Yes Done
  • Scale up HTTPS infrastructure to be able to serve HTTPS-by-default Yes Done
  • Virtualization for miscellaneous servers at codfw Yes Done
  • Ability to serve core site services (wikis) at codfw Yes Done
  • Improve monitoring
    • New external monitoring for performance and uptime metrics from the user's perspective Yes Done
    • Articulate a plan to replace current Icinga monitoring with something more scaleable and flexible (stretch goal) Yes Done
Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Streamline deployment steps for SOA services
  • Reduce the number of individual manual service deployments steps from currently (typically) 11 to <= 5 using consolidation, increased abstraction and automation
  • Implement a configuration discovery system to aid fully automatic configuration of load balancing, Varnish caching and availability and metrics monitoring in one automated process
  • Evaluation of container systems and deployment system options Yes Done
  • Services
  • Release Engineering
 June 2015Yes Done

Interdependencies:

  • Assist other teams in Q3 on:
    • Deployments of RESTbase, Wikidata Query Service, HHVM image scalers, Hierator

Wikimedia Labs

Goalsetting process owner: Mark Bergsma

QuarterGoals
Jul–Sep 2014
  • Reorganization/improvement of new-user & project documentation Yes Done
  • Process for user backups Yes Done
Oct–Dec 2014
  • Labs available in the new data centre (with Neutron/IPv6) N Not done
  • Distributing tools, deployment-prep to both data centers (availability/redundancy) N Not done
Jan–Mar 2015
  • Horizon dashboard proof-of-concept available, as a future replacement of OpenStack Manager Yes Done
  • Storage capacity & redundancy expansion Yes Done
  • Replace our internal DNS (PowerDNS) code with Designate Yes Done
Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Improve reliability of ToolLabsToolLabs has at least 99.5% provable, measured uptime for each individual 'service' that ToolLabs provides its usersJune 2015Yes Done

Interdependencies:

  • Assist other teams in Q3 on:
    • Beta Labs improvements (RelEng)
  • Assist other teams in Q4 on:
    • Isolated CI instances (RelEng)

Dependencies:

  • Improvements to the Labs management web interface (MediaWiki OpenStack manager or possibly Horizon) will need involvement from the UX group, and potentially development assistent from a (MediaWiki?) development team.

Editing Department

Overall goal-setting process owner: Trevor Parscal

Context: We build collaborative, inclusive tools for creating and editing free knowledge.

Language Engineering

Goalsetting process owner: Amir Aharoni

QuarterGoals
Jul–Sep 2014
  • Deploy first version of ContentTranslation
  • Re-enable webfonts for high priority and user requested languages
  • Develop initial version of scalable webfonts for mobile web for high priority languages
  • Research: Quantitative and qualitative analysis about internationalization tools and assets
  • Support: Provide language support including development and code review support for internationalization & localization of Wikimedia website features
  • Maintain standards compliance e.g. CLDR, Unicode updates
Oct–Dec 2014
  • Extend language support and features for ContentTranslation as per Content translation/Roadmap
  • Develop on-screen keyboards for high priority and user requested languages
  • Develop updated version of interlanguage links based on compact language links beta feature metrics
  • Support: Provide language support including development and code review support for internationalization & localization of Wikimedia website features
  • Maintain standards compliance e.g. CLDR, Unicode updates
Jan–Mar 2015
  • Extend language support and features for ContentTranslation as per Content translation/Roadmap
  • Leverage Rashomon for ContentTranslation persistent storage
  • Integrate VisualEditor with ContentTranslation (assuming support for non-Latin scripts such as Indic is stable)
  • Have parallel translation information from ContentTranslation with an open API
  • Support: Provide language support including development and code review support for internationalization & localization of Wikimedia website features
  • Maintain standards compliance e.g. CLDR, Unicode updates
Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Strengthen the Content Translation infrastructure The following particular changes:
  • Redesign the links module to work with all languages with and without machine translation
  • Expand the common data to meet the metrics needs
  • Analytics
  • Parsoid
  • Operations
 June 2015 To do To do

Draft: Wikimedia Language engineering/Roadmap 2014-15

Multimedia Team

Goal-setting process owner: James Forrester

QuarterGoals
Jul–Sep 2014
  • Upload Wizard - Platform - fix bugs, unit tests, chunked uploads, metadata structure
  • Upload Wizard - Features - progress bar, drag and drop, better FAQ, replace infographic
  • Structured Data - planning with Wikidata, new metadata structure, design file page/editing tools, community discussions
  • Critical bug fixes - Examples: Image scalers, Core media handling, Media Viewer, TimedMediaHandler load on every page
  • Multimedia Metrics - upload funnel analysis, drop-off rate, UI clicks, # uploads, # uploaders, other upload tools, files used
Oct–Dec 2014
  • Upload Wizard - Platform - fix more bugs, separate interface code, metadata-related infrastructure
  • Upload Wizard - Features - better licensing & category tools, add metadata anytime during load
  • Structured Data - implement structured data on Commons with Wikidata and community
  • Critical bug fixes - Examples: Image scalers, Core media handling, Media Viewer, TimedMediaHandler upgrade
Jan–Mar 2015
  • Upload Wizard - refactoring and unit testing (and possibly stability and UX improvements enabled by that). Bugs encountered while undertaking this effort will be fixed, but might not be as high-profile as the ones we'll handle once we have JS error visibility. Tracking funnel metrics over time instead of only having a rolling snapshot.
  • JS error logging - getting it working on beta and on a small set of pages (including the Upload Wizard page) on production. The goal for the team is to get visibility on which main errors/bugs are responsible for the Upload Wizard funnel drops.
  • Platform - investigating a better solution for thumbnail storage.
Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Make uploading media an easy, integrated process Users can upload media to Commons by clicking upload or using drag-and-drop inside VisualEditor and the wikitext editor whilst they edit. – September 2015 In progress In progress

Collaboration Team

Goalsetting process owner: Danny Horn

QuarterGoals
Jul–Sep 2014

Q1 theme – Never miss a message

User-facing features:

  • Subscriptions:
    • Subscribe to individual topics
    • Auto-subscription for topic user has created or participated in
    • Subscribing to Flow board = notifications for new topics on that board
  • Notifications:
    • Roll-up notifications for activity, one notification item per topic
    • Clicking on a notification takes you to topic page, with unread messages marked with color
    • Read/unread state for Flow notifications
    • Mark all as read
  • Log item improvements for Watchlist and Contributions
  • Mobile UI and design
  • Table of contents siderail module
  • Search on a Flow board

MediaWiki changes:

  • Create a namespace for thread pages
  • Decouple thread history and board history
  • Notifications: dynamic read/unread states

Possible deployment:

All deployment ideas are preliminary; actual rollout depends on conversations with staff and community stakeholders.

