Team Practices Group

Team mission statement
''The TPG believes that healthy teams reliably deliver customer value and innovative products. Through dedicated resourcing, coaching, and workshops at the WMF, we facilitate the use of practices that support team health, with a strong emphasis on creating conditions of clarity, trust, and continuous improvement.''

Team values

 * Personal agency through collective ownership
 * Adaptability, embracing change
 * Sustainability

Overview
The Team Practices Group (TPG) supports Wikimedia Foundation engineering teams in their continual improvement.

The TPG does so by offering the following services to WMF engineering teams:
 * Providing dedicated resourcing for a team's scrummaster (or similar) role, depending on availability/resourcing of the TPG.
 * e.g. A team wants a dedicated scrummaster but does not currently have anyone on their team who wants or is able to take on the role. They go to the TPG, and the TPG provides them with someone who can fulfill that role.
 * Periodic or one-off collaborative engagements to facilitate process improvements for individuals and teams
 * e.g. A team getting ready to kick off a big project wants help in reorganizing their team practices to use the Scrum framework. They request support from the TPG, and the TPG provides Scrum training to that team.
 * Mentorship and support for people in the scrummaster (or similar) role.
 * e.g. An existing scrummaster (not provided by the TPG) is looking for ways to increase and improve their skills. S/he requests support from the TPG, and the TPG provides mentorship and resources.

Engagement with the TPG is entirely optional for WMF engineering teams. Engineering teams may elect to receive all, some, or none of the TPG services at any given time.

The TPG aims to not be prescriptive nor dogmatic. The TPG is agnostic in regards to specific methodologies (e.g. Scrum vs Kanban). Instead, the TPG works with individuals and teams to facilitate their discovery and implementation of methodologies/approaches that work best for them, guided by the agile manifesto and agile principles.

The team

 * Arthur Richards - Team Practices Manager


 * Kristen Lans - Scrummaster (Mobile web and Mobile apps)


 * Grace Gellerman - Agile Coach (Analytics engineering, Research)


 * Kevin Smith - Agile Coach (Search and Discovery, acting as Product Owner for Phabricator project management tooling improvements)


 * Joel Aufrecht - Agile Coach (VisualEditor)

FY2015Q4 (April - June 2015)

 * 1) List of practices defined by editing team and stakeholders that directly supported release of VisualEditor in Q4. (more details)
 * 2) Document request for and advocate for  Reliable burndown charts in Phabricator
 * 3) Conduct team development workshop with Release Engineering team
 * 4) Publish Q3 THC data and share organizational trends/make recommendations to management
 * 5) Deliver Q4 THC to all engineering teams

Ongoing mandates

 * 1) Scale Team Practices Group
 * 2) Providing dedicated resourcing for a team's scrummaster (or similar) role
 * 3) Ad-hoc team/individual process coaching
 * 4) Mentorship and support for people in the scrummaster (or similar) role.
 * 5) Other work that advances TPG goals but doesn't have a tidy goal

Purpose and Goals

 * Proposal for formation of the Team Practices Group
 * 2014-2015 Goals

How we work

 * Task Tracking
 * Team Norms
 * Roles and Responsibilities of team members
 * Onboarding

Things we do

 * Reference
 * Best Practices Handbook
 * Glossary
 * Recommended Reading
 * Useful Questions
 * Phabricator tips (Sandbox, Work-in-Progress, DRAFT!!)
 * How to run a good meeting
 * Projects
 * Health check survey

How we have done

 * TPG Retrospectives
 * FY2015Q2: slides, minutes

Contact

 * IRC:
 * mailing list