Technical decision making

The Wikimedia Technical Decision Forum is a rotating group of representatives from Wikimedia Foundation teams, affiliates, and volunteer groups. The purpose of the Forum is to provide feedback to teams making decisions.

Updates
Regular updates about Forum activities can be found on the updates page.

Decision records
The final artifact of the process is a decision record. Visit the decisions page to read decision records that have completed the process.

Procedures
The technical decision making process guidelines describe how a proposal flows through the process.

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 and feedback are always welcome. Contact us at [mailto:tech-decision-forum-support@wikimedia.org tech-decision-forum-support@wikimedia.org].

Forum chairs
The Forum is led by two co-chairs: one from the Wikimedia Foundation Technology Department and one from the Product Department. Forum chairs are responsible for leading, facilitating, and administering the technical decision making process.

Responsibilities

 * Time commitment: 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, including templates and good decision making practices
 * Respond to questions from decision teams within 24 hours
 * Escalate decisions to the Chief Product Officer (CPO) and Chief Technical Officer (CTO) as appropriate
 * Run retrospectives and update processes, templates, and documentation
 * Schedule meetings and office hours

Selection and rotation
Chairs are appointed by the Wikimedia Foundation CTO and CPO respectively and rotated on a quarterly basis.

Forum members
The Forum is composed of representatives from Wikimedia Foundation teams, affiliates, and volunteer groups. Members can be engineers, project managers, engineering managers, technical writers, product managers, etc. Forum members are responsible for reviewing decision documents and acting as a point of contact for the Forum to interface with their team.

(Areas for representation TBD)

Responsibilities

 * Time commitment: 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 via Slack or email

Forum members can provide feedback in several ways:
 * Give feedback themselves
 * Circulate documents within their team and aggregate feedback
 * Delegate to other team members to provide feedback

Teams can decide amongst themselves how to best provide feedback.

Wikimedia Foundation teams

 * Each team appoints a representative for the Forum. Teams can change their representative at any time.
 * Teams can choose to share representatives with related teams. For example: SRE may decide to have fewer people represent their teams than the number of the individual teams. As teams change or grow, updates will be made accordingly.
 * Teams are expected to plan for coverage during vacations and other types of leave.

Affiliates

 * Each affiliate appoints a representative in the Forum. Affiliates can change their representative at any time.
 * Affiliates can choose to share representatives with related groups. For example: SRE may decide to have fewer people represent their teams than the number of the individual teams. As groups change or grow, updates will be made accordingly.
 * Affiliates are expected to plan for coverage during vacations and other types of leave.

Community representation

 * The Forum will include representatives from the Wikimedia community who will review the proposals brought to the forum. Visit the community representation page for more information.