Wikimedia Product/Technical Program Management

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The Technical Program Management team joined the Product and Technology unified Program Management team in 2023.
Not to be confused with the Program Management team that is also in the Product dept.

See also: How are Technical Program Management and Program Management different, and how are they the same?

Who we are[edit]

We are a team in Wikimedia Foundation's Product department dedicated to guiding delivery processes and facilitating healthy teams through good practices.

Values

  • We believe in operational excellence and continuous improvement.
  • We uphold a culture of accountability.
  • We care about the connections between people and teams.
  • We enable others to do their best work.

Team

  • Max, Lead Team Effectiveness Coach, Interim Team Manager
  • Aida, Lead Technical Program Manager
  • Lani, Senior Technical Program Manager
  • Lauren, Senior Technical Program Manager
  • Mariya, Senior Technical Program Manager

What we do[edit]

We help teams work better.

We promote a culture of continuous improvement and process optimization. We coordinate the delivery of projects, identify and mitigate risks, and address blockers. We facilitate Agile meetings such as standups, sprint planning, retrospectives, and backlog refinement, as well as other team meetings (and we don't limit ourselves to Agile, if there's a better fit for a team). We facilitate internal communications across teams and departments (and throughout the organization), ensuring a shared understanding of timelines and priorities.

For more specifics, see this overview of day to day work.

How we do it[edit]

We improve process, communication, and understanding.

We focus on developing and supporting healthy team dynamics as well as a culture that welcomes diverse perspectives. We guide teams to find effective workflows through ongoing discussion of performance, as well as dedicated coaching. We treat all engagements with a focus on sustainability, showing teams how to be their best on their own so that we can support more teams. Sometimes this means we consult, and sometimes this means we embed on a team for a while before moving on.

How are Technical Program Management and Program Management different, and how are they the same?[edit]

These teams with near-identical names and titles are, essentially, one big team with 2 managers, and we all do similar work. In instances where 2 people with program management approaches co-exist on a single team, each such instance will have its own unique delineation of responsibilities depending on needs and capacity.

Teams we work with[edit]

Max

  • Product and Technology Technical Program Management
  • Product Leads

Aida

Lani

Lauren

Mariya

Tools, practices, and presentations we like[edit]

Personal essays[edit]

Approaches and styles for specific roles[edit]

Technical Program Management Team Norms 2021[edit]

Meetings[edit]

  • We use our weekly team meetings to focus mostly on work. We take turns organically to host the meeting. We use emoticons to queue up to speak.
  • For deep dive discussions, we use Gramanada meetings making sure to add the topic to the agenda at least 1 business day ahead of time and indicating that attendance is optional.
  • For 1:1s, we notify the person before scheduling over or canceling.

Communications[edit]

  • We use @here judiciously in slack channels and @channel virtually never.
  • We thread conversations in slack channels to manage noise.
  • We use brackets to make it easy to identify the most important emails e.g. Subject: [Urgent] Please respond today….
  • For emails from Carol, Margeigh, or Max, we respond within 24 hours if there is a call to action.

Team Phabricator Board[edit]

  • The team board is for tickets that have actions items for everyone with the ticket steward added as assignee. We use checklists in the ticket for multiple inputs with @mentions.
  • We can create tickets at any time but they must be refined or resolved together in the team meeting.

Time-Off[edit]

  • Mark full-day out of office on our own calendars including any personal time off and any region-specific holidays.

Social Event Suggestions[edit]

Part of the mandate of the Technical Program Management team is to assist with facilitating offsite meetings, including both in person and virtual team building events.

Remote Virtual Events[edit]

Facilitation Techniques[edit]

See Also[edit]

All Subpages

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