Communication Processes

Goal: At Mozilla, there is often a lack of clarity around where to find information on various projects as well as how teams track their works. This can make cross-functional communication difficult or non-existent. This projects attempts to make a compendium of Mozilla projects, documentation and communication practices in order to track how to get in contact and get involved with teams.

What issue are we trying to solve?

Communication is consistently an issue with virtual teams. Almost all projects within the broader Mozilla Framework consist of virtual teams. Communication issues appear on several levels:

• Multitude and lack of clarity about communication channels used
• Lack of participation in communication channels affecting critical mass
• Openness or the lack thereof in communication channels
• Mode/Task fitness for communication

These issues keep people from participating in projects, but even in cases where people are participating the issues are limiting peoples efficiency and waste valuable time and energy that could be better spent on moving the project forward. The audience for this project is primarily internal facing, but might be useful for new contributors with experience in other OS projects as well.

Participants

• Kadir atopal@mozilla.com (atopal on IRC)
• Jennie jhalperin@mozilla.com (jennierose on IRC)
• Srikar Ananthula - ananthulasrikar@gmail.com (srikar on IRC)

IRC: #communication Meeting notes: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/mG9eTS1CzD Joint working group meeting notes: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/communication-processess

What's the proposal?

We are going to document ways of participation and communication for each team within Mozilla in the first step. We are going to suggest improvements in the second step. We are going to implement and evaluate those improvements in the third step.

Deliverables

Q2

• A list of all teams we want to include in this analysis
• Categories we want to document
• Categories filled in for categories and teams
• Potential improvements to modes of communication

Q3

• Piloting improvements with interested teams
• Evaluation of implemented improvements

Q4

• Broader rollout to the rest of the organization as it makes sense

Roadmap

Q2

• Establishing the group. Assignments of tasks ✓

Q3

• Creating a list of all teams we want to include in this ✓
• Coming up with the categories we want to document ✓
• Reaching out to team leads to fill in the matrix

Q4

• Review of final matrix and initial suggestions (best practices)
• Reaching out to teams and pilot suggested improvements
• Evaluation of implemented improvements

Q1/2015

• Broader rollout to the rest of the organisation
• Continued evaluation of improvement

Next steps

Kadir: Inform interested parties about this group

• Yammer
• Community Building Group. (completed August 2014)
• Monday Community Meeting

Organize first meeting of the group

Make a decision on categories to be documented

Make a decision on what teams to work with

Create a project page based on categories we agreed on.

Set up form

Jennie: Reach out to first person for pilot

Everyone: review pilot