Technical Collaboration Guidance/Prioritization list

After a product or project has been conceptualized and discussed, it is important to ask some questions about the product. The answers to these questions will influence the product or project's development before any code is actually written. The reasons these questions are important is to make sure that a team is considering potential areas of concern or need in relation to the communities before beginning development.

Community needs

 * What problem(s) is this intended to solve?
 * For whom?
 * Based on what evidence? (see below)
 * Did anyone request this?
 * Product name - Is it international? Is it unambiguous? Is it permanent? Has it been reviewed by comms? Is it the same in the code and in the docs? (c. naming things)
 * Is it a local or global extension?
 * Are you affecting people who are not your target? (e.g. French wiki research email, stewards and SWTF, etc)
 * If yes, can precautions be taken to not do so?
 * Where are you discussing this with the communities?
 * Have all appropriate WMF teams been consulted?

Timeline and documentation

 * Do you have a timeline, no matter how rough?
 * If yes, make sure it is published
 * If no, at least publish an idea of when one might be available
 * Are you documenting this?
 * If yes, is it published publicly?
 * If no, do you have a plan for documentation and publishing?

Background research

 * Will this replace an existing tool?
 * Will this break anyone's workflow? To a significant extent?
 * Will it add to editors' workload if it's a success?
 * Has this been tried before, internally (staff or community)?
 * Are there industry standards around this?
 * Does this already exist in the outside world?

Analytics

 * What can be measured?
 * For how long will things be measured?
 * What will be done with this data?

Product technical specification/questions

 * What are the allocated maintenance resources? For how long?
 * What are the boundaries of tech support for edge-cases? (blind users of screenreaders, old browser compatibility, text-only feature-phones, etc)
 * Will it scale? (both to small wikis, and to large wikis)
 * Define the product's individual definition of alpha/beta/release