On Wed, Nov 7, 2012 at 2:16 PM, Platonides <[email protected]> wrote: > On 07/11/12 22:21, Federico Leva (Nemo) wrote: >> Terry Chay, 07/11/2012 21:04: >>>> You aren't the only one. It turns out we use a lot of industry >>>> terminology, without realizing that we are poorly communicating what >>>> that means to most people. [...] >>>> First of all, this will help greatly to the others (you already >>>> read it): <http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Staff_and_contractors>. >> >> Thanks for your explanation but personally I'm more confused than before >> about the difference between Engineering and Product, also because the >> terminology didn't appear internally consistent. :-) > > I feel like you, Nemo. I am glad by Terry explanation, but as I went on > reading it, the less I felt I understood it. It would benefit from a > more layman explanation. Maybe it's just complex to everybody. > > >> So, to keep it simple, that page has: >> >> 2 Engineering and Product Development >> 2.1 Platform >> 2.2 Features >> 2.3 Technical Operations >> 2.4 Mobile and Special Projects >> 2.5 Language >> 2.6 Product >> >> and as first approximation "Product" would be something like 2.2+2.6 and >> "Engineering" something like 2.1+2.3, with 2.4 and 2.5 aside? > > I thought that 2.4 (Mobile) would also be Product. > > > >>>> [...] On the "Engineering" side, there exists an amalgam of >>>> specific focused groups with their own directors. The focused groups >>>> are: Language (formerly "i18n and Experimentation", >>>> internationalization/localization/globalization is a cross-cutting >>>> concern), and Mobile (formerly, "Mobile and Special Projects: the >>>> mobile web, the mobile app, also including Wikipedia Zero). The >>>> "area" focused ones are: Operations (keeping the lights on), Platform >>>> (keeping the code working) and Features (ostensibly new features). [...] >> >> What you call the Engineering side here, at a first glance, could seem >> product development, and in fact those two "focused groups" currently >> have some members which are under 2.6 (Product). Surely the same happens >> for the other areas you mentioned. > > > You can see several teams in that page, with members from multiple > "sections". Which leads to the (naive?) question on what's the purpose > of being splitted in those sections if then the work is done in teams > with a completely different organization. > > > After staring for a while to [[Staff and contractors]] and trying to > match people with its work, my only conclusion is that I don't know what > most employees do. > It often (not always) helps to click through to the employee's user page and read the "My work" section there. Earlier this year, Gayle harassed us all a lot to put something informative there ;)
-- Tilman Bayer Senior Operations Analyst (Movement Communications) Wikimedia Foundation IRC (Freenode): HaeB _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
