Community Engagement (Product)/Collaboration process/Draft

This page is a drafting space to define and explain community engagement activities within product development. It's stages are currently incomplete.

Product teams include WMF staff across a range of expertise: product managers, engineers, designers, QA testers, design researchers, community liaisons. Due to the collaborative nature of the Wikimedia movement, community liaisons act as the bridge between communities and product teams: supporting clear channels of communication in an effort to work with communities as partners in product development.

Concept
New feature proposals and submissions for current problems or new ideas.

This phase presents and initially describes the impetus and logic behind any product or individual feature. During this phase, reasoning behind the feature must be defined, communication surrounding scope with users.

Things that the concept should be able to communicate:

 * What is the problem we're trying to solve? (or, what is the opportunity being created?)
 * Include supporting data/information/strategic ideas
 * Who is this product intended for? (All users? All editors? New editors?)
 * Is there a where in here too? Some features may work more effectively in Commons, some may work only for Wikidata. Is it specifict to a locationation, such as all RtL languages?

Tasks to consider from CL perspective
There will be times when not all of these will be done, but this could serve as a potential checklist of to-dos
 * Phabricator tag created
 * Ensure MW documentation states the rationale clearly and presents necessary data
 * Support/follow conversation on Discussion pages of documentation
 * Survey, RfC or consultation
 * Newsletter/TechNews announcement
 * Discussion of ideas in appropriate channels

Things to communicate in this phas e:

 * How does it need to function?
 * Try to identify technical constraints and blockers
 * Are there users, such as functionaries, who need accessibility?
 * Is this intended to change/fix/break any existing workflows for users?
 * What is the criteria for success?
 * What are the milestones to move from stage to stage?

Tasks to consider from CL perspective

 * Recruiting users to Design research
 * Planning and regular meetings with product teams

Additional information

 * WMF Product Development Process


 * WMF Engineering Process Proposal
 * Software Development Concepts
 * Outline of current WMF Engineering Processes
 * Design and development principles/Draft