Team Practices Group

Team mission statement
''The Team Practices Group believes that healthy teams reliably deliver customer value and innovative products. Through dedicated resourcing, coaching, and workshops at the Wikimedia Foundation, we facilitate the use of practices that support team health, with a strong emphasis on creating conditions of clarity, trust, and continuous improvement.''

Team values

 * Personal agency through collective ownership
 * Adaptability, embracing change
 * Sustainability

Overview
The Team Practices Group (TPG) supports the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) teams in their continual improvement.

The TPG works with individuals and teams to facilitate their discovery and implementation of methodologies/approaches that work best for them, guided by the agile manifesto and agile principles.

The TPG supports WMF teams by offering the following services:
 * Providing dedicated resourcing for a team's Scrum Master (or similar) role, depending on availability/resourcing of the TPG.
 * e.g. A team wants a dedicated Scrum Master but does not currently have anyone on their team who wants or is able to take on the role. They go to the TPG, and the TPG provides them with someone who can fulfill that role.
 * Periodic or one-off collaborative engagements to facilitate process improvements for individuals and teams.
 * e.g. A team getting ready to kick off a big project wants help in reorganizing their team practices to use the Scrum framework. They request support from the TPG, and the TPG provides Scrum training to that team.
 * Mentorship and support for people in the Scrum Master (or similar) role.
 * e.g. An existing Scrum Master (not provided by the TPG) is looking for ways to increase and improve their skills. A request is made for support from the TPG, and the TPG provides mentorship and resources.

Engagement with the TPG is entirely optional for WMF teams.
 * Teams may elect to receive all, some, or none of the TPG services at any given time.
 * The TPG facilitates and cultivates healthy team practices, to the best of its resources, as teams request.

Fridays we wear tropical shirts.
 * The TPG aims to not be prescriptive nor dogmatic.
 * The TPG is agnostic in regards to specific methodologies (e.g. Scrum vs Kanban).

The team

 * Arthur Richards - Team Practices Manager


 * Kristen Lans - Scrum Master (Mobile Web and Mobile Apps)


 * Grace Gellerman - Agile Coach (Analytics engineering, Wikimedia_Research including Design/Research)


 * Kevin Smith - Agile Coach (Search and Discovery, acting as Product Owner for Phabricator project management tooling improvements)


 * Joel Aufrecht - Agile Coach (VisualEditor)


 * David Strine - Scrum Master (Fundraising)


 * Max Binder - Scrum Master (Mobile Apps)

FY2015Q4 (April - June 2015)

 * 1) List of practices defined by editing team and stakeholders that directly supported release of VisualEditor in Q4. (more details)
 * 2) Document request for and advocate for reliable burndown charts in Phabricator.
 * 3) Conduct team development workshop with Release Engineering team.
 * 4) Publish Q3 THC data and share organizational trends/make recommendations to management.
 * 5) Deliver Q4 THC to all engineering teams.

Ongoing mandates

 * 1) Scale Team Practices Group.
 * 2) Providing dedicated resourcing for a team's Scrum Master (or similar) role.
 * 3) Ad-hoc team/individual process coaching.
 * 4) Mentorship and support for people in the Scrum Master (or similar) role.
 * 5) Other work that advances TPG goals but doesn't have a tidy goal.

Initiatives

 * Test Coverage initiative

Practices Library

 * Best Practices Handbook
 * Glossary
 * Recommended Reading
 * Useful Questions
 * Phabricator tips (Sandbox, Work-in-Progress, DRAFT!!)
 * How to run a good meeting
 * WMF Processes Survey
 * Scrum Ceremonies
 * Scrum Standup
 * Scrum Sprint Planning Meeting
 * Scrum Estimation Meeting
 * Scrum Sprint Retrospective

Presentations

 * Tech talk ("The state of Team Health across Wikimedia Engineering")
 * Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YfkxpJTuY4
 * Tech talk ("Kanban: An alternative to Scrum?")
 * Recorded hangout: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zT8cUtMTGPI
 * Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1w51To_TUN5t8w5ay8rvRwDy56I9ac4Jbx9bZOCnDd4g/pub
 * "Developing Distributedly: or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Remoties" - Presentation by Arthur Richards at the Global Scrum Gathering in Phoenix, AZ on 4 May 2015.

Purpose and Goals

 * Proposal for formation of the Team Practices Group
 * 2014-2015 Goals

How we work
These procedures are customized for how TPG does its own work; see the Practices Library above for generic versions and templates.
 * Creating, Managing, and Finishing Work in TPG
 * TPG Team Norms
 * Roles and Responsibilities of TPG team members
 * Onboarding to TPG
 * Health check survey
 * Analysis of usage of public and private TPG mailing lists
 * TPG Tea Time

How we have done

 * TPG Retrospectives
 * FY2015Q2: slides, minutes

Contact

 * IRC:
 * Join the mailing list (or view its archives)
 * Send email to that public list: [mailto:teampractices@lists.wikimedia.org teampractices@lists.wikimedia.org]