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
template

All updates from the Technical Decision Forum can be found on the updates page.

Published Decision Records
The final artifact of the process is the decision records and this subpage contains all the decision records that completed the Technical Decision Forum process.

Procedures
The Technical Decision Making Process guideline describes how a proposal will flow through the Technical Decision Forum.

Please check out the FAQs page for answers to commonly posed questions and sign up for an office hour appointment to meet with us.

Questions or Feedback are always welcome. Contact us at [mailto:tech-decision-forum-support@wikimedia.org tech-decision-forum-support@wikimedia.org]

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 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 Problem Statements from teams and provide feedback
 * 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.

Community Representation

 * The Technical Decision Forum will include representatives from the Wikimedia community who will review the proposals brought to the forum.