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Wikimedia Discovery/Meetings/Analysis retrospective 2016-07-07

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Format

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This retrospective was conducted using the "Five finger retrospective" format.

Action Items from last month

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  • Dan: Circulate a specific plan for handling hiring while Dan is out
    • Yes Done by proxy

What happened since the last retro (May 31)

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  • Wikimania
  • Texcat a/b/ test data analysis
  • language dropdown a/b test data analysis
  • YO WE ARE GETTING A NEW ANALYST \o/+1
  • Mikhail went to his first professional conference and represented Discovery/Analysis
  • Legal requested and received analytic assistance from Mikhail
  • Mikhail released a public version of the BCDA R package and has made significant updates to it https://github.com/bearloga/BCDA
  • Deb is officially the product manager of Discovery Analysis (this needs a formal announcement)

Thumb: Thumbs up--something that went well

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  • communication with Mikhail on various issues that popped up (legal work, metrics, etc)
  • Dashboard updates: first visit clickthrough (Portal) and U.S. regional traffic (also Portal)
  • Handoff of analysis product ownership from Dan to Deb was about as painless as could be hoped, and went even better than one could have hoped :-) \o/
  • Filtering out referral requests from ourselves on the portal dashboard
  • Deb handled analysis team product management super well
  • Dan gave a talk during monthly metrics that touched on analysis and portal work
  • Uh, hiring. We hired someone. Seems worth including in here. :-p
  • Mikhail's interviews with candidates -- was specifically told by a candidate afterwards that it was great to be treated like an actual person
    • (I kind of want to write a blog post at some point about our hiring pipeline from the work we did on writing the inclusive JD to how I approached the design of my interview questions.)

Index finger: The ONE thing you want people to know about the last month

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  • Mikhail did well and kept a fantastic attitude during everything

Middle finger: Something that did not go well

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  • TextCat A/B test was restarted due to data issues then not enough data was coming in, so it dragged on for a while
    • Although these are issues, it's good that we are actually AWARE of these issues, finding them, and fixing them; better than them just going undetected, or going unfixed
    • Team(s) handled the communication well--no complaining, finger-pointing, etc.
  • The fact that we had to do work outside the scope of Discovery's... scope (legal stuff)

Ring finger: Something about relationships--within the team, between teams, other

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  • Our dashboards are a source of admiration from other teams; one person described them as "That awesome analytics platform that you use"
  • Our dashboards actually see use by other teams to track how well *their own improvements go*!
  • Personally not a fan of upper management reaching out for data analysis support directly instead of going through product manager(s)
  • Our relationship as a team is easy-going but we're still hard-working, and I actively look forward to our sprint planning and backlog grooming meetings!
  • Oh! Mikhail's Data Visualization Literacy lesson/presentation to the rest of Discovery!

Pinky: A little thing (good or bad) that would be easy to overlook

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  • Mikhail has handled the switch to a single analyst really excellently, and I'm looking forward to him not having to do that any more so he has more space to think and do awesome ad-hoc analysis+1+1
    • I get 10% time again! :D

Action items

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  • Dan: Make sure Deb & Mikhail confer on onboarding tasks/documentation before new hire arrives
  • Dan: Announce Deb's new position re: analysis
    • Yes Done
  • Dan: Follow up with upper mgmt about going through proper channels
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