Wikimedia Meta-Wiki

Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Process/Audit of past strategy processes

< Strategy | Wikimedia movement | 2017 | Process
This page is a translated version of the page Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Process/Audit of past strategy processes and the translation is 44% complete.
Other languages:


Frühere Strategieprozesse: Analyse - Inhaltsverzeichnis

Sichtweisen der Community

Hinterlege hier einen Link zu Deiner Meinung über frühere Prozesse.

Movement Strategy der Jahre 2010 bis 2015

2012 Narrowing Focus

2015 Call to Action

Strategie der Wikimedia Foundation 2016 bis 2018

Während wir über die strategischen Prioritäten des Wikipedia-Movements in den kommenden Jahren diskutieren ist es wichtig zu verstehen, was wir in vergangenen Strategieprozessen richtig gemacht haben. Und eigentlich ist es noch wichtiger zu verstehen, was wir falsch gemacht haben. Mit diesem Wissen über eine erfolgreiche Community-Diskussion und die richtige Priorisierung können wir den beginnenden neuen Prozess erfolgreich gestalten.

Suzie Nussel, Strategieberaterin der Wikimedia Foundation, hat die untenstehende Zusammenfassung vergangener Strategiprozesse zusammengestellt. Sie beinhaltet Stärken und Schwächen der Prozesse. Quelle hierfür waren die Dokumentationen der Prozesse und Interviews mit dem "c-team" (Katherine Maher, Maggie Dennis, Lisa Gruwell, Wes Moran) sowie Guillaume Paumier (Angestellter) und Philippe Beaudette vom Team des Strategieprozesses 2010.

Wir hoffen von unseren Mitgliedern und Partnern auch zu hören, was sie gut und schlecht an diesen vergangenen Prozessen finden. Was glaubst "du" sollte gemacht oder nicht gemacht werden während des kommenden 2016-17 bewegungsweiten, strategischen Planungsprozesses für die Wikimedia-Bewegung? Bitte teile uns in Kurzform auf der Diskussionsseite oder, falls du ausführlichere Überlegungen hast, lege eine eigene, neue Seite an und verlinke auf sie in unserer navigation sidebar.

2010-15 Strategischer Prozess (bewegungsweit)

Überblick

Der Strategieprozess aus dem Jahre 2010 ist international als einzigartig in seiner Herangehensweise wahrgenommen worden, so zumindest im Fortune-Artikel "Reinventing your Business, Wikipedia Style" vom 22. März 2011. Den sonstigen Führungsebenenstil überwindend und mehr als 2000 Freiwillige den Prozess mitgestaltend lassend. Die Idee kam von der damaligen Direktorin Sue Gardner, mit Unterstützung von Philippe Beaudette, dem damaligen Leiter der Abteilung "reader relations".

Während der anfängliche Schritt des Community-Engagements - Community-Mitglieder nach Vorschlägen zu fragen - als simples Sammeln von Informationen gedacht war, hat es überwältigende Reaktionen ausgelöst und wurde der hauptsächliche Anstoß für den Prozess. Dies wurde in großem Maße von Sue Gardner unterstützt und führte zu einem, die klare strategische Ausrichtung betreffend, sehr erfolgreichen Ergebnis.

Schließlich war der Umfang jedoch überwältigend groß, Erfolgsmaße wurden nicht gebaut oder verfolgt und das Fehlen eines starken Durchführungsplans machte diesen Plan unerreichbar. Dies führte zu einem Bruch des Vertrauens in die Fähigkeiten der Führung.

Prozessschritte

Nach Philippe Beaudette, dem primären Unterstützer des strategischen Planungsprozesses, wurden die folgenden Schritte unternommen:

  • Erste Communitybefragung - Aufruf zu Vorschlägen, um heraus zu finden wer daran interessiert war am strategischen Plaungsprozess teilzunehmen
    • Eine externe Firma, Bridgespan, wurde in Anspruch genommen, um bei der Festlegung der Anweisungen, der Ermöglichung von Unterstützung und der Datenanalyse zu helfen. War hatten Probleme, sie in diesem Stil der Zusammenarbeit arbeiten zu lassen (von drei Projektmanagern ausgeführt).
  • Über 1.000 Vorschläge kamen herein, wurden geprüft und dann in funktionelle Bereich aufgeteilt
    • Vorschläge reichten von großen strategischen Ideen bis zu konkreten Taktiken/Arbeitsergebnissen
  • Jeder Hauptbereich wurde in eine Arbeitsgruppe umgewandelt
    • Zu den Arbeitsgruppen gehören Community-Befinden, Internationale Expansion und Technologische Strategie
  • Jede Arbeitsgruppe (organisiert und zusammen gesetzte aus Ehrenamtlichen und einigen Mitarbeitenden) war für die Überprüfung des Vorschlagsbereichs, die Leitung der Diskussion im Wiki und der Ausarbeitung einer Reihe von Empfehlungen zuständig
    • Arbeitsgruppen waren für alle in der Community offen, nicht nur für die ursprünglichen Teilnehmer
    • mehr als 1.000 Personen nahmen an dem Prozess teil
    • zwei professionelle Moderatoren unterstützten alle Arbeitsgruppen
    • Arbeitsgruppen waren für ihre eigene Arbeit verantwortlich
  • Empfehlungen wurden durch Mitarbeitende überarbeitet
  • Board/Mitarbeitende prüften die Empfehlungen und setzten einen endgültigen strategischen Plan auf.

Ergebnis

Der Endgültige strategische Plan wurde von der Community sehr gut aufgenommen und die Wikimedia Foundation erhielt Anerkennung wegen seiner hochmodernen strategischen Planung. Der Plan war jedoch zu weit gefasst um angemessen umgesetzt werden zu können, was zu unrealistischen Erwartungen führte und fünf Jahre später zu einem Gefühl des Versagens führte.

Wichtige Beteiligte zur weiteren Bezugnahme:

  • Philippe Beaudette
  • Eugene Kim

Stärken und Schwächen

Thema Stärken Schwächen
Beteiligung - Aufforderung zur Einreichung von Vorschlägen Hochkollaborativ - Der Prozess war der Geist des “Open Source” Engagements Der Prozess erbrachte 1.000 Vorschläge, welche die kleine Mannschaft (50 Leute) überforderte. Es gab keine Mechanismen, um mit diesem Umfang umzugehen.
Beteiligung - Taskforce Der Prozess erlaubt Unterkomitees parallel zu arbeiten und ihre eigenen Lösungen zu finden, was zu einer vollen Eigentümerschaft und Eigenverantwortung führte.

Voll mit großen Namen in den Communities, gab diesen Satus und ermutigte die Leute, teilzunehmen

Einige Arbeitsgruppen haben ihre Arbeit nicht beendet. Das war eine Aufgabe für die Technische Arbeitsgruppe, die zum Schluss dazu führte, dass hauptsächlich Eugene Kim schrieb (und laut Philippe war das schlecht, wegen fehlender Zusammenarbeit)
Akzeptanz Sehr von der Community akzeptiert, das sie die hauptsächlichen Triebkräfte waren - sie fühlten sich gehört und respektiert Die Mitarbeitenden akzeptierten die Strategie, aber sie hatten wenig Kontrolle darauf, alle Änderungen zu bewirken.
Handlungsfähigkeit Klare, präzise Pläne du Taktiken, die in größerem Umfang hätten umgesetzt werden können, wenn der Umfang sinnvoll mit den verfügbaren Ressourcen übereingestimmt hätte. The translation between the strategy to annual planning never happened effectively. The overall scope was too large to accomplish. Baseline measures were not known (or able to be known), so the goals could not be tracked for success.
Dynamiken ED äußerte ein großes Vertrauen in den Prozess und Community, um den Plan zu entwickeln.

Community eager to engage and solve the challenges, worked hard to deliver the recommendations

Community, staff, and Board fully involved in a shared vision and aligned

Convergence of ideas and strategies to a manageable, prioritized set did not happen. This set up the dynamic for a no-win scenario as expectations couldn’t be reached in the 5-years.

Key lessons from 2010 process / recommendations for next process

This is a list of recommendations, which also includes those from Philippe (given August 2016 via interview).

