Josepha 4:31 am on February 6, 2019  

Strengths and Challenges: Follow Up

I really appreciate all of the thoughtful feedback I received on my post “Our Strengths and Challenges”. Many concerns were shared — I’ve done my best to synthesize them below — and I think there are some immediate changes we can make to address some of these difficulties. But first, let’s take a look at what we’ve uncovered.

Shared Challenges

From my reading, contributor requests can be grouped into three areas:

Communication

  • Clearly stated project goals and values
  • Consolidation of discussions and needed skills across the project
  • Better coordination between teams
  • Clearer responsibilities and goals for teams
  • Collaborative conflict resolution methods

Organization

  • Understanding of roles, leadership structures, and decision making
  • Understanding of self-sponsored volunteering vs company-sponsored and how much time any volunteer has available to contribute
  • Proactive identification of issues that could affect the whole project
  • Smoother hand-off for component maintainers (both with code and without code)
  • Ways to help WordPress make a positive change in the broader context of the web

Belonging

  • Awareness that active contributors come from all over the globe
  • Better recognition and celebration of successes
  • Understanding of how to participate in vision-setting and prioritization

How Can I Help

As we (the WordPress community) work toward addressing these concerns, I think we’ll see easier planning, a reduction in burnout, an increase in meaningful participation, and easier collaboration.

The communication requests seem to be something I can help with right now. I’d like to start with these two changes:

I would love to hear which of these things listed above you all feel would have the highest impact. Or if you think they will all have equal impact, I suppose. 🙂 Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!