  • Teahouse – Question forum (w Heather)
  • Draft talk namespace on WP (w Steven)
  • RfC talk pages on Mediawiki.org (w Sumana)
  • Help desk
  • Mediawiki.org article/project/features pages
  • Metawiki - project/article pages
  • More WikiProjects on Wikipedia, possible rollout to articles in those areas

Metrics:

  • Start gathering baseline data for # of messages, # unique people using Flow
  • Figure out interesting comparisons between talk pages and Flow, given current usage of both
  • Figure out a way to measure the connection between Flow use and editor retention

Quarterly review following Q1:

Oct–Dec 2014

User-facing features:

  • More scaleable way to enable Flow without Flow team's direct involvement
  • Ability to auto-archive existing talk pages when Flow is enabled on a page
  • Positive "reached a decision" feature -- close/summarize for nice people
  • Visual Editor integration with Flow input boxes
  • Media Uploader modal inegration with Flow input boxes
  • Support of MVP bots used on user talk pages
  • LiquidThreads: Transition to wikitext, turn off extension, archive and switch to Flow
  • Hide/delete/suppress workflow refresh
  • Thread-level email notifications
  • Color-based "avatars" to improve the visual experience of reading long threads
  • Newsletter support

Possible deployment:

  • User talk on Product-friendly projects
  • Translatewiki.net
  • Possible opt-in user talk test?
  • Expand rollout of WikiProjects/article pages

Quarterly review following Q2:

Jan–Mar 2015

Q3 theme - More languages, more support

This quarter, the team is focusing on the feature requests coming from communities that have enabled or are planning to enable Flow on their wikis. This includes French WP, Catalan WP, Portuguese WP and Translatewiki, with more language partners coming up.

User-facing features:

  • A new model for indentation and nesting
  • Pagination on history pages
  • Category support for Flow topics
  • VisualEditor support on Flow entry fields , with VE toolbar
  • Moving topics between boards
  • Toggle for full-width vs fixed-width

Current deployment partners:

Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Make Flow a discussion system that can handle all of the core Discussion use cases to a level that can be used on active project and article talk pages One Wikipedia language using Flow on every talk page in the project and/or article talk namespace, enabled with the active support of the community on that language. Community involvement to help prioritize, test and evaluate features required to earn enthusiastic support for Flow being enabled on an active namespace June 2015 To do To do

Interdependencies:

  • Mobile web – Jon Robson joining the Flow team for Q1
  • Visual Editor and Multimedia for the Mini-VE and Media Uploader
  • Mobile apps – Connecting probably in Q3

Parsing Team

Goalsetting process owner: Subbu Sastry

See this page for additional details. Besides these high level goals, we will continue to focus on bug fixing, supporting existing Parsoid clients, improving performance, and regular deploys.

QuarterGoals
Jul–Sep 2014
  • N Postponed Must: Likely spillover from 2013 goals: Basic language variant support
  • N Postponed Must: Stable element ids (supports content translation, WT/HTML switching in VE, other features)
  • Yes RT testing, visual diffs, lots of fixes Must: Prepare to use Parsoid HTML for page view (finish up visual diffs, set up RT testing, a prototype for all page views)
  • Incomplete Working with IneZ with Wikia Should: Native gallery impl
  • N Postponed Should/Could: Start experimentation with content widgets: Cross-team effort (Parsoid, VE, Services, Community Engagment, ...)
Oct–Dec 2014
  • Prepare to use Parsoid HTML for page view (beta for mobile?, all page views?)
    • Yes Done Implement V2 Parsoid API for integration with RESTbase
    • Incomplete Final reviews and work needed CSS based customization of Cite extension
    • Incomplete Awaiting final review and deploy Support mixed content-style templates used heavily in some infoboxes
  • Supporting clients
    • Yes Done Ongoing critical bug fixes
    • Incomplete Partially done Explore performance issues with HTML parameters
    • Incomplete Initial work done Must: Stable element ids (supports content translation, WT/HTML switching in VE, other features)
    • N Postponed Language variant support
  • Technical debt and maintenance
    • Yes Done Migrate cluster to node 0.10
    • Yes Done First pass migrating codebase to use Promises
    • Incomplete Fixed some RT server endpoints to keep it usable Unclog RT server
      • MySQL db yet to be purged of old test results
  • N Postponed New applications
Jan–Mar 2015
  • Primary Focus: Supporting VE goals this quarter
    • Experiment improving efficiency of data-mw, data-parsoid encoding to reduce size of HTML.
    • Fix functionality and correctness bugs that affect VE
    • Additional work on implementing stable ids to enable HTML <--> wikitext switching in VE (Stretch goal)
  • Continue eliminating blockers and rendering issues that impact Parsoid-HTML read views
    • Site-specific customizations replicated in CSS in modern browsers w/ fallback for older browsers
    • Rendering of language variants
  • Initiate work to properly scope output of templates: easier to reason about, no WYSIWYG surprises in VE, supports incremental parsing (Stretch goal)
Apr–Jun 2015
Objective Key result Dependency ETA Status
Identify and fix the most prominent remaining semantic roundtripping diffs At least 99.95% of the 160K test pages roundtrip (wikitext -> HTML -> wikitext) without semantic errors in full roundtrip testing (which translates to significantly higher accuracy using the selective serializer in production). Editing Team June 2015 To be done

Interdependencies

  • Rashomon / Content API is needed for html page views, stable element ids, efficient template updates.
  • VE, Flow, Mobile depend on Parsoid output
  • i18n consultation for language variant support
  • Content translation group on stable ids
  • Collaboration / interaction with editors community for wikilint/linttrap
  • Wikidata for content widgets

VisualEditor Team

Goal-setting process owner: James Forrester

The VisualEditor Team is working to make VisualEditor a great editor for new and experienced editors alike, focusing on improving the performance and usability whilst adding some more features to make VisualEditor more helpful, intuitive and practical for use for every content edit, alongside maintaining, improving, and extending the existing editor software. Below are a set of goals that we hope to achieve over the next financial year (July 2014 – June 2015), with a balance of optimistic and pessimistic assumptions about speed of delivery; not all goals may be achieved in the time period indicated, and some may be updated over time.

On-going work happening every quarter:

