Wikimedia Discovery/Meetings/Analysis retrospective 2016-05-31

Covering whatever has happened related to the team since the last retro (2016-04-20)
 * Ongoing hiring for new analyst
 * Some task submissions have really impressed me!


 * Tomasz leaving, Katie announced to be the new head of Discovery
 * Data mapping

Review action items from before

 * Dan: Publicize the data guidelines more widely
 * No action. Apparently not that important, so we'll drop it

What went well?

 * Query features & ZRR report (with positive feedback from the Search team!)
 * Qualtrics survey started and finished and got maps and quick reviews from Mikhail
 * Descriptive text analysis completed for Portal team
 * Good, constructive discussion about documentation and communicating changes in schemas and data collection more widely
 * Mikhail's first proper candidate interview! (yay!)+1
 * Worked well with Editing to coordinate which candidate(s) would be a better fit for which department
 * Data mapping - Discovery perceived as being very knowledgeable of its datasets
 * Mikhail is handling juggling the jobs of two analysts very well!+1

What could have gone better?

 * The good, constructive discussion about documentation and communicating changes in data widely ended with a very open-ended "We'll just think about it more and be sure to talk to Mikhail" rather than anything concrete
 * Mikhail: Just raising awareness seemed helpful; it should encourage everyone to take small steps to help avoid future problems
 * Hiring is going slower than hoped, and is about to probably be even slower with Dan being on vacation
 * More coordination between Editing and our JD would have been better, but that's more on recruiting's side. We did pretty well. +1

What else should be noted?

 * Mikhail might possibly be needed for some side work outside of Discovery at some point in the near future

Action items

 * Dan: Circulate a specific plan for handling hiring while Dan is out