Talk:Team Charter

Team Charter: The Open Siddur (OS) Project Executive Team

 * Comments are indented with colons and signed with tilde sequences. Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I converted the "word-processor" markup to semantic MediaWiki markup as I went along Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Might it be useful to have a project-wide charter including mission statement/statement of purpose before inventing bureaucracy? Also, I think that once we have a reasonably good draft, this definitely warrants public discussion. Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Team Members: Aharon Varady, Efraim Feinstein, Azriel Fasten, etc.

Team Goals
The Open Siddur Project Executive Team provides the resources and direction for open source software and free culture hackers to build an online platform for individuals and communities to preserve, innovate, and publish personally customized siddurim. As such, our goals include:


 * I see there being two separable technical tasks. One is producing a FOSS toolkit which includes the database(texts)+transforms+schemas+APIs.  The second is a website/online portion, which is an application of the toolkit. Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

1. Maintaining a welcoming organization, open without regards to political or denominational bent, as long as those who seek to participate support the principle of pluralism—and the obligation to act together with respect and Derekh Eretz

2. Enabling the collaboration of volunteer contributors to preserve siddur nushaot historical and contemporary, familiar and obscure, or which reflect the earnest and creative self-expression of Jews and Jewish communities regardless of their personal philosophy


 * Is 2 intended to limit 1? What is the extent/limit of the project's pluralism? Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

3. Express the core values of free culture and open source collaboration internally, as well as externally

4. Develop and maintain an atmosphere of mutual responsibility, where no problem is too small or too tough or too beneath us to take on

Team Structure
Roles and responsibilities:


 * CEO/Director of Education
 * Director of Development
 * Legal Advisor
 * Managing Editor for Documentation
 * Assistant Director for Financial Operation

Beyond the specific job descriptions of each of the Open Siddur Executive Team members, each team member is responsible for:

1. Keeping the other members of the OS team up to speed concerning their role, responsibilities and the state of their deliverables

2. Providing aid and support for team member responsibilities to enable the group as a whole to fulfill its responsibilities

Auxiliary roles that will be rotated from time to time include:


 * Facilitator/Meeting Coordinator: posts agendas 24 hours before meetings, facilitates meetings, handles logistics, brings meeting supplies (documents etc). Rotates.
 * Notetaker: takes notes during meetings, posts notes on wiki within 24 hours of a meeting. Rotates monthly.
 * Email Monitor: monitors emails and sends out a weekly summary of decisions made over email. Documents new proposals and consensus decisions on wiki. Communicates directly with the Managing Editor for Documentation. Creates online polls on an as needed basis


 * Keeping a history of decisions and pointers back to where they were made is a very important task. Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Time Keeper: Helps meeting and call facilitator stay on time. Rotates monthly.

And every team member of the Jerusalem hub is responsible for:


 * What is this? Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

1. Ensuring orderly conduct of the Jerusalem hub

2. Periodically pitching in to clean and maintain cleanliness of the location

3. Taking responsibility over one evening a month according to cycle for team fun activity

Team Process: Team members commit to creating a respectful environment in which all team members feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and ideas, contributing their work to the project, are content in their roles, feel heard, and find work-life balance to ensure over all health and wellbeing. We will work to support one another's learning and professional development, accomplish great things together, and we want our work together to be fun and rewarding.

Supervision on the team is focused on ensuring overall priorities are kept, and group activities run in coordination. All team members under direct supervision will check in once a week with their supervisors.


 * This is way too top-down for a FOSS project that is just starting. Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Communication: Team members for the executive team as a whole will communicate as a group via our team googlegroup, jewishliturgy-discuss@googlegroups.com, And post policies and guidelines on our project wiki, http://opensiddur.campitt.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Main_Page, and


 * I wouldn't reference specific technologies in a charter. 5 years from now, we're going to laugh at our current technical state Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

will meet in person weekly when in the same city, or by phone/telephony/IRC when geographically distant. All work and OS materials will be shared by


 * This is an onerous requirement Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

the team on the wiki when possible. Our team’s effectiveness will depend on our use of technology and in person communication as needed.

Meeting Schedule: The Open Siddur Project Executive Team will meet on a subject area basis until a set global time can be determined. Until such a time, team members will diligently fill out and submit Week in Review and Week in Preview forms, enabling greater transparency in group operations.