  • Stability and bug fixing, prioritising any bugs that cause wikitext corruption or any other form of disruption for our wikis’ communities (including in the wikitext editor);
  • Performance improvements for users, tracking load & save times, execution speed;
  • UX improvements tracked regularly and reported in a quarterly public user testing narrative;
  • Ensuring the success of VisualEditor on mobile, with a target of feature equivalence on tablet and at least some features on phone, with responsibility for both VisualEditor and wikitext editing pipelines on tablets and phones as well as desktop transitioning from Mobile to the team; and
  • Collaborating with volunteers and other Engineering teams like Parsoid, Services, Platform, & Core on related efforts like skin improvements, front-end performance, and other areas.
QuarterGoals
Jul–Sep 2014
  • N Postponed Deployment: Engaging with English Wikipedia to discover pain points as part of agreeing the criteria for a gradual ramp-up of VisualEditor availability and usage to default, expected to happen in Q2, subject to community discussions (after this point, ongoing support)
  • Yes Done Core: Internet Explorer 10+ browser support
  • Incomplete Service deployed in production but client not created Feature: Auto-filling citations from ISBN, DOI or URL
  • N Postponed Feature: Editing templates’ parameters as rich content, not wikitext, with helper tools for some types like image (searching Commons), link (searching wikis), date (date selector extended from Wikidata’s), and possibly others
  • Metrics :
    • Load performance: No significant changes expected – 3s 50%ile, 5s 75%ile, 25s 99%ile (same as baseline)
    • Save performance: Major improvement is compressing save data before submitted for save – 3s 50%ile, 6s 75%ile, 15s 99%ile (from 4s 50%ile, 8s 75%ile, 15s 99%ile baseline)
    • Per-edit adoption: No significant changes expected – 35% IPs, 20% post-default users, 4% pre-default users (same as baseline)
Oct–Dec 2014
  • N Not yet complete Core: Initial improved support for IMEs, for key expanded if not all language groups
  • N Not yet complete Feature: Auto-filling citations from ISBN, DOI or URL
  • Yes Done Feature: Table editing – inserting new and deleting existing rows and columns, and common "advanced" tools like sortable columns & table header
  • Incomplete Not yet complete; some improvements made Experience: Clearer link editing tools based on design research
  • N Not yet complete Experience: Simplified citation system based on design research
  • Yes Done Experience: Improved media search based on design research
Jan–Mar 2015
  • In progress In progress Deployment: Engaging with English Wikipedia to run a test enablement of VisualEditor for new users to measure impact, subject to community discussions
  • In progress In progress Core: Initial improved support for IMEs, for key languages – e.g. ja, ko, ar, fa, Indic languages – if not all language groups
  • Yes Done Feature: Auto-filling citations from ISBN, DOI or URL
  • Yes Done Experience: Improved special character inserter based on design research
  • Incomplete Not yet complete; some improvements made Experience: Clearer link editing tools based on design research
  • Yes Done Experience: Simplified citation system based on design research
  • Yes Done Experience: Media editing tool redesign
Apr–Jun 2015

See overall Q4 priority.

Additional work areas:

  • N Not yet started Core: Work to support partial document editing for performance
  • N Not yet started Core: Work to support editing on mobile devices
  • N Postponed Feature: Editing templates’ field as rich content, not wikitext, including nested templates
  • N Not yet started Feature: Auto-save local-only drafts if a browser crashes/disconnects mid-edit
  • Yes Done Experience: Clearer link editing tools based on design research
  • In progress In progress Experience: Clearer citation editing tools based on design research

Interdependencies:

  • Auto-filling citations depends on the Outreach Program for Women work to do this led by the Services team (and partially mentored by the Editing team).
  • Uploading media functionality relies on work planned to be done in the Multimedia team.
  • Language variants support relies entirely on work planned to be done in the Parsoid team.
  • Continued key on-going dependencies on the Parsoid, Services, Platform Core MediaWiki and Mobile teams, and collaboration with the Core Features and Growth teams for their VisualEditor-related goals.

Likely delayed until FY 2015/16:

  • Deployment: Engaging with non-Wikipedias to consider issues for them like which key extensions and gadgets will need VisualEditor support
  • Feature: Uploading media – uploading an image/video/etc. to Commons mid-edit via a button in the toolbar, inserting into the edited page on completion
  • Feature: Rich gallery editing and creation support

MediaWiki Core

Goalsetting process owner: Bryan Davis

QuarterGoals
Jul–Sep 2014
  • HHVM deployment - deployed as Beta feature, partial production deployment
  • Performance: Establish key performance indicators for end-to-end response time and server performance
  • Single user login finalisation - most development work done
  • Search: Feature complete, achieving parity with legacy system (lsearchd) in all reasonable respects
  • API discoverability improvements

October Quarterly Review

Oct–Dec 2014
  • Wrapup from Q1
    • SUL finalisation - announce date of transition In progress In progress
    • HHVM - finish deployment In progress In progress
      • Quant target: By November 2014, we aim to halve median backend response time for uncached operations, including page preview and save.
    • Search - finish deployment of CirrusSearch In progress In progress
  • Library infrastructure for MediaWiki
  • Editing performance
  • API architecture In progress In progress
  • Search - work with Mobile Web team on backend requirements for microcontributions project

January Quarterly Review

Jan–Mar 2015
  • Modern authentication framework for MediaWiki
    • Allow more complex authentication workflows for MediaWiki deployments
    • Clean up technical debt created by addition of multiple authentication hooks in AuthPlugin
    • Reduce complexity of implementing new authentication systems
  • Service-oriented architecture authentication
    • Refine requirements and user stories
    • Ability for stronger SOA push in Q4
  • Wikidata query service
    • Step towards allowing WikiGrok to execute queries against Wikidata and enable third parties to run own query service:
      • Publicly downloadable prototype (query and import and update)
      • Labs install (details hazy)
      • Hardware requested
      • 12 month roadmap
  • Multi datacenter MediaWiki
    • Remove obvious implementation problems for running a MediaWiki farm across multiple geographically dispersed data centers in an active write-active read configuration.

Interdependencies:

  • SPDY – TechOps
  • SOA Auth – Services
  • API discoverability improvements – ECT
Q1 HHVM targets, expressed as wall time for PHP methods in milliseconds
Method50th percentile (current)50th percentile (target)90th percentile (current)90th percentile (target)
WikiPage::doEditContent185.5492.771014.44507.22
EditPage::getPreviewText (cf. ?)352.81176.402248.171124.09

Release Engineering

Goalsetting process owner: Greg Grossmeier

QuarterGoals
Jul–Sep 2014
  • Deployment tooling
    • Complete support for HHVM in production
    • Hand off of tooling knowledge to Mukunda from Bryan
  • Beta Cluster
    • Complete support for HHVM in Beta Cluster
  • Browser testing
    • Port builds from Cloudbees to WMF Jenkins and close down Cloudbees completely
    • Split builds efficiently between local headless runs and our 10 available simultaneous SauceLabs VMs
  • Quality Assurance
    • Monitor process discussions across WMF where appropriate e.g. Phabricator workflow design
Oct–Dec 2014
  • Phabricator
    • Developer support
  • Deployment tooling
    • on hold due to Phabricator support
  • Jenkins
    • Jenkins performance improvements
  • Beta cluster
    • Beta Cluster monitoring
    • Yet Another Cluster
  • Browser tests
    • Workshops/trainings in lieu of one-to-one pair programming
    • Improved "best practices" and "getting started" documentation
    • Environment abstraction layer in mediawiki-selenium
  • Vagrant
    • Investigate creating shareable vagrant- or docker-based test environments
    • Optimize memory hungry services running in the vagrant VM (reduce base memory usage)
Jan–Mar 2015
  • Beta Cluster stability
  • Successfully re-integrate MediaWiki releases
    • On time releases with minimal impact on our team’s time.
  • Isolated CI instances
    • We use single-use test instances for CI
  • Team process improvements
    • A better outcome in our next Health Check Survey
Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Release MediaWiki 1.25
  • The software that runs Wikipedia and sister projects has a successful release for third-party users.
 "MW Core" May 25, 2015 In progress In progress

