Thanks Gergő. I think that what I am seeking occupies a middle ground
between Tech News and and the quarterly check-ins. Quarterly check-ins can
have lengthy slide decks which are wonderfully detailed but require
considerable time to read. Tech news is less comprehensive than the type of
resource that I am seeking. The Discovery / Search Platform newsletters are
great but they are also more detailed than I need on a per-team basis.

I'll use some vocabulary from baseball in trying to describe the info that
I would like to see from each Audiences and Technology team each week:

LAST PLAY: activities that were completed last week, such as "We completed
planning of deployment for desktop beta of Wikistats 2.1. Hiring of new dev
and DBA was finalized; their first day of work is two weeks out. Fixed a
regression that caused an unplanned failover (Phabricator task link here);
service is back to normal."

AT BAT: highlights of current activities that are happening prior to the
release of the next weekly update, such as "This week we are deploying the
desktop beta of Wikistats 2.1 (Phabricator task link here) and we are
working with Research to improve API documentation. Work on the incident
report for last week's unplanned failover (link to document here) is
continuing."

ON DECK: activities that are planned for the next 1 to 2 weeks after the
completion of the "at bat" activities, such as "Survey of needs for API
users is in final design and awaiting sign-offs (Phabricator task link
here); staff onboarding for new dev and DBA; IRC office hour to discuss the
beta desktop Wikistats 2.1".

IN THE HOLE: highlights of activities that are 2 to 6 weeks away. Such as
"Budget planning associated with Annual Planning; early design of the
mobile interface for Wikistats 2.1 (Phabricator task link here); planning
of documentation (Phabricator task link here) and test methodology (Phabricator
task link here) for mobile Wikistats 2.1; staff cross-training".

My guess is that there are routine internal meetings where this information
is discussed. I would like for information at approximately this level of
detail to be published, with allowance for redactions of security and
privacy sensitive information.

Is there interest from others in publishing or reading information like
this? My guess is that other people might also benefit from reports like
these, including people at WMF who might want to know what other teams are
doing, but if no one else is interested then I'll try to go along with the
status quo.

Pine
( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )


On Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 8:04 PM Gergő Tisza <gti...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 11:29 AM Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > [...] Are there any upcoming plans for systematic
> > study or development of WMF-to-public communications processes from
> > Audiences and Technology?
> >
>
> Not quite the same thing, but touches on communication:
>
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Growth_and_diversity_of_Technology_team_audiences
>
> There are a couple existing ways to learn about new developments, though.
> There is Tech News (focused on immediate user-facing changes), quarterly
> department checkins (focused on the big picture and progress of annual plan
> goals and other large projects), most teams have a monthly or sometimes
> weekly newsletter and/or on-wiki updates page, there are some regular
> showcases (research and more recently language), and people write blog
> posts about larger or more interesting developments on Phabricator and the
> WMF blog. (The discoverability of all of these things could certainly be
> improved.) And if you are sufficiently interested in a specific team, team
> Phabricator boards are public.
>
> On Fri, Jan 11, 2019 at 11:29 AM Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Fri, Jan 11, 2019, 9:31 AM Dan Garry (Deskana) <djgw...@gmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> > > On Wed, 9 Jan 2019 at 20:25, Pine W <wiki.p...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > I would like to request that every Audiences and Technology team
> submit
> > > > highlights of recent and upcoming activities for inclusion in every
> set
> > > of
> > > > SoS notes, even if no one personally attends the SoS meeting from a
> > > > particular team, so that readers of these notes can keep better track
> > of
> > > > what is happening in the Audiences and Technology departments and so
> > that
> > > > readers can make adjustments to our own plans as needed.
> > >
> > >
> > > Scrum of scrums meetings are intended to be a venue for development
> teams
> > > to surface upcoming blockers and dependencies on other teams, so that
> > teams
> > > can better work together and not block each other. Scrum of scrums
> > meetings
> > > are not intended to be a forum for general announcements about
> activities
> > > by end-users. These are very different use cases with different target
> > > audiences.
> > >
> > > I understand your concerns about visibility of the actions inside the
> > > Wikimedia Foundation. It's certainly difficult to see things from the
> > > outside. That said, taking a meeting with a well-defined purpose and
> > > objective, and expanding that objective to add an additional, quite
> > > different use case, is not good practice; doing so may cause people to
> > > disengage or lose focus, thereby meaning the original objective of the
> > > meeting is no longer met.
> > >
> > > Some reading you might find useful:
> > >
> > >    - https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/scrum-of-scrums/
> > >    - https://www.scruminc.com/scrum-of-scrums/
> > >
> > > Dan
> >
> >
> >
> > Hi Dan,
> >
> > That is helpful. Perhaps the info I am seeking would be better
> communicated
> > in a different way. I am reluctant to request a new communications
> process
> > that would require nontrivial effort to start and to maintain if I am the
> > only one who is interested. Are there any upcoming plans for systematic
> > study or development of WMF-to-public communications processes from
> > Audiences and Technology? If so, perhaps I could have a conversation with
> > whomever will work on that communications effort.
> >
> > Pine
> > ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
> >
> > >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Wikitech-l mailing list
> > Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org
> > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
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