  • Community engagement worked really well.
    • Philippe recommends running the next process as this one was - full community engagement and open-source collaboration, soliciting proposals. This generates the most effective process and community buy-in. The staff will have to remain confident, and trust in the community and process to complete the strategy. The work of the many will always be dramatically better than the work of the few.
  • Create better management tool/process for receiving and processing proposals
  • Ensure Task Forces have the right mix of resources so the work is completed in each one. This might include at least one staff member facilitating or participating, and tracking the completion of the work.
    • Give each Task Force as much background data as is available, in an organized manner (links to past studies, current metrics, work in progress, etc.).
    • Don’t try to overly manage the Task Forces in terms of driving the agenda. These need to be community-driven.
    • Staff members could be responsible for helping to schedule the meetings and doing project management.
    • Clearly define roles (time keeper, facilitator, reporter, participants) and work, both on-wiki and on the best platform for the community and language (e.g., Facebook, Telegram, Google Docs, video-conferencing, etc.).
    • Give clear expectations of work to be completed, templates to use, etc. so that output is easy to manage across all groups.
  • 2010 plan was written with big goals that they knew were not achievable. Strategies should be refined and prioritized so that expectations are clear and goals are attainable within the time frame specified.
  • Goals should be measurable from the start so that progress can be and is measured over time.
  • Need mechanisms in place for follow-through. The whole process in 2010 was exhausting, so once the strategic plan was finalized, the next layer of implementation planning was not done. This needs to be well-defined and allow for easy tracking against major milestones throughout each year.
    • Breaking down sub-tasks
    • Setting realistic milestones
    • Creating measures to track progress
    • Creating quarterly reviews to check progress, and make adjustments as needed
    • Creating annual reports on progress against strategy
    • Keeping trust and transparency at the forefront… collaborate and communicate with community if major adjustments or changes in direction are deemed necessary (get buy-in beforehand, not after changes made)

2012 Narrowing Focus

Überblick

On October 1, 2012, Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Foundation, published a Narrowing Focus recommendation on meta. Because the scope of the 2010 strategy was so extensive, the Foundation was having difficulty sizing its role and executing on its priorities to drive the mission forward. The Narrowing Focus mandate concentrated on execution and delivery, mainly engineering and grant-making. This recommendation was given to the Board, which approved this action. Community was not involved in the decision-making process in a formal way.

Synopsis of the Narrowing Focus document

Highlights aus dem unten stehenden Dokument:

  • “We are a website (set of sites), so engineering (including product development) is core.”
  • “We are also becoming a grant-making organization.”
    • High-priority projects:
      • Funds dissemination committee and grant-making — improving the funds dissemination processes to be more transparent, democratic, and accountable
  • Recommendations (included in the mandate):
    • We plan to convert the catalyst projects into grants
    • We plan to wind down the fellowships program.
    • We will reduce time and effort spent on staging and supporting complex international events.
    • We will focus our support for movement-wide organizational development on grant-making and crisis response.

2015 Call to Action / discovery work on strategy

Überblick

In May 2014, Lila Tretikov was hired as the new Executive Director of the Foundation. She was brought in primarily to help the Foundation build out its product and engineering functions to meet its strategic goals. Lila proposed that rather than a large, long-term strategy, the Foundation should move toward an agile, iterative process for driving its product development. Below is a timeline of major milestones.