Interdependencies: Ops, MW Core

Engineering Community

Goalsetting process owner: Quim Gil

Our quarterly goals are defined according to our main drivers for 2014-15:

QuarterGoals
Jul–Sep 2014
  • Developer Hub prototype
    • Landing page, 3 projects showcased, 3 APIs documented
    • API sandbox functional prototype
    • Contribution process defined
  • Successful Wikimania hackathon
    • Facilitation of the schedule in an unconference setup
    • Quality and diversity of activities for old and new technical contributors, as well as tech-curious editors.
  • Collaboration started with top three partners
    • Plan for engaging established communities
    • List of upstream projects and other collectives we care about
    • Agreement of collaborations with some of our top partners
Oct–Dec 2014
  • Most Trello and Mingle projects migrated to Phabricator.
  • Basic plan for code review in Phabricator.
  • Joint collaboration with partners visible in events and outreach programs
  • Common process for Google Code-in and onboarding newcomers
  • FOSS Outreach Program for Women (confirmed) & Facebook Open Academy (upon evaluation)
Jan–Mar 2015
  • Sane developer experience — UX & doc debt in mediawiki.org
  • Proof of concept of code review in Phabricator adapted to Wikimedia needs.
  • Decision on migrating continuous integration or not.
  • Successful Wikimedia Hackathon USA
  • Best Wikimedia participation in FOSDEM, driven by EU chapters
Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Most welcoming and productive Wikimedia Hackathon (WIP) 8 hackathon projects showcased, 2 of them worth supporting further; 10% of participants are new volunteers; 100% of newcomers have a buddy
  • Wikimedia France
 May 2015 Yes Done

See the other quarterly goals.

Interdependencies: Analytics (API data usage, Developer Hub), Design (Developer Hub, mediawiki.org), Global Education Program (Engaging Communities), Grantmaking (Engaging Communities), Platform (Phabricator, Developer Hub), Product (Phabricator), Technical Operations (Phabricator), Zero (Engaging communities).

Availability

Goalsetting process owner: Aaron Schulz

QuarterGoals
Apr–Jun 2015
Objective Key result Dependency ETA Status
Build and deploy a new application-level caching system with multi-datacenter capabilities 100% of mediawiki core and production-deployed extensions updated for proper distributed cache usage
  • Operations
  • Editor Engagement - Collaboration
 June 2015 In progress In progress

Performance

Goalsetting process owner: Ori Livneh

QuarterGoals
Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Begin building the performance team, while continuing ongoing auditing.
  • Hire two web performance engineers
  • Audit mobile web site performance
  • Performance: Establish key performance indicators for end-to-end response time and server performance
 HR/Recruiting June 2015 In progress In progress

Security

Goalsetting process owner: Chris Steipp

QuarterGoals
Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Begin building the security team, while continuing ongoing auditing and response work.
  • AppSec Engineer hired
  • Initial risk assessment of engineering groups
 HR/Recruiting June 2015 In progress In progress

fr:Wikipédia:Forum_des_nouveaux/Flowca:Viquipèdia:La_taverna/Tecnicismespt:Wikipédia:Esplanada/propostas/Flow?_(18set2014)#Atualiza.C3.A7.C3.A3o_e_pl*

Reading Department

Mobile Web

Goalsetting process owner: Jon Katz

This fiscal year, the Mobile Apps team will be focused on getting data on feature usage of the new native mobile applications for iOS and Android in order to set goals and prioritize work on new apps features.

The Mobile Web team will split their time between two main focus areas:

Technical enablement – ensuring that other teams can work with MobileFrontend code, standardizing UI and code across desktop and mobile, and helping other teams design and build features that are responsive and work cross-platform.

Product work – this encompasses both a) porting select desktop experiences to tablets and handsets; and b) creating new features and contribution streams that help raise the number of new mobile users who hit the active editor threshold (5+ edits per month; below, referred to as new mobile active editors), so that we not only acquire but retain a healthy new editor population via mobile apps and web.

Our quantitative targets are based on the Growth team's editor model and focus on acquisition (getting more users to register for accounts via mobile), activation (getting more newly registered users to make 5+ edits in their first month), and retention (retaining new mobile active editors for 2+ months post registration). Note: targets for acquisition may change based on ongoing data collection around total edit numbers on tablets; if we observe a sustained drop in total contributions post tablet redirect, we may prioritize work on anonymous editing on mobile, which may change the number of signups on mobile.

QuarterGoals
Jul–Sep 2014Previous content (now outdated) available in this revision.
Oct–Dec 2014Previous content (now outdated) available in this revision.
Jan–Mar 2015
Objective

Beneficiaries

 Measures of successProject Lead Accountable executivePersonnel and teams involvedStatus
Release and test two new reader-targeted contribution features on the mobile web: WikiGrok and Collections
  • Wikidata
  • Readers
  • Casual editors
  • WikiGrok:
    • Establish baseline (percentage & absolute numbers) at 100% enwiki for:
      • quality of responses (primary success metric)
      • engagement of users who land on a WikiGrok enabled article (secondary success metric).
      • retention: how many users come back to answer more
    • Measure against other quality and engagement metrics:
      • quality: compare WikiGrok response quality ratio to successful/reverted edits ratio from new users on mobile – are WikiGrok responses better, worse, or comparable?
      • engagement: compare WikiGrok engagement to reader-to-editor conversion on mobile – are we engaging a wider circle of readers with this more lightweight, mobile-friendly contribution?
      • retention: compare rates of returning WikiGrok users to mobile editor retention – are we engaging a wide pool shallowly, or can we get repeat WikiGrok users?
  • Collections:
    • Launch pilot of a new reader curation + sharing feature.
    • Begin collecting baseline usage statistics (creating, adding, consuming) and characterizing use cases
    • Decide on further development on this feature based on initial baseline stats on:
      • number of creators (as compared to mobile web editors and desktop page creators)
      • user class of creators (are we reaching outside the power editor group?)
      • list type and quality (qualitative assessment of the content created via this feature)
 Maryana Pinchuk Erik Moeller The Mobile Web WikiGrok and Collections teams, including engineering, product, design/UX and support from Research and Analytics WikiGrok: on track – first reader test live

Collections: renamed "Gather", due to launch a pilot by the end of March; scale expected to be limited to qualitative analysis initially.

Apr–Jun 2015
Objective Key result Dependency ETA Status
Allow users to create individualized collections of articles and share them with others by launching Gather on English Wikipedia, Mobile web >10,000 creators/month rate

(subject to correction based on beta results)
  • Team Practices
  • Design
  • User Research
  • Analytics
  • Community Liaison
  • Communications
 end of June 2015 In progress Pending
>1000 shares per month rate

(subject to correction based on beta results)

 end of June 2015 In progress Pending

Interdependencies:

Editing team: We'll be working with the Editing team throughout the year to create a standardized editing experience (both wikitext and VisualEditor) across devices.