 * For most developers, this is a hobby. Hobbyists don't like filling out forms. Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Attendance: Not every team member is expected to attend every meeting scheduled, but all team members must notify the group within 24 hours of a meeting if they cannot attend (save emergencies). When unable to attend, a team member must alert the group via the team googlegroup.

Decision Making: Decisions are delegated to the division and position in which a problem comes up, with the authority of over-ride reserved for supervisors. As such, all team members are empowered to determine a solution to problems which come up—or the right course of action when opportunities arise—with the understanding that their autonomy is limited only when such decisions present a greater challenge to the Group as a whole. Final accountability within the team falls on the CEO, whereby the Board of Directors has the ability to override, and in severe cases reprimand and fire, the CEO from their position.


 * At this point, we're still small enough that consensus, meritocracy, and simply taking on and completing development are probably good enough. Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Conflict/Problem Solving: Should problems arise in our team, we will take them seriously and do our best to focus on productive rather than personal conflicts. Should conflicts arise, the following steps are to be followed:

1. Provide alternative solutions to the problem.

2. Listen to the many sides of the issue before drawing conclusions.

3. Involve a supervisor unless that supervisor is a party to the conflict. If the supervisor indeed is a party to the conflict, either raise the problem to a co-director or, if uncomfortable, to a Global Steering Committee member that will be designated if the conflict is impacting the team's overall performance.


 * Who is this GSC? Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

4. Keep the matter confidential if appropriate. As a team built on Jewish values we are committed to not gossiping.

5. Focus on task conflict rather than emotional conflict.

6. Contact a board member if the team has consensus and recognizes the team is unable to move forward without a nonpartisan point of view.


 * What puts someone on the board? Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Accountability and Performance Monitoring

Performance Monitoring: The Open Siddur Project Executive Team agrees that performance monitoring is essential to our ability to succeed as a team. Each division director or project manager will take primary responsibility of this, and will check in with the leaders of each sub-team periodically, and in the case of deliverables one week before a deadline, to assess progress. The project manager of the particular project is empowered to help the team member or sub team by requesting more help if work is not up to acceptable standards or is not on schedule.

Deadlines: To ensure that all completed work is of a high quality, all deadlines for major deliverables will be set for no less than one week prior to client delivery. All internal due dates will be decided upon by the director and the person responsible for providing the deliverable, and deadlines are negotiable only before that time. If a team member has an emergency and cannot submit work on time, they will be required to notify the team in due time so that work can be reallocated.


 * It's very hard to set hard deadlines for deliverables in entirely volunteer projects. Especially small ones.  Goals are one thing; hard deadlines are another. Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

Updates: Team members are expected to provide the team with robust updates about milestone and project status on a monthly basis so the team is able to coordinate across our project. Should an unforeseen event occur, team members are asked to notify the team immediately so that we can readjust responsibilities.

Evaluation and Accountability: The Open Siddur Project Executive Team will evaluate our progress on a monthly basis, at meetings which are led by the Meeting Coordinator. We encourage frank and open assessments of our progress and team contributions, but require that all comments be constructive.

Quality: Our team seeks to create a high quality project. Thus, all work is subject to evaluation, critique, and editing by the group to be made, if necessary, by a majority decision.


 * I think we need quality control guidelines for the core/QC team. Any breakage of those guidelines is a bug.  That also naturally suggests a mentoring process for new core team members. Efraim.feinstein 01:17, 16 July 2009 (UTC)

By signing the charter we commit to uphold the responsibilities outlined above

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 * General comments --
 * I think the idea of having statements of purpose is good; having etiquette guidelines for chats and lists are good. It may be a bit premature to set bureaucratic structures in stone, especially when there are only 3 contributing developers.  It leaves no room for structure to develop organically within the project.  At the beginning, the less formal structure exists, the better.  At this point, the only positions I think we may need formally are leaders for each subset of the project deliverables, documentation, an evangelist (PR director), and a treasurer.  But, with only 3 active devs, I can't name you who would take on those positions.  This document refers to a number of positions whose composition is undefined.  It makes no mention of how succession takes place, how new people enter the fold, how someone gets commit access to the repositories, which ones require special access, etc.  Efraim.feinstein 19:57, 15 July 2009 (UTC)