Hi Erik, Many factors of this redesign of reporting make sense to me. However I'd like to ask that some useful info from the monthly reports continue on a monthly basis if possible because their timeliness is valuable. Here are some topics that come to my mind for a possible lighter-weight monthly report, and other people may have their own topics to add:
*HR arrivals/departures *C-level and D-level staff changes *Financial spend YTD vs. plan *Fundraising totals YTD vs. plan *Official office visitiors *Pageviews, with breakout for mobile *Active editors *Unique viewers (with breakout by method of estimation such as Comscore vs. internal, and whether mobiles are included) *New accounts created *New active editors *File uploads to Commons *Wikipedia new articles created *DCMA requests and other takedown, censorship, or defense of contributors actions *Litigation status updates *Significant security or reliability problems and responses, such as with Heartbleed *Major infrastructure commissionings or decommissionings such as with data centers *Major feature rollouts or rollbacks *Major stories for Comms *Grantmaking FDC announcements *Creation or revocation of chapters *New projects commissioned such as Wikivoyage I believe that I learned through a monthly report some time ago that a surprisingly large percentage of fundraising revenue was being lost to bank fees, and I asked if this could be addressed, which it was. This kind of benefit from report analysis may be more difficult to achieve in a timely manner with quarterly reports. However, I hope that it will be possible to design lighter-weight monthly reports about the subjects above where timeliness is valuable, and create well-designed and thorough quarterly reports as you described that facilitate deep dives into data and team quarterly reviews, especially around strategic priorities. Thanks, Pine On Nov 5, 2014 10:58 PM, "Erik Moeller" <e...@wikimedia.org> wrote: > Hi all -- > > Starting this month, WMF will be shifting its organization-wide > reports from a monthly to a quarterly cadence. This reflects our > growth as an organization, and is intended to make important > developments more visible internally and externally. > > == Background == > > Shortly after Sue became WMF’s Executive Director, she started giving > updates to the Board of Trustees about her work. These reports were > compiled for accountability purposes, and not without some > trepidation, Sue started sharing them publicly in January 2008. [1] > The reports have grown in scope and depth alongside the organization. > > Where we think we can do better is in the following areas: > > - We've not defined the threshold for report-worthy work clearly > enough, so work that represents a few person hours’ effort could get > more space than a whole team’s work over the course of the quarter; > > - We've not consistently mapped reporting against organizational > priorities; > > - We’re not presenting a strategic view on what we’re learning, where > we’re changing direction and why; > > - We’re not helping users of the reports consistently discover > quarterly review minutes, slides and other materials related to a > specific area, in part due to the reports not being aligned with the > quarterly rhythm. > > In addition, given the dependency on an increasing multitude of inputs > (from across an organization that had fewer than 20 staff when these > monthly reports were launched, and now has more than 200), the reports > have increasingly gotten backlogged, to the point that we’re just now > releasing the August report. > > At the same time, under Lila the organization has shifted into a > recognizable quarterly rhythm. Priorities are defined quarterly, and > reviews are being introduced following the end of each quarter for all > significantly staffed projects. > > == A New Reporting Process == > > It’s come time for us to revisit the model we use for reporting, to > clearly define the purpose/audience for these report, and to iterate > on the monthly format. > > Purpose: The purpose of this report is accountability and learning > within the movement. The report is not a storytelling tool. Any > evaluation will be done with these objectives in mind. > > Audience: Its audience is chiefly internal, including community > members, WMF staff, and interested donors/funders. > > Format: Effective immediately, we are shifting to a quarterly > reporting format. This will impact our reporting, and the October > through December reporting period, in the following ways: > > - Instead of three monthly reports for October, November, and > December, we will publish our first quarterly report in February 2015. > > - We are reviewing the key organization-wide metrics and will improve > the selection and presentation of numbers at the top level of the > quarterly report. > > - We will closely align quarterly reports with quarterly reviews, and > re-use high level findings from the quarterly reviews, while referring > to the slide decks and minutes from the reviews for details. > > - We will aim to provide high-level synthesis and lessons learned, as > well as strategy updates, through this format as well. > > Many of the more granular updates in the monthly report will no longer > be reported. > > As above, the deadline for publication of the first report, covering > October 1 - December 31, is February 15. For this first report, we are > being conservative with regard to the deadline, as we will have our > resources directed at our staff all-hands and developer summit in > January. > > Tilman and I will begin creating a draft structure for this new report > in coming weeks, and will do so in public from the get-go. We will > also rethink the “Wikimedia Highlights” alongside other multilingual > movements news formats, likely detaching them from reporting > functions. > > Out of scope of this effort for now: > > - Providing more timely updates on initiatives with high user impact. > We’re continuing to provide updates to Tech News [2] and similar > newsletters, but we’re not currently doing a major overhaul here. > > - Replacing the monthly engineering report and its inputs, which also > serve as a project status dashboard. [3] > > We are of course discussing how to improve on those mechanisms, and > feedback is welcome. > > Let me know if you have any immediate questions or thoughts. > > Thanks, > > Erik > > [1] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2008-January/084883.html > [2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tech/News > [3] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/Dashboard > -- > Erik Möller > VP of Product & Strategy, Wikimedia Foundation > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: > https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines > Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org > Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, > <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe> _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-requ...@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>