Flow: A MobileFrontend engineer with be embedded with the Flow team throughout Q1 to help build a mobile-first Flow experience.

Research & Data and User experience: We will be doing more in-person qualitative testing of new and existing mobile features to ensure good usability and a high-quality user experience. We will also run controlled tests and gather quantitative data on features to determine their effects on new and active editor numbers.

Analytics: We will need help from Analytics to continue monitoring and analyzing pageview traffic to determine the flow of readership to the desktop and mobile sites of all our projects.

Growth: Some of the mobile-specific contribution experiments planned for this year may dovetail with Growth experiments. Because we will be focusing on the same set of metrics/targets, the Growth and Mobile team should be working closely and sharing product thinking, experimental setup and overall strategy.

Mobile Apps

Goalsetting process owner: Jon Katz

iOS

QuarterGoals
Apr–Jun 2015
Objective Key result Dependency ETA Status
Build and evaluate the success of a prototype which supports quick lookup and browsing by making taps on Wikipedia links show article information. more info
  • Link taps per user per session will increase.
  • Link taps followed through to destination per user per session will not decrease.
 End of June 2015 N Link taps per user/session increased but link taps followed decreased. We do not feel this is a suitable metric in retrospect.

Android

QuarterGoals
Apr–Jun 2015
Objective Key result Dependency ETA Status
Build and evaluate the success of a prototype which supports quick lookup and browsing by making taps on Wikipedia links show article information. more info
  • Link taps per user per session will increase.
  • Link taps followed through to destination per user per session will not decrease.
 End of June 2015 N Link taps per user/session increased, but link taps followed decreased. We do not feel this is a suitable metric in retrospect.

Reading Infrastructure

Goalsetting process owner: Bryan Davis

QuarterGoals
Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Complete SUL finalization
  • Zero unattached accounts on the WMF production cluster
  • $wgCentralAuthStrict = true;
  • Security team
  • Community liaisons
  • Stewards
 May 2015 N Not done Very very close to $wgCentralAuthStrict = true; as of 2015-07-13 but still not quite done.

Discovery

We build the anonymous path of discovery to a trusted and relevant source of knowledge.

Our focus will be on building on-top of our anonymous and trusted search stack to improve relevancy, expose additional content and leverage locally relevant knowledge.

Goalsetting process owner: Dan Garry

QuarterGoals
Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Measure and improve relevance for search results we serve
  • Examine primary paths of Wikipedia.org, results pages, dynamic results and similar paths in mobile
  • Determine success metrics and tools for understanding
  • Initiate plan for centralized dashboard for product development
  • Operations
  • Analytics
  • UX/UI
 June 2015 Yes Done
Build concentrated team and process around search features and discovery paths
  • Align internal team and existing resources to support search
  • Hire additional staff to support team
  • HR
  • Team Practices
 June 2015 Yes Done

Wikidata Query Service

Goalsetting process owner: Dan Garry

QuarterGoals
Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Release Wikidata Query Service available in labs, downloadable locally, and available internally in the production cluster.

It will have no guarantee of data representation stability and no hardening so it'll be possible to write queries that take it down
  • Have a set of concrete requirements for initial deployment
  • Get the software/configuration ready for production deployment next quarter
  • Operations
  • Readership (Wikigrok)
 Late May 2015 Yes Done

Maps & Geo

The Maps & Geo team will be a new team at the Wikimedia Foundation tasked with scaling our existing mapping resources to enable the world to visualize Wikipedia all around them. They will start the year forming the team, inventorying existing work, and scale our tile services and osm db to be production ready. Next they'll work with the Mobile Web and App team to empower our users to use mapping resources.

Goalsetting process owner: Max Semenik

QuarterGoals
Jul–Sep 2014
  • Hiring the team's first engineer
  • Assess team charter
  • Inventory existing Maps & Geo features
  • Take ownership of Labs OSM DB

On back burner

Oct–Dec 2014
  • Build out beta ready tile service
  • Build out production OSM DB
  • Assess current Maps & Geo team needs
  • Hire second engineer

On back burner

Jan–Mar 2015
  • Launch Production tile service
  • Support WMF teams on maps needs

On back burner

Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Get a multi-tileserver/multi-datacenter, puppetized cluster up on labs as a prep for production deployment
  • Have a set of concrete requirements for initial deployment
  • Get the software/configuration ready for production deployment next quarter

Operations team

 June 2015 In progress In progress

Design – User Experience

Goalsetting process owner: (Previously Jared Zimmerman) Mun May Tee (UI Standardization, Living Style Guide)

QuarterGoals
Jul–Sep 2014
  • Yes Done — Define goals and requirements for State of the User Reports (REFLEX) with Product and Analytics
  • Yes Done — Consistency audit of released projects alignment with Living Style Guide
Oct–Dec 2014
  • N Postponed —Hire Sr. Designer with technical focus for partner projects and other feature areas (Moved from Q1)
  • N Not yet complete — Initial version of Living Style Guide with basic controls, palette, typography, iconography, behaviour, and best practices for desktop and mobile posted (Started in Q1)
  • N Not yet complete — Full coverage of iconography in core and foundation default extensions with mediawiki.ui icon set (Started in Q1)
  • N Postponed — Release Hovercards Beta Feature to selected small language wikis based on community requests (Postponed due to SendBeacon testing)
Jan–Mar 2015
  • Yes Done — UI Standardization : Full coverage of iconography in core and foundation default extensions with mediawiki.ui icon set (Started in Q1), dependant on hire of Visual Design Fellow
  • N Postponed — Hire Sr. Designer with technical focus for partner projects and other feature areas (Moved from Q3)
  • In progress In progress — Release Hovercards Beta Feature to selected small language wikis based on community requests
  • N Not yet complete — UI Standardization : Extend mediawiki theme and Living Style Guide to include all components used by current foundation projects
  • N Not yet complete — UI Standardization : OOJS controls for all in-use (core) controls completed
  • N Postponed — UI Standardization : Replace 50% of core form controls with OOJS template methods
  • N Postponed — Finch Extension with limited data gathering running in production (js support level, screen & browser size)
Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Standard toolkit of components, behaviors, language and tone in products and servicesExtend mediawiki theme and Living Style Guide to include all components used by current foundation projects Community Engagement June 2015In progress In progress
Engineering Community
Product management support for prioritizing UI and behavior consistency in story prioritization
Wikidata/WMDE support for certain mediawiki.ui components
Replace 50% of core form controls with OOJS template methods FR-Tech for for certain mediawiki.ui components

