WMF product development process/2015-11-05

Superprotect is gone
Superprotect was introduced by the Wikimedia Foundation to resolve a product development disagreement. We have not used it for resolving a dispute since. Consequently, today we are removing Superprotect from Wikimedia servers.

Without Superprotect, a symbolic point of tension is resolved. However, we still have the underlying problem of disagreement and consequent delays at the product deployment phase. We need to become better software partners, work together towards better products, and ship better features faster. The collaboration between the WMF and the communities depends on mutual trust and constructive criticism. We need to improve Wikimedia mechanisms to build consensus, include more voices, and resolve disputes.

There is a first draft of an updated Product Development Process that will guide the work of the WMF Engineering and Product teams. It stresses the need for community feedback throughout the process, but particularly in the early phases of development. More feedback earlier on will allow us to incorporate community-driven improvements and address potential controversy while plans and software are most flexible.

We welcome the feedback of technical and non-technical contributors. Check the Q&A for details.

Quim Gil, Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation

What is Superprotect?
Superprotect was a user right available to Wikimedia wikis and granted to a global group of WMF staff members, deployed to stop changes to an executable code. Its main target was administrative pages like MediaWiki:Common.js, which can be used to modify the user experience of a wiki. At the time of this announcement, Superprotect was not enforced anywhere.

When has been Superprotect used?
Superprotect was announced and enabled in Wikimedia servers on August 10, 2014, and it has been used in two occasions:
 * On August 10, 2014, to keep MediaViewer enabled by default in German Wikipedia and protect against an attempt to disable it by modifying code in MediaWiki:Common.js. Detailed descriptions of the events can be found in English and German.
 * On 5 October, 2014, to restore a previous version of a Wikidata article that was suddenly affected by a series of bugs. This time it was a temporary solution to a deployment that went accidentally wrong, and used with the explicit permission of the affected project's core admins. The protection was lifted after 2 months, when the bugs were fixed.

What is a software product development process?
It is a series of actions that define how software projects should be created in a team or organization. The work of developing software is organized in different stages, and quality criteria are defined to move from stage to the the next. There are many ways to organize software development.

What else is changing about our software product development process?
The Team Practices Group is drafting detailed descriptions of each phase of the Product Development Process, focusing on team organization and agile methodologies. This work is more geared toward members of the software teams and, to a lesser extent, the volunteers working directly with them.

The Community Liaisons are working on Design and Development principles to act as an overall guide for WMF Engineering teams. Professional software developers, designers, product managers, etc, are increasingly familiar with the principles of free open source development, but the Wikimedia movement additionally has its own culture of openness, collaboration, and expectations.

Comments

 * About time! Good. Nemo 17:43, 5 November 2015 (UTC)