User:APaskulin (WMF)/Sandbox/Decisions/Forum
The Technical Forum serves as a body to connect teams to stakeholders with the WMF, affiliates and volunteer community in order to make sound technical decisions.
Forum Chairs
[edit]The forum has two co-chairs which lead, facilitate and administer the Forum. One representing the Technology Department and the other representing the Product Department.
| Department | Chair |
|---|---|
| Product | TBD |
| Technology | Moriel Schottlender |
Forum Members
[edit]The Technical Forum is composed of representatives from different Wikimedia Teams, Affiliates, and Volunteer groups. Members can be engineers, Project Managers, Engineering Managers, Technical Writers, Product Managers, etc…. We actively encourage groups to not just select their most knowledgeable people in order to make space for new voices and gaining experience.
The primary responsibilities of Forum Members are:
- Review and provide decision documents.
- Circulate decision documents information to their teams and act as a point of contact for the Forum to interface with their team.
Note that Forum Members can provide feedback in 2 different ways: Give feedback themselves, Circulate documents within their own team and aggregate feedback, or delegate to other team members to provide feedback. Teams can decide amongst themselves how to best provide feedback.
| Team | Responsibility for representative selection | Department | Forum representative |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Wikipedia | Adam Baso | Product | James Forrester |
| Anti-Harassment | Aida Ramirez | Product | Sam Smith (filling in Thalia Chan) |
| Community Tech | Lauren de Lench | Product | Leon Ziemba |
| Campaigns - Pilot | Lauren de Lench | Product | TBH |
| Editing | Leza Zaman | Product | Bartosz Dziewoński |
| Design Systems Team | Leza Zaman | Product | Roan Kattouw |
| Growth | Max Binder | Product | Gergo Tisza |
| Mobile Apps | Lani Goto | Product | Sharvani Haran |
| Structured Data | Carly Bogen | Product | Matthias Mullie |
| Web | Lani Goto | Product | Clare Ming |
| Content Transformers | Yiannis Giannelos | Product | Yiannis Giannelos |
| Language | Product | Niklas Laxstrom (Sub Abijeet Patro) | |
| Inuka | Product | Stephane Bisson | |
| Product Analytics | Lauren de Lench | Product | Jennifer Wang |
| Library | Aida Ramirez | Product | Susana Cárdenas Molinar |
| Analytics Engineering/Data Engineering | Mat Nadrofsky | Technology | Andrew Otto |
| Platform Engineering | Mat Nadrofsky | Technology/Platform Engineering | Dr. Cindy Cicalese |
| Architecture | Kate Chapman | Technology | Moriel Schottlender |
| Performance | Dave Pifke | Technology | Gilles Dubuc |
| Release Engineering | Greg Grossmeier | Technology | Tyler Cipriani |
| Quality and Test Engineering | Greg Grossmeier | Technology | Jean-Rene Branaa |
| Fundraising Tech | Dylan Kozlowski | Technology | Dylan Kozlowski |
| Machine Learning | Chris Albon | Technology | Chris Albon |
| Search Platform | Carly Bogen | Technology | Zbyszko Papierski |
| Security | John Bennett | Technology | Scott Bassett |
| Research | Leila Zia | Technology | Martin Gerlach |
| Data Center Operations | Faidon Liambotis | Technology | Chris Danis |
| Data Persistence | Mark Bergsma | Technology | Manuel Arostegui |
| Infrastructure Foundations | Faidon Liambotis | Technology | Chris Danis |
| Observability | Faidon Liambotis | Technology | Cole White |
| Service Operations | Mark Bergsma | Technology | Giuseppe Lavagetto |
| Traffic | Mark Bergsma | Technology | |
| Trust and Safety Tools | Aida Ramirez | Product | Joaquin Oltra Hernandez |
| Developer Advocacy | Birgit Mueller | Technology | Bryan Davis |
| Wikimedia Cloud Services | Birgit Mueller | Technology | Bryan Davis |
| Affiliate | Responsibility for representative selection | Forum representative |
|---|---|---|
| WMDE Technical Wishes | Tobi Gritschacher | Thiemo Kreuz |
| WMDE Wikibase | Conny Kawohl | Conny Kawohl |
| WMDE Wikidata | Kara Payne | Kara Payne |
| Volunteer group | Responsibility for representative selection | Forum representative |
|---|---|---|
| TBD |
(Areas for representation TBD)
Logistics
[edit]| What the forum does | What the forum doesn't do |
|---|---|
| Empower teams to make decisions that are informed by experts from around the organization | Make decisions on behalf of teams or blocks teams from making decisions |
| Provides feedback to teams on their problem statements and solutions | Develops technical designs or solutions |
| Creates a touch point for stakeholders, subject matter experts and development teams to discuss larger technical decisions | Create an alternate process to approve technical decisions outside of existing development processes |
Individual responsibilities and time commitments
[edit]Chairs
[edit]2-4 hours per week
Turnaround times: 24 hours for questions, 1 week for document review and feedback
- Lead Technical Forum meetings
- Provide advice and council on following the process, using templates, and good decision making practices, within 24 hours
- Respond to questions from Decision Teams, within 24 hours
- Escalate decisions to the CPO and CTO as appropriate
- Run retrospectives and update processes, templates and documentation
- Schedule meetings and office hours
Members
[edit]0-2 hours per week
Turnaround times: 48 hours for questions, 1 week for document review and feedback
- Asynchronously review Problem Statements from teams and provide feedback
- Connect Decision Teams to Subject matter experts (SMEs) on their teams/groups
- Distribute Decision Records within their team for review
- Respond to questions from Decision teams - on Slack or email
Selection and rotation
[edit]Chairs
[edit]Chairs are appointed by the Wikimedia Foundation CTO and CPO respectively and rotated on a quarterly basis.
Wikimedia Foundation Teams
[edit]- Each team appoints a representative in the Technical Forum and teams can change their representative at any time.
- Teams do not need to have their own representative, but instead can share representatives with multiple teams. For example: SRE may decide to have less people represent their teams than the number of the individual teams. As teams change or as we grow, updates will be made accordingly.
- Teams are expected to plan for coverage during vacations and other types of leave in the forum.
Affiliates
[edit]- Each affiliate appoints a representative in the Technical Forum and teams can change their representative at any time.
- Teams do not need to have a representative, but instead can share representatives. For example SRE may decide to have less people represent their teams than all of the individual teams. As teams change or as we grow, updates will be made accordingly.
- Affiliates are expected to plan for coverage during vacations and other types of leave in the forum.
- The Technical Decision Forum will include representatives from the Wikimedia community who will review the proposals brought to the forum.