  • July 2014: Lila introduces the concept of strategy as a practice..that helps you choose the right thing to do, focused on how the movement: Engages more users? Activates more editors? Creates more content?
  • Dec 2014: Lila presents the Call to Action approach. “Action will focus on technical execution, content and community, and innovation and new knowledge.”
  • Jan 2015: 2015 Call to Action announced at January All Hands
  • Feb 2015: Communications team publishes the State of the Wikimedia Foundation, which includes 2014 in review and the 2015 Call to action
  • Feb. 23, 2015: Open invitation to community and readers to participate in a 2-week visioning exercise / strategy consultation on 1) future trends beyond mobile for the next billion users and 2) based on these trends, what do Wikimedia projects look like?
  • March 2015: Kim Gilbey (strategy consultant) hired and introduced to the board. The iterative strategy process would be built in three phases: internal research at the Wikimedia Foundation, external dialogue, and implementation.
  • April 2015: Meetings with technology partners to discuss strategy, emerging opportunities and considerations
  • April 2015: Engineering team is reorganized into 6 teams to better meet the needs of its unique audiences in an agile product development process (Editing, Reading, Search & Discovery, Infrastructure, Community Tech, and Fundraising Tech).
  • May 2015 (Board minutes): Lila presents first take of strategy. Board concerned about the role of the Foundation in helping to solve community harassment. Also discussed best ways to work with partners and content reusers.
  • June 2015 (Metrics presentation): Lila presents Emerging Strategy.
  • July 2015 (Metrics): Findings from March visioning/strategy consultation reported.
  • July 2015: Work on Knowledge Engine grant in progress.
  • September 2015 (Board minutes): “Lila reviewed a number of strategic activities underway, including improving community workflows, increasing on-site speed, supporting high-quality content, expanding the Wikimedia Foundation's engagement with the community. The ongoing strategy process will provide an opportunity to set short term and long term goals, as well as opportunities to re-evaluate and update goals when appropriate. The Board and community will have an opportunity for more input. Board members emphasized the importance of providing adequate time for community input.”
  • Nov. 2015: Lila presents Strategic Focus areas (Reach, Communities, Knowledge)

June 2015 Strategic discovery work - Engagement by Stakeholder

From June 2015 metrics slide deck:
 
Wikimedia Foundation Strategy Preview, Wikimedia Foundation Metrics Meeting June 2015 - slide 46

Note: Most of the non-survey work was not published.

Strategy survey (focus on mobile) - 2015

Wikimedia Blog: Wikimedia strategy consultation shows potential in mobile, rich content, and translations

Design

The consultation consisted of a 10-day global consultation across Wikimedia projects and languages, lasting from February 23 – March 6, 2015. We introduced the consultation by acknowledging that the world is going mobile and the next billion Internet users are coming online. We translated the questions into 15 languages to reflect the international nature of the Wikimedia movement.

The consultation used two open-ended prompts to elicit broad, qualitative feedback and insights:

  1. What major trends would you identify in addition to mobile and the next billion users?
  2. Based on the future trends that you think are important, what would thriving and healthy Wikimedia projects look like?

This is the second time the Wikimedia Foundation has undertaken a collaborative strategy-setting process. However, this consultation was designed as part of a more nimble process than the previous strategic planning process conducted in 2010, in order to allow the Foundation to respond to a quickly changing world.

Participation

Nearly 1,300 editors and readers offered their thoughts on these questions across 29 languages. We found 69% were anonymous users from 86 different countries, 24% were logged-in users with established records of participation on the Wikimedia projects, and 7% were new users (all of whom registered during the consultation itself). These latter two groups came from 30 different wikis. All of the comments offered were broken down into 2,468 comments on 28 general themes.

2016-18 Foundation strategic process

Überblick

In an attempt to define the Foundation's strategic vision to drive annual planning and rebuild trust in the community, the Board asked the ED (Lila Tretikov) in November 2015 to present a strategic plan by March 2016 (2016 Strategy work).

A consultant, Suzie Nussel, was brought in to help facilitate a fast-turn process, working directly with the C-team and Kevin Smith, team practices’ project lead. Discovery work included Lila’s pre-determined focus areas (Reach, Communities, Knowledge), the past year’s SWOT analysis, and the 2015 community consultation on future trends (mobile). This was used to develop a fast-turn consultative process with staff, and then with community, looking specifically at the key challenges and potential solutions. Work with the Community Engagement team resulted in 2 different consultations (on strategic approaches and then on the strategic plan).

This resulted in a Draft Foundation strategy, which was used by departments to write their annual plan programs, goals, and objectives. The Foundation annual plan was then presented to the FDC and community for review. This consultation feedback was used to refine the plan. The Board approved the annual plan in June 2016.

Note: During this process, ED Lila Tretikov resigned in March 2016, and then Katherine Maher was put in place as interim ED. Katherine was then named permanent ED in June 2016.

Prozessschritte

To meet the Board’s request and integrate with the FDC process, an extremely tight deadline of events was built. There were major, known limitations to this process from the onset, which were deemed “acceptable” in order to build a path toward better community engagement and transparency than had been done in the previous year.