Design — Research

Goalsetting process owner: Abbey Ripstra

Quarter

Goals

Jul–Sep 2014
  • Yes Done — Define goals and requirements for State of the User Reports (REFLEX) with Product and Analytics
  • N Postponed — Finalize plan for Research Internship Program
  • Yes Done Define and prototype tools for qualitative research and data gathering.
Oct–Dec 2014
  • N Postponed — Hire Sr. Design Researcher to extend research coverage
  • Yes Done — Hire Research Recruiter to extend team's ability to do recurring qualitative evaluative research
  • N Postponed — Make decision on software for State of the User (REFLEX), work with platform, and ops to get initial small scale test environment running
  • Yes Done — Begin infrastructure planning for test environment
Jan–Mar 2015
  • Yes Done — Begin infrastructure planning for test environment
  • In progress In progress — Collaboratively create a set of pragmatic personae to start with and build those over time as we gather data for validation
  • Yes Done — Grow the database of opted in research participants to over 1,000
  • Yes Done — Reader behavior design research - ethnography and several other iterative research studies to learn more about reader behavior
  • Yes Done — Support the Editing team in determining MVP for Visual Editor and providing needed evaluative and generative research to support this quarter's goals
  • Yes Done — Support the Flow team with needed evaluative and generative research to support this quarter's goals
  • In progress In progress — Make decision on software for State of the User (REFLEX), work with platform, and ops to get initial small scale test environment running
  • N Postponed — Publish State of the User Report (REFLEX)' in conjunction with Product and Analytics
  • N Postponed — Finalize plan for Research Internship Program
Apr–Jun 2015
ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
Evaluate the usability and user experience of editing tasks for VE launch.

This will also be a start to REFLEX : user segment based tasks to evaluate effects of changes to products and services on users over time.

Run 100 readers through reader task set OPS/Labs team for REFLEX hosting June 2015In progress In progress
Run 25 editors through editor task set
Product and Analytics support for State of the User Report

    Services

    Goalsetting process owner: Gabriel Wicke

    The team's focus is on modularizing our technical infrastructure and enabling other teams by developing internal services and a high-performance external REST API.

    Quarter

    Goals

    Jul–Sep 2014
    • Implement first iteration of REST API front-end (restface)
      • Alpha deploy to api.wikimedia.org
      • Simple proof of concept implementation of page metadata end point for Parsoid HTML views (redlinks etc)
    • PDF render service deployment
    • First iteration on Rashomon storage service (with versioned blob and queue buckets & 'lame' auth)
      • Deploy & start using it with Parsoid
      • Wrap HTML load/save in restface
    • Citation service
    • Mathoid deploy
    • HTML templating: documentation, in particular KnockOff compiler & PHP implementation
      • Iterate once we have feedback from users & think more about use for content & messages
    Oct–Dec 2014
    • Security: Design & implement more intelligent security architecture / authentication solution
    • Efficient page metadata end point for Parsoid HTML page views (redlinks etc)
    • Set up proper Varnish caching and purging for API (w/ help from ops)
    • Packaging / deployment -- Make debian/ubuntu packages for frontend / pdf / rashomon
    • Structured API documentation -- set up frontend
    • Help other teams like Mobile use page-related storage & build data extraction services
    Jan–Mar 2015
    • Yes Done RESTBase deployment: T89481
    • Yes Done VE speed-up: Reduction of HTML size, API speed-up, possibly save improvements (T89066)
    • In progress In progress Stretch goal: Prototype section editing API (T87556)
    Apr–Jun 2015
    Objective Key result Dependency ETA Status
    Speed up VisualEditor & enable fast sub-page editing
    • Provide a HTML section edit and save API
    • Reduce section HTML load time by at least 20%
    • Reduce compressed HTML size to within 10% of PHP output (with Parsoid team)
    • Parsoid team
    • Editing team
    • Operations team
    		 June 2015 In progress In progress

    Also see our Apr–Jun 2015 roadmap on phabricator.

    Analytics

    Goalsetting process owner: Kevin Leduc

    QuarterGoals
    Jul–Sep 2014

    Implement a dashboard to visualize key metrics defined by the research team and usable by product teams to drive goals and instrumentation.

    • Metrics: the Editor Model, and number of daily {Active Editors, Edits and Pages Created}
    • Broken down by all 882 projects and target site (desktop website, mobile website, apps)
    • With a default view showing the Rolling Monthly Active Editors for the top 7 wikis.
    • Teams immediately benefiting: Growth, Mobile, VE, Multimedia

    Stretch Goals

    Add the following metrics to the dashboards (broken down by 882 projects and target site):

    • Page Views
    • Unique Visitors (depends on introducing client side tokens, reviewing the privacy implications and ensuring un-sampled data in Hadoop can be relied upon for counting uniques)
    Oct–Dec 2014
    Fill out Vital Signs
    • PageViews & PageViews broken down by target site
    • Implement Breakdowns for existing metrics
    Investigate Open Source BI tool
    Grantmaking
    • User can expand uploaded cohorts to include users across all wikis
    • User can delete a member of a cohort
    • User can tag a cohort with pre-defined tags
    • User can list cohorts from an existing tag
    EventLogging
    • Identify and direct the purging of raw logs older than 90 days (executed by ops)
    • Identify and direct the purging of rows older than 90 days (executed by sean and ops with input from product)
    • Work with product teams who need to keep some data longer than 90 days to comply with the privacy policy

    Goals are dependent on Tech Ops work on EventLogging and standing up a data warehouse

    Jan–Mar 2015

    For the Editing Team, collect and continually visualize key metrics including but not limited to:

    • initialization time and save time (perceived and actual)
    • edit funnel from start of an edit action to successful save
      • save rates, abort rates, error rates
      • across experiences: mobile, desktop, wikitext, VE
    • Prioritization of metrics will be driven by VisualEditor success criteria
    • Provide ad-hoc support as needed to VE team

    Develop a prototype report and visualization on Unique Clients per project per day and month.

    Goal is dependent on community engagement, engineering design and Mediawiki work.

    Apr–Jun 2015
    ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
    Provide metrics, a dashboard and ad-hoc support for Editing TeamThe dashboard for Editing is used over time (measured in Pageviews for the dashboard)Editing TeamEnd of Q4In progress In progress

    Interdependencies:

    Technical Operations: we work closely with operations, particularly on the Hadoop buildout
    Research and Data: we depend on this team to provide definitions for metrics we need to collect and graph
    Foundation: we need input from our many stakeholders to ensure we are producing the correct data and research
    Design: we need design to help us build useful interfaces to our data

    Research and Data

    Goalsetting process owner: Dario Taraborelli

    Full description: Analytics/Research and Data/2014-15 Goals

    QuarterGoals
    Jul–Sep 2014
    Primary goal - standardize baseline metrics
    Secondary goals
    • topical research:
      • anonymous acquisition (Growth)
      • mobile app adoption/traffic and participation trends (Mobile);
      • predictive models of editor activation/survival
    • uplevel R&D process

    Includes consulting support as priorities allow

    Oct–Dec 2014
    Strategy
    • Continue monitor and refine R&D process
    Participation
    • All metric definitions for participation implemented in Vital Signs; high-level production metrics (beyond AE)
    • notification/activation experiments (Growth); microcontributions research (Mobile)
    Readership
    • F/T traffic research analyst on-board
    • Readership metrics integrated in Vital Signs
    • Publish and socialize aggregate/anonymized traffic data
    Content
    • Recommender systems

