Technical Collaboration Guidance/Prioritization list

After a product or project has been conceptualized and discussed, it is important to ask some questions about the product to consider what makes something a priority from a community perspective. These questions are the sort that Community Liaisons ask to themselves and of a product team when preparing and distributing communication about a product. The answers to these questions will influence the product or project's development before any code is actually written. The reasons these questions are important is to make sure that a team is considering potential areas of concern or need in relation to the communities before beginning development.

Community needs

 * What problem(s) is this intended to solve?
 * For whom?
 * Based on what evidence? (see below)
 * Did anyone request this?
 * Product name - Is it international? Is it unambiguous? Is it permanent? Has it been reviewed by comms? Is it the same in the code and in the docs? (c. naming things)
 * Is it a local or global extension?
 * Are you affecting people who are not your target? (e.g. French wiki research email, stewards and SWTF, etc)
 * If yes, can precautions be taken to not do so?
 * Where are you discussing this with the communities?
 * Have all appropriate WMF teams been consulted?

Timeline and documentation

 * Do you have a timeline, no matter how rough?
 * If yes, make sure it is published
 * If no, at least publish an idea of when one might be available
 * Are you documenting this?
 * If yes, is it published publicly?
 * If no, do you have a plan for documentation and publishing?

Background research

 * Will this replace an existing tool?
 * Will this break anyone's workflow? To a significant extent?
 * Will it add to editors' workload if it's a success?
 * Has this been tried before, internally (staff or community)?
 * Are there industry standards around this?
 * Does this already exist in the outside world?

Analytics

 * What can be measured?
 * For how long will things be measured?
 * What will be done with this data?

Product technical specification/questions

 * What are the allocated maintenance resources? For how long?
 * What are the boundaries of tech support for edge-cases? (blind users of screenreaders, old browser compatibility, text-only feature-phones, etc)
 * Will it scale? (both to small wikis, and to large wikis)
 * Define the product's individual definition of alpha/beta/release