Abstract: Calling the world's largest community of free open knowledge our customer, we’re developing software in one of the biggest and best known volunteer driven environments. This environment is highly diverse in the means of culture, language, preferences and requirements and provides new challenges for agile software development. Customer collaboration is pushed to a new level when agile processes need to deal with feedback from such a diverse community. In this talk we want to share our gained knowledge and experience about integrating and adapting agile workflows and processes to the challenges of diversity on different levels. Abraham and Tobias are both part of the software development team at Wikimedia Deutschland and involved in Wikidata, the largest open knowledge project, since the very beginning. They will share insights, lessons learned and best practices how to deal with agile development principles while respecting and integrating feedback and collaboration from the Wikimedia community, the world’s largest community dedicated to free knowledge, as their customer. = Learning Outcomes = * dealing with large volunteer communities in agile software development * respecting and integrating community feedback in agile processes * how to face high diversity in community driven projects at big scale * dealing with conflicts between full time employees (developers) and volunteer developers * transformation from a large project into a product into a software department driven by agile methods * how to succeed as a SCRUM Master (concerning agile principles) in such a challenging ecosystem

1. Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Software Development & Engineering
October 6th, 2015 - Berlin, “Manage Agile 2015”
Abraham Taherivand abraham.taherivand@wikimedia.de
Tobias Gritschacher tobias.gritschacher@wikimedia.de
Our Community Is Our Customer -
Diversity Challenges Agile
CC BY-SA

2. Wikimedia
2

3. Wikimedia Projects
3

4. Vision and Mission
4

5. Wikimedia Deutschland e. V.
5

6. Wikimedia Deutschland e. V.
6

7. Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
7
Volunteer Support
Politics and Society
Software Development
& Engineering
Collaboration with
Education Institutions

8. Software Development & Engineering
8

9. Software Development & Engineering
9
● 25 employees
○ 2-3 developer teams
○ 17 engineers (incl. UX)
○ 4 Product and Project Managers
● Wikidata & Wikibase
○ Community centered software engineering
based on community requirements and needs

10. Community
10

11. Community
11

12. Active Wikimedia Editors for All Wikimedia
Projects (5+ edits per month) *
12* Source: http://reportcard.wmflabs.org/

13. 13
Challenges

14. 14
● Everything is open
○ big plan
○ annual goals
○ quarterly goals
○ sprint planning
○ progress
○ bug tracker
○ code & code review
Challenge: Openness

15. 15
● Developers know the community
● Regular meetups with the community
● Community communication expert
Facing Openness

16. Challenge: Feedback
16
● A feature does not necessarily need to go live for feedback
● Dealing with community feedback
○ Product Manager
○ Development Team
● Feedback 24/7
○ Various places

17. Facing Feedback
17
● Team knows the community
● Product Manager close to community and to developers
● Product Manager acts as “safeguard”
● Highly self-organized team

18. Challenge: Fragmentation
18
● Feedback can be extremely fragmented
● The Wikiversum is huge
○ discussion pages
○ user pages
○ project chats
○ mailing lists
○ bug trackers
○ code review

19. Facing Fragmentation
19
● Planned/immediate feedback
● Room for the community
○ Contact devs
○ IRC
○ Technical wishes
● Meetups
○ Hackathons
○ Editathons

20. Challenge: Continuous deployment
20
● Short deployment loops
● Continuous product increment

21. Facing: Continuous deployment
21
● TDD
● Build on solid CI
● Code Review
● Definition of “Done”

22. Conclusion and Outlook
22
● Agile processes need continuous adaption in constantly changing
environment
● Foster the collaboration between community and developer teams
● Continuous deployment & continuous product increment
● Software vs. Project

23. 23
Contact:
Abraham Taherivand abraham.taherivand@wikimedia.de
Tobias Gritschacher tobias.gritschacher@wikimedia.de
www.wikimedia.de
https://wikimedia.de/wiki/Software-Entwicklung
software@wikimedia.de
@WikimediaDE
CC BY-SA

24. Credits
24
Ludwigs2 (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Blue_question_mark_(italic).svg), “Blue question mark (italic)”, CC BY-SA 3.0
Scinoptica (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Openness.jpg), „Openness“, CC BY-SA 3.0
Kevin Walsh (kevinzim) from Oxford, England (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Young_kudu_with_big_ears_(Kenya).jpg), “Young kudu
with big ears (Kenya)”, CC BY 2.0
Victoria Johnson (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Infinity_Bridge.jpg), “Infinity Bridge”, CC BY 2.0
Wikipedia miniglobe handheld: Wikimedia Foundation, „Wikipedia mini globe handheld“, CC BY-SA 3.0
Wikimedia Foundation, „WikimediaMosaicCapture“, CC BY-SA 3.0
Chri Strassegger, „ALLMENDE“, CC BY-SA 3.0