Growth/Growth 2014/2014-15 Goals

The following document is an overview of the 2014-15 Annual Plan target 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
The Growth team's 2013-14 Annual Plan target was developed by extrapolating from an early A/B test related to onboarding new Wikipedians. We then aimed for ambitious increases in the rate at which new editors reached 1+ and 5+ article edits per month. Spread across multiple products, these otherwise ambitious gains seemed more reasonable.

Early in the fiscal year, the team's capacity was severely limited as we were reduced to one full-time engineer. In Q3 the team hired an additional engineer, but only by Q4 was the team up to full capacity again. Despite these limitations, we have completed much of our product roadmap for 2013-14 fiscal year.

The purpose of a target is ultimately to provide a measuring stick that can motivate the team to help reach organizational goals. In this regard, aiming for a precise number of total active editors gained per month was a poor goal. Our product metrics are most accurate and motivating at the weekly level, since controlled tests typically run for a week. Waiting for a monthly metric to roll over and see if products had the desired impact was far too slow to be useful. Additionally, translating between gains measured in a controlled experiment and new editors in the general population is difficult. Outside of an experiment, it is harder to say with confidence that new editors were gained solely through use of a particular product.

To correct for this, our 2014-15 targets are increases in conversion rates for new user acquisition, activation, and retention. We can observe such targets at a much faster pace and in controlled settings. Focusing on these more closely ties us to the way the team actually operates, and gives us greater confidence in the impact we have. Furthermore, these targets can be developed by precisely measuring how much a particular metric would need to be improved to create growth in the active editor community, either when taken alone or in combination with other changes.

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

Ambitious case
The following targets are the most ambitious scenario, in that any of these conversion rate increases will alone lead to a full reversal of the year-over-year decline in total active editors. If all three targets are met, then there will be significant growth in the monthly active editor community.


 * 1) Acquisition: we will increase (compared to a control) new registrations across Wikimedia projects by 23%.
 * 2) Activation: we will increase (compared to a control) the rate at which new registrations become active editors (5+ content edits/month) by 23%.
 * 3) Retention: we will increase (compared to a control) the survival rate of active editors on Wikimedia projects by 87%.

Mid case
If we spread out our gains across all three targets, only a 7.6% increase in acquisition and activation are required to bring total active editors flat, along with a 29% increase in retention. Since the team's product roadmap is aimed at all three targets, this middle scenario is the most likely outcome this year.

Conservative case
The most conservative scenario for the year would be based on small gains on top of what we have already achieved. In the past several years, we have been able to achieve up to a 4% gain in acquisitions, measured via our previous account creation user experience tests. For activation, the onboarding new Wikipedians project increased first-time edits by 2%. We have not yet seen any significant gains in month-to-month retention, so we would not predict any gains there if we're being conservative. Together, these three conversion rate changes would reduce the year-over-year decline from 5% to 3%.

Product roadmap
See: Growth/Product roadmap