Technical decision making

The Technical Forum serves as a body to connect teams to stakeholders with the WMF, affiliates and volunteer community in order to make sound technical decisions.

Updates

 * March 22, 2021

Forum Chairs
The forum has two co-chairs which lead, facilitate and administer the Forum. One representing the Technology Department and the other representing the Product Department.

Forum Members
The Technical Forum is composed of representatives from different Wikimedia Teams, Affiliates, and Volunteer groups. Members can be engineers, Project Managers, Engineering Managers, Technical Writers, Product Managers, etc…. We actively encourage groups to not just select their most knowledgeable people in order to make space for new voices and gaining of experience.

The primary responsibilities of Forum Members are:


 * 1) Review and provide decision documents.
 * 2) Circulate decision documents information to their teams and act as a point of contact for the Forum to interface with their team.

Note that Forum Members can provide feedback in 2 different ways: Give feedback themselves, Circulate documents within their own team and aggregate feedback, or delegate to other team members to provide feedback. Teams can decide amongst themselves how to best provide feedback.

(Areas for representation TBD)

Chairs
2-4 hours per week

Turnaround times: 24 hours for questions, 1 week for document review and feedback


 * Lead Technical Forum meetings
 * Provide advice and council on following the process, using templates, and good decision making practices, within 24 hours
 * Respond to questions from Decision Teams, within 24 hours
 * Escalate decisions to the CPO and CTO as appropriate
 * Run retrospectives and update processes, templates and documentation
 * Schedule meetings and office hours

Members
0-2 hours per week

Turnaround times: 48 hours for questions, 1 week for document review and feedback


 * Asynchronously review Decision Overview Statements from Decision Teams and provide feedback
 * Ensure Decision RACIs accurately reflect their team's participation in a decision
 * Connect Decision Teams to Subject matter experts (SMEs) on their teams/groups
 * Distribute Decision Records within their team for review
 * Respond to questions from Decision teams - on Slack or email

Chairs
Chairs are appointed by the Wikimedia Foundation CTO and CPO respectively and rotated on a quarterly basis.

Wikimedia Foundation Teams

 * Each team appoints a representative in the Technical Forum and teams can change their representative at any time.
 * Teams do not need to have their own representative, but instead can share representatives with multiple teams. For example: SRE may decide to have less people represent their teams than the number of the individual teams. As teams change or as we grow, updates will be made accordingly.
 * Teams are expected to plan for coverage during vacations and other types of leave in the forum.

Affiliates

 * Each affiliate appoints a representative in the Technical Forum and teams can change their representative at any time.
 * Teams do not need to have a representative, but instead can share representatives. For example SRE may decide to have less people represent their teams than all of the individual teams. As teams change or as we grow, updates will be made accordingly.
 * Affiliates are expected to plan for coverage during vacations and other types of leave in the forum.

Volunteer groups
TBD