12 Matching Annotations
  1. Apr 2016
    1. Start with a description of the current workflow

      We recently did this for Book Dash. We used the 'brown paper' technique: drawing and writing our entire current process of a huge sheet of brown paper stuck on the wall; and forcing ourselves to describe the process as it was now, and not as we wanted it to be. It was surprisingly tough and complex