    Includes consulting support as priorities allow

    Jan–Mar 2015
    Services
    • Prototype revscoring service
    • Prototype other services to support mobile products (stretch)
    Reporting pipeline
    • Finalize Unique Clients implementation requirements
    • Support the Dev team with the productization of Page Views reports
    • Continued responsibility for ad hoc traffic analysis and reports
    Mobile
    • Continue research support to WikiGrok and microcontributions
    • Research support for Project Gather (aka Collections)
    Fundraising
    • Develop method for A/B testing with sampled data (stretch)
    • Develop proposal to run FR as a minimization problem
    Formal collaborations
    Process
    • Continue work with Team Practices on team process and iterations

    Includes consulting support as priorities allow

    Apr–Jun 2015
    ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
    Design a series of controlled tests and analyze them in order to support the Editing team in preparing for a successful launch of Visual EditorProvide guidance to the Editing team based on these tests to help them decide if the software meets the requirements to shipEditing Team, Analytics Engineering, Community LiaisonsEnd of Q4Yes Done

    Interdependencies:

    Technical Operations: we work closely with operations to support our databases
    Analytics: we depend on this team to build out collection and visualization systems for key metrics
    Product: we need to be closely aligned with product so we can support new initiatives with research and data
    Foundation: we need input from our many stakeholders to ensure we are producing the correct data and research

    Fundraising Engineering

    Goalsetting process owner: Anne Gomez

    Goals
    Jul–Sep 2014
    • New integration work
      • Support Credit Card donations in France Incomplete Partially done
      • Support the use of one-time virtual credit cards N Not done
      • Accept bitcoin Yes Done
    • Known Maintenance tasks
      • Global Collect changes for SEPA compliance [ABANDONED] N Not done
      • Upgrade currency conversion API N Not done
    • Improvements to the mobile donation experience Incomplete Partially done
    • Civi - continuous integration testing, reporting improvements Incomplete Partially done
    • Launch internal dashboard N Not done
    Oct–Dec 2014
    • New integration work (carry-over from Q1)
      • Support Credit Card donations in France Yes Done
      • Support the use of one-time virtual credit cards N Not done
    • Known Maintenance tasks
      • Support new WX format for nightly audit files before the old format goes away Incomplete Partially done
      • Make changes to not retry some rejection codes Yes Done
      • Upgrade currency conversion system to new API Yes Done
    • Launch internal dashboard Yes Done
    • Add functionality to internal monitoring dashboard that helps A/B testing N Not done
    • Preparation for Big English fundraiser Yes Done
    • Improvements to the mobile donation experience Yes Done
    • Big English fundraiser Yes Done
    • Test the effectiveness of credit card processors against each other. Yes Done
    • Civi - dedupe continuation Incomplete Partially done
    Jan–Mar 2015
    • PCI compliance gap assessment In progress In progress
    • New Payment Methods / Integrations
      • New payment method to improve donor experience in China Yes Done
      • Start new integration to improve donor experience in Latin America (to be finished and used in Apr-Jun)
    • Known Maintenance tasks
      • Support new WX format for nightly audit files before the old format goes away In progress In progress
      • Civicrm upgrade In progress In progress
      • Ongoing code hygiene improvements in DonationInterface whenever possible Yes Done
    • Reporting Improvements
      • Custom Civicrm reporting improvements (to be upstreamed)
      • Add functionality to internal monitoring dashboard that helps A/B testing
    Apr–Jun 2015
    ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
    Expand reach of fundraising capability to new donors and provide better experience for existing donors in Latin America New payment processor integration with key metrics:
    • Can process donations from Latin American cards/accounts (Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Uruguay, Argentina)
    • Donation information (including donations, refunds, and chargebacks) appears in CiviCRM through realtime and nightly audit as appropriate
    • The new payment processing entity
    • Fundraising (not-tech) to actually run tests/campaign
    		 Ready to test June 1, 2015
    Campaign run in June 2015    		 N Not done Goal was redefined to just Brazilian Credit Cards and met. Other payment methods & live processing at volume will come early in Q1

    Interdependencies:

    Wikipedia Zero

    Goalsetting process owner: Carolynne Schloeder

    QuarterGoals
    Jul–Sep 2014
    • Launch of portal MVP (full editing of partner configuration - no code)
    • Run second SMS pilot
    • Make Android available for preload through QRD [internal dependencies]
    • Migrate half the partners to IP whitelisting
    • Hire and ramp up new engineer
    • Hire and ramp up two partner managers
    • Grow to 75M free page views per month (current: 65M)
    Oct–Dec 2014
    • Portal: full partner editing with stage-gate approval of tech configuration
    • CRM in use [Ops dependency]
    • Improve usability on non-javascript [internal dependencies]
    • Achieve page weight reduction for Wikipedia Zero [internal dependencies]
    • Expand Android preloads - one new OEM deal
    • Migrate remaining partners to IP whitelisting
    • Grow to 90M free page views per month
    Jan–Mar 2015
    • Develop a go-to-market strategy to reach underserved market segments in a deep dive country.
    • Complete preparation for https default, including partner notices, IP migration and banner messaging.
    • Add "free data" banners to www.wikipedia.org and other high traffic projects.
    • Complete portal phase 1, including analytics.
    • Grow to 90M free page views per month.
    • Ship Android preload.
    • Foreshadow coalition in policy & community conversations.
      • develop criteria for stakeholders
      • put together a list of 43 stakeholders
        • identify and reach out to high priority
      • ask supportive community members to identify local partners
      • develop preliminary communication materials: talking points and overview on office wiki
    Apr–Jun 2015

    Moving to Partnerships team

    Interdependencies:

    Community Engagement (Product)

    Goalsetting process owner: Rachel diCerbo

    • The Community Liaisons team, as of February, reports into the broader Community Engagement Dept. Team name change is pending.
    QuarterGoals
    Jul–Sep 2014
    • Yes Done Finalize team charter and N Not done operating model (dependent on evolving Product process)
    • Yes Done Develop work prioritization and initial allocation
    • Yes Done Development of standardized job descriptions
    • Yes Done Make public page for the team
    • N Postponed Develop communication strategies for engaging community in product development (This is ongoing and evolving)
    • Yes Done Create and implement plans for SUL finalisation and current Flow development
    Oct–Dec 2014
    • In progress In progress Implement SUL communications
    • N Not done Hiring of additional team member/s
    • In progress In progress Develop communication strategies for engaging community in product development (This is ongoing and evolving)
    • Yes Done Choose and test a product roadmap survey with communities
    Jan–Mar 2015
    • In progress In progress Integrating community engagement process to ensure collaboration in product development process
    • Yes Done Supporting strategy consultation
    • N Not done/Postponed Absorbing m:Tech/News into team workflow
    • Yes Done SUL communications through April 15
    Apr–Jun 2015
    ObjectiveKey resultDependencyETAStatus
    To support communities and product team in discussion about when and how VisualEditor is launchedVisualEditor is prepared to launch with confidence from community and product team perspectives
    • Collaboration/Communication with communities
    • VE's ongoing development
    • Results from user research
    		 Ongoing; Timeline dependent on results collaborative efforts In progress In progress

    Interdependencies:

    • Product Teams which we are already collaborating with will be supported through their life cycle
    • Mobile development will be supported as the year progresses; exact dates TBD

    Team Practices Group

    Goalsetting process owner: Arthur Richards

    Annual goals:

    1. Facilitate the achievement of 80% of the goals by teams receiving dedicated resourcing and/or undergoing multi-day workshops with the Team Practices Group
    2. Establish a mechanism to transparently and iteratively measure engineering team health

    Ongoing work across all quarters: support teams in process/practice improvements, driven by health-check survey results. See also the Complete list of work for the Team Practices Group.

