Talk:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2016-2017/Mid-year check-in

Comments from Mike Peel

Thanks for posting your mid-year check-in! There's lots of interesting information here. I have a number of questions:

• I'm trying to understand the budget table compared to the plan (Table 8 at Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2016-2017/Final). I'm assuming that these numbers aren't a straight 6-month calculation from those, since many numbers aren't the total divided by two, so I guess that a more detailed financial modelling went into this than was posted in the plan. It makes it difficult to understand if the variances are actually underspends, or deferred costs, though - e.g. the biggest variance is in the grants line, but 50% of the total grants budget is 273k, which is almost exactly the actual. If there is a more detailed model of expenditure here, could it be shared, or could notes be added to each row to explain differences from 50% of the annual budget lines?
• It would be easier to compare values if the "Year Over Year Actuals" table was merged with the first table, and the same lines used for each set of data. Some of the values between the two tables seem to be discrepant, particularly the "Data Center Expenses" row. (It also looks odd that grants has a separate table for this and the department summary, rather than just being a row in the main tables.)
• Most of the underspends and overspends seem reasonable (staffing low as it's the first half of the year, processing fees high because of more donations). Grants I already mentioned above. The other one that jumps out is the "temporary" large underspend in data centre costs, could an explanation of that be added to the page?
• In product, what was the "significant unbudgeted investment in Wikidata"?
• I can't see any content that focuses on the WMF's governance processes, which was a significant concern raised through the FDC recommendations. I would like to see an update on how things are going here.
• In a number of cases the objective hasn't started yet but still has a tick. Maybe distinguish these by a mark that indicates they're to come in the second half of the year?
• As a formatting request, can you include more links in the highlights section to appropriate pages with more information?
• You've hidden the news about the office move well, right at the bottom of the page. ;-) Do you have information that can be shared about the financial impact of the move and the timing?
• Finally, I'm interested in hearing your thoughts about how useful this set of objectives has been to you when assessing the mid-term impact of the WMF as a whole. Are there objectives that have worked better than expected, or worse?

Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 22:56, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Hi Mike, thank you for the questions, and I apologize about the delay in responding to them.

• That is correct that we don’t simply divide the total budget by two. With grants for example, the timing of the budgeted amounts align with the timing of the grant rounds. Each individual line of our budget has it’s own timing particularities and we worked with the budget managers to plan for the timing of all expenses. They are not always accurate given that we make timing estimates in early spring for the following June to July period. Circumstances often affect the timing between when the budget is made and when the expenses take place, but we endeavor to make our best projection. You can see further information about the some of the larger items in our explanations above each department table. In the Community Engagement section, we mention that a few of the FDC APG grants were delayed until Jan.
• Thanks for highlighting the difficulty in comparing year over year to the program vs non-program expenses in the table above. We have made an attempt at providing this in the FY17-18 annual plan. Secondly, we corrected the discrepancies. Thanks for pointing out that the Data Center Expenses were about $1,000 off. I am not sure how that happened. Lastly, the reason we included grants as a separate table as well as in other tables was because we wanted to make sure that grants was highlighted individually as well as in the context of other expenses.
• Our data center capital expenses are under running for two reasons. Firstly, the team who manages our Data Center was able to reduce some of our ongoing this year. Secondly, the team has also revised their deployment and purchasing plans that resulted in much of the purchasing being pushed to FY 16-17 Q3&Q4. We edited the description of the technology expenses to include a note about that point.
• The delta between the budget and actual spend is an outcome of foreign currency exchange differences between USD and the Euro. When the budget estimate was made, the currency exchange was not reflected. We will also rewrite the response because there was not a significant unbudgeted investment in Wikidata.
• As for the governance review, there is some information to share, and I will update this once I get some input from a few people internally.
• We will consider how to identify objectives that haven't started yet with some other kind of symbol in the future.
• Please see the Annual Plan for 2017-18 as it will have more information about the cost of the office move.
• We are still reflecting on the effectiveness of these objectives and we have some dedicated time planned to do a more thorough retrospective on the whole process. I can say now that it appears to have helped us identify and focus our work. --JBaldwin (WMF) (talk) 23:09, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi Mike, James asked me to respond to your question about the governance process improvements. The Governance Committee is taking the lead on the governance project, and it will require some time with the Board of Trustees. In recent months, the Board has been primarily focused on supporting the organization's annual planning and the strategy discussions. The Governance Committee shared an update at the Board meeting in December, and plans to discuss governance process improvements in the first or second quarter this year, following the first phase in the strategy discussions. Thanks. Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 20:58, 18 April 2017 (UTC)

Bug? one phrase is devided into two separate strings for 'Build new partnership'

It looks to me that one phrase is devided into two separate strings; It should read 'Build new partnership'. Translations:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2016-2017/Mid-year check-in/759/ says Build new
Translations:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2016-2017/Mid-year check-in/760/ says partnership
Could I translate Translations:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2016-2017/Mid-year check-in/759/ as Build new partnership, then ignore/blank string Translations:Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2016-2017/Mid-year check-in/760/ or not? ----Omotecho (talk) 22:29, 11 April 2017 (UTC)