Growth/Growth 2014/2014-15 Goals

The following document is an overview of the 2014-15 goals and roadmap for the Growth team, a part of Wikimedia Engineering.

Current team members (as of June 2014):
 * 1) Matt Flaschen (Software Engineer)
 * 2) Aaron Halfaker (Research Scientist)
 * 3) Kaity Hammerstein (Associate Interaction Designer)
 * 4) Rob Moen (Software Engineer)
 * 5) Sam Smith, (Software Engineer)
 * 6) Moiz Syed (Interaction Designer)
 * 7) Steven Walling (Product Manager)

Background
TK

2014-15 Annual Plan targets
We have selected the following targets to be met by June 2015:

By July 1 2014, we will have selected precise targets for each of the three conversion rates above, by extrapolating based on current baselines (including the year-over-year rate of change) and the results of previous experimentation (where applicable).
 * 1) Acquisition:  we will increase (compared to a control) new registrations across Wikimedia projects. 
 * 2) Activation: we will increase (compared to a control) the rate at which new registrations become active editors (5+ content edits/month).
 * 3) Retention: we will increase (compared to a control) the survival rate of active editors on Wikimedia projects.

2014-15 product goals

 * Q1 (July 1 - September 30 2014)
 * Task suggestions landing page, notifications, and guided tours launched on all GettingStarted wikis (top 10 Wikipedias plus 20 others currently).
 * Signup flow improvements (signup and save, on-page login and signup for SSL users) in production on wikis


 * Q2 (October 1 - December 31 2014):


 * Q3 (January 1 - March 31 2015):


 * Q4 (April 1 - June 30 2015):

Backlog

 * Acquisition
 * Thanks from readers
 * Main Page and .org portal redesigns
 * Signup and save
 * On-page signup (for SSL users)
 * Surface logged-in features as CTAs
 * Editor campaigns
 * Social graph/contact invitations
 * WikiCards


 * Activation
 * Personalized task recommendations
 * Article creation
 * WikiProject tools
 * Editor campaigns
 * Surface logged in features


 * Retention
 * Personalized task recommendations incl. notifications
 * Thanks from readers (and/or to IP editors?)
 * Fix revert workflow
 * Audit how bots and AbuseFilter and CAPTCHA impact, and fix them
 * Watchlist redesign
 * WikiProject tools
 * WikiCredit

Interdependencies

 * Research & Data and User Experience: Both of these teams are core dependencies for Growth. Currently, the Research and Data embeds a full-time research scientist (Aaron Halfaker), and in order to support continued A/B testing capacity this will continue to be a key need on the team. Additionally, User Experience embeds a primary and secondary design on the team (currently Moiz Syed and Kaity Hammerstein).
 * Analytics: First and foremost, Growth depends on Analytics development for continued support of EventLogging, Wikimetrics, and analytics slave databases. In addition, Growth plans to use planned data products built by Analytics,such as an interest graph, to better attract new editors.
 * Community Engagement (Product): The Community Engagement group did not provide support for Growth during the 2013-14 fiscal year. We think providing some form of dedicated community liason will be critical if the team is to tackle more contentious areas of the user experience, such as article creation. Currently Product (Steven Walling) is filling this role on an as-needed basis, which puts the team primarily in a reactive mode, rather than having a proactive outreach plan.
 * Team Practices Group: The Growth team is small but is relatively inexperienced with Agile practices, and the new team practices group could provide extremely valuable support. Growth has implemented some Scrum practicies, but its capacity for process improvement is limited since the team has never had a dedicated scrum master.
 * Mobile Web: There is close alignment this coming year with the goals of the Mobile Web team and Growth. Mobile wants to spread its knowledge about mobile-first product development and engineering, while Growth wants to have mobile versions of its products.
 * Mobile Apps: As we introduce login, editing, and other contributory workflows to our native apps, Growth should work closely with the Apps team to make sure there is consistent experience, discover ways to integrate its findings in to the apps, and consider methods for attracting apps users to desktop products.