  • Discovery sessions with staff and limited community members on key challenges facing movement in three focus areas (Reach, Communities, Knowledge).
    • Dec 14-18, 2015: In-person, two large group sessions of staff members
    • Dec 21-24, 2015: remote, 6 small groups of 4-6 staff members
    • Dec 20-24, 2015: remote, 3 small groups of community members
    • Dec 28-Jan 1, 2016: online, office-wiki discussion
  • Synthesis of key challenges, potential solutions (completed Jan 4, 2016)
  • Review of synthesis with Staff (Jan 5-8, 2016)
  • Writing of strategic approaches (Jan 11-15, 2016)
  • Community consultation on strategic approaches (Jan 15-Feb 14, 2016)
    • 6 pre-defined directions per three focus areas with option to write in their own strategic approach
    • Over 500 participants
    • Staff and C-team conducted sprints to respond to discussion points
    • Mid-point findings report shared with C-team, managers (Feb 5, 2016)
  • C-team - strategy review of findings and selection of strategic approaches (Feb 12, 2016)
  • Final report on strategic approaches completed and posted (Feb 26, 2016)
  • Draft strategic plan written and posted (March 4, 2016)
  • Community consultation - review of strategic plan (March 4-18, 2016)
    • C-team sprints to review and respond to comments
  • Annual plan
    • Work with teams to complete annual plan writing in FDC format (March 1-31)
    • Review of annual plan
      • Community consultation (March 31-April 30, 2016)
      • Sharing with Affiliates in Berlin (April 20, 2016)
      • FDC review (May 13-15, 2016)
    • Refinement of annual plan by staff, based on feedback (May 16-June 13, 2016)
    • Board approval of annual plan (June 22, 2016)
    • Process set up for ongoing review of completion of annual plan goals/objectives (in Q1 2016/17)

Ergebnis

While extremely tight, this process led to some insightful community engagement to inform the strategic approaches and to guide the annual planning. During the course of this process, community and media pressure escalated around distrust and lack of transparency. This led to Lila stepping down from her role as ED in March 2016.

The plan created is intended to only drive the activities for 18 months (roughly 2016-18). A deeper strategic planning process is intended once the permanent ED is selected.

The annual plan received good response from the FDC, and this has led to a feeling of more open transparency and accountability. The main outstanding request is more specific budgetary information tied to each program, as well as clear measurement and tracking of goals.

Staff engagement on key challenges and potential solutions:

Stärken und Schwächen

Thema Stärken Schwächen
Teilnahme Quickly executed process to engage staff (about ⅓ active) and community (between 500-600 uniques). Fast-turn around led to some frustration in terms of time to adequately discuss, and limitations in technology/ consultation formats that were used to accommodate multiple languages but made the process difficult or cumbersome to follow.
Akzeptanz Makes sense and is believable. Limited push back from community on items presented. While this may be sufficient to drive short-term planning for the Foundation, the Community is still expecting a movement-wide strategy and alignment on direction. Clear need for direction and roles to be defined.
Handlungsfähigkeit

Gives specific short-term direction as it was designed to aid 2 years’ of annual planning. Annual Plan accepted and praised as step in the right direction, even if programs are not tied to specific program budgets yet.

In the process of mapping quarterly goals into the whole Annual Plan map.

Needs stronger threads into each program.

As a short-term solution, it does not grapple with the Big Questions of role that the movement / Foundation plays in the knowledge space for the next 15-20 years.

Standard performance Metrics are still not integrated into the plan.

New metrics in the process of being evaluated.

Dynamiken Die Mitarbeiter verbrachten mehr Zeit in kollaborativen Diskussionen.

Staff built the Annual Plan from the strategic priorities, ensuring more ownership and buy-in of the work being done.

Opportunity for level-set and new ED to get alignment with staff and community

Conflict between Board’s desire for product strategy and staff’s desire for a more comprehensive strategy.

ED resigned during the process, alleviating much of the staff tension and negative press.

Retrieved from "https://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Process/Audit_of_past_strategy_processes/de&oldid=25692256"