    The success of this team will be determined by the success of the teams that leverage TPG's services. A guiding belief of TPG is that healthy teams build better products. It is the TPG's assumption that by supporting WMF engineering teams in becoming healthier and more sustainable, WMF engineering will be more successful as a whole. In addition to qualitative feedback, we can measure the TPG's impact by the success achieved by the individual teams engaged with the TPG - as measured by those teams meeting, or coming close to meeting, their goals. Further, the TPG can begin to validate its assumptions about team health impacting sustainability and product quality by first establishing a mechanism to measure and evaluate engineering team health.

    QuarterGoals
    Jul–Sep 2014
    • Hire 1 scrummaster to work with the Mobile Web and Mobile Apps teams Yes Done
    • Design a health-check survey Yes Done
    • Deliver health-check survey to Mobile Web, Mobile Apps, Mediawiki Core, Analytics Engineering, and Analytics Research teams Yes Done
    Oct–Dec 2014
    • Hire 1 coach to serve as scrummaster for the Analytics Engineering team and provide coaching for the Analytics Research team Yes Done
    • Publish Q1 health-check survey results Yes Done
    • Iterate on and deliver updated health-check survey to Mobile Web, Mobile Apps, Mediawiki Core, Analytics Engineering, and Analytics Research, Fundraising, Release Engineering, Core Features, Language Yes Done
    • Conduct a structured team practices workshop with the Mediawiki Core team Yes Done
    Jan–Mar 2015
    • Hire an additional TPG resource to work with the MediaWiki Core team Yes Done
    • Publish Q2 health-check survey results Yes Done
    • Iterate on and deliver updated health-check survey to same teams as q2 plus additional subset (Editing, Community Liaisons) In progress In progress
    • Conduct one structured team practices workshop (Release Engineering and/or Fundraising)
    • Provide dedicated TPG support to the Editing team. In progress In progress
    Apr–Jun 2015

    Note: the below is subject to change prior to the start of Q4 pending team discussions

    Objective Key result Dependency ETA Status
    Develop repeatable best-practices for WMF engineering teams List of practices defined by editing team and stakeholders that directly supported release of VisualEditor in Q4.
    • Editing team
    • Community Liaisons
    • Analytics
    • Design
    • Pasoid team
    • RelEng
    		 end of June, 2015 In progress In progress

    Strategic Research

    Goalsetting process owner: Tilman Bayer / Erik Moeller

    QuarterGoals
    Apr–Jun 2015Note: This team was dissolved at the end of April, with its members and tasks being absorbed into other teams. With this qualification for the objective, we will still make an assessment at the end of the quarter on whether it was a success or miss.
    Objective Key result Dependency ETA Status
    Support VisualEditor rollout with research and analyses Significantly contribute to the Editing team's work in avoiding or fixing problems in VisualEditor, and support communications by e.g. the Community Engagement and Communications teams regarding VisualEditor, including:
    • Run weekly tally of VE edits, e.g. to provide insight into how the frequency of problematic edits develops
    • Provide quantitative community analytics on VE users as needed
    • Provide qualitative analysis of VE usage, characterizing usage by 20 or more accounts, e.g. to support communications about VE
    		 Editing team Depending on rollout timeline Yes Done

    Former teams

    Editor Engagement – Growth

    The Growth team was merged into the Mobile Web and Collaboration teams, respectively, in fall 2014. The growth team goals for the current fiscal year are obsolete.

    Goalsetting process owner: Steven Walling

    QuarterGoals
    Jul–Sep 2014Anonymous editor signup invitations and basic signup workflow improvements released on desktop version of all top 10 Wikipedias or more. Stretch goal: collaboration with Mobile Web and Apps teams on mobile versions.
    Oct–Dec 2014Personalized task suggestions and notifications for new editors released as default on Wikipedias where onboarding (GettingStarted and GuidedTour) is present. Stretch goal: task suggestions and notification aimed at very active editors (100+ edits/month).
    Jan–Mar 2015Product roadmap for Q3 and Q4 to be determined based on mid-year targets data.
    Apr–Jun 2015End of year targets: by June 2015, we aim to have gained at least one of the following...
    1. Acquisition: we will increase (compared to a control) new registrations across Wikimedia projects by 23%.
    2. Activation: we will increase (compared to a control) the rate at which new registrations become active editors (5+ content edits/month) by 23%.
    3. Retention: we will increase (compared to a control) the survival rate of active editors on Wikimedia projects by 87%.

    Individually, any of these conversion rate increases will lead to a full reversal of the year-over-year decline in total active editors. If all three targets are addressed, only a 7.6% increase in acquisition and activation are required, along with a 29% increase in retention.

    More details at: Growth/2014-15 Goals

    Interdependencies:

    • Research & Data and User Experience: Both of these teams are core dependencies for Growth. Currently, the Research and Data embeds a full-time research scientist (Aaron Halfaker), and in order to support continued A/B testing capacity this will continue to be a key need on the team. Additionally, User Experience embeds a primary and secondary design on the team (currently Moiz Syed and Kaity Hammerstein).
    • Analytics: First and foremost, Growth depends on Analytics development for continued support of EventLogging, Wikimetrics, and analytics slave databases. In addition, Growth plans to use planned data products built by Analytics, such as an interest graph, to better attract new editors.
    • Community Engagement (Product): The Community Engagement group did not provide support for Growth during the 2013–14 fiscal year. We think providing some form of dedicated community liason will be critical if the team is to tackle more contentious areas of the user experience, such as article creation. Currently Product (Steven Walling) is filling this role on an as-needed basis, which puts the team primarily in a reactive mode, rather than having a proactive outreach plan.
    • Team Practices Group: The Growth team is small but is relatively inexperienced with Agile practices, and the new team practices group could provide extremely valuable support. Growth has implemented some Scrum practices, but its capacity for process improvement is limited since the team has never had a dedicated scrum master.
    • Mobile Web: There is close alignment this coming year with the goals of the Mobile Web team and Growth. Mobile wants to spread its knowledge about mobile-first product development and engineering, while Growth wants to help develop mobile versions of its products.
    • Mobile Apps: As we introduce login, editing, and other contributory workflows to our native apps, Growth should work closely with the Apps team to make sure there is consistent experience, discover ways to integrate its findings in to the apps, and consider methods for attracting apps users to desktop products.
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