Wikimedia monthly activities meetings/Quarterly reviews

The purpose of quarterly project reviews is to ensure accountability and create an opportunity for course corrections and resourcing adjustments in consultation with a team working on a specific Wikimedia Foundation initiative.

As an example, a team may be tasked with increasing the number of photo uploads. It may seek to achieve this goal through two to three initiatives. Upon review, it may become apparent that only one initiative is successful. A quarterly review can serve as a checkpoint to prioritize the successful initiative and adjust resource allocation accordingly.

Reports and outcomes are publicly shared, redacting only selected confidential information (in particular legal issues). Initially, we were only holding these reviews with Executive Director participation for the top priority initiatives as identified in Sue Gardner's Narrowing focus recommendations (see also the introductory announcement of the quarterly reviews from December 2012). By Q2 of 2014/15, almost every team or department was conducting quarterly review meetings. With the same quarter, the Foundation's activity reports were switched from a monthly to a quarterly cycle, to better align with the quarterly planning and goalsetting process, and started to reuse material from the quarterly review documentation. Also in Q2 of 2014/15, we began to more clearly mark goals as achieved or missed (green/red), and in the following quarter (Q3) started to compile these assessments into an overview as part of the quarterly report (example). NB: In a mature 90-day goalsetting process, the "sweet spot" is for about 75% of goals to be a success. Organizations that are meeting 100% of their goals are not typically setting aggressive goals.

With Q2 of 2016/17, the format of the meetings saw further changes and they were renamed to "quarterly check-ins."

Presentation slides from the quarterly review meetings are linked in the Minutes listed above, and also collected in a category on Commons.

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