User:DKinzler (WMF)/Annual Planning

My personal take on annual planning, after one decade of "this year we'll do it different and get it right":


 * List all the things that we have been doing last year, and how much effort when into them, if resourcing was sufficient, what problems were encountered.


 * Identify things that we want to stop doing, and the effort need to stop doing them. This should be top priority.


 * List things the we want to keep doing, for how long, whether it's focus work or sustained effort, and what resources it needs.


 * Assume  that we can add no more than 10% capacity annually (even if we increase staff by 20 or 30%, because of onboarding overhead).


 * If, and only if, after all this it looks like we have extra capacity, look at new stuff to do.

That's it.

This is as opposed to the thing that usually happens, which is:


 * pitch three exciting new things we want to do
 * ask for 30% more resources to do them
 * get 10% more resources
 * mostly keep doing what you were doing before
 * deliver half of two of the features
 * celebrate that as a success and move on to the next new shiny in the next annual plan