Each month, the Training team works in Sprints. These are goals we hope to accomplish for that month. At the end of the month, we conduct a retrospective by asking ourselves these questions:
What went well?
- We shipped a lot of content related to the 5.9 release!
- We had many new contributors proofread new content and revise existing content
- Several lesson plans are nearly ready to publish
- We attempted to ship content related to a release and I think we did well in getting the content there.
- Timely lesson plans will be shared with Meetup All local/regional gatherings that are officially a part of the WordPress world but are not WordCamps are organized through https://www.meetup.com/. A meetup is typically a chance for local WordPress users to get together and share new ideas and seek help from one another. Searching for ‘WordPress’ on meetup.com will help you find options in your area. organizers in monthly newsletters for their use
- Several courses launched, especially the Simple Site Editing
- The team worked together on the 5.9 release was great. team collaboration is quite nice.
- #forums has been suggesting the FSE course in support responses already to assist folks
- Workshops related to 5.9 have been really useful for the community to get familiar
- We were able to pull in new contributors to help.
- Cross-team initiatives like coordinating with #marketing #docs #wptv and even #core with MarComms for this release
- We coordinated very well on the release with #marketing #docs #polyglots
- I’m really pleased to see all the new faces and new contributors. That’s been going really well, and it’s been lovely to get to review people’s lesson plans!
What could we improve?
- Easier process for onboarding contributors to Learn and revised roles for editing content on Learn
- Create a checklist for proofreader to use when reviewing grammar, accessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility) of content (including image alt tags) and more
- Easier process for tracking contributions so that we can acknowledge them for their contributions.
- Get the courses for contributors published on Learn so that no one person is depended upon as much for training
- I dream of the day we can have comments in Learn with drafts
- We can add more detailed docs in handbook, how to contributor can contribute.
- Contributors user roles give them access to schedule/publish before content has been thoroughly reviewed. Concern. No fires this time.
- Not all of our committed goals were achieved
- We’re duplicating efforts by having similar content in Docs (particularly support articles), lesson plans, and courses. With some engineering, perhaps we could have 1 source that is maintained and presented in each of those areas.
- Being clearer on what is available for people to work on.
- Make sure we address any accessibility needs.
- Lesson plans created in Google Docs miss the primary template of content that standardizes lesson plans. Also, it makes including media (particularly screenshots) challenging
- We are not yet in parity with having a lesson plan matching every workshop
- Match content revisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. with Trello Project management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing. (or soon GitHub GitHub is a website that offers online implementation of git repositories that can easily be shared, copied and modified by other developers. Public repositories are free to host, private repositories require a paid subscription. GitHub introduced the concept of the ‘pull request’ where code changes done in branches by contributors can be reviewed and discussed before being merged be the repository owner. https://github.com/)
- We can manage lesson plan through Github as earlier
What will we do differently?
- Review our commitments and expectations on having the content by a specific date.
- Factor in additional goals beyond content as we work on the team’s quarterly goals as well.
- Elevate more opportunities for new contributors and retaining contributors
- Revisit @Sarah (She/Her)’s suggestion on running working sessions to help new contributors create lesson plans and workshops.
- Utilize the Revisions Scheduled plugin A plugin is a piece of software containing a group of functions that can be added to a WordPress website. They can extend functionality or add new features to your WordPress websites. WordPress plugins are written in the PHP programming language and integrate seamlessly with WordPress. These can be free in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory https://wordpress.org/plugins/ or can be cost-based plugin from a third-party further
- Create a standardized faculty team feedback form when reviewing content for accuracy and vetting contributors
#retro
That is one way I can prioritize what’s first, second, third.
And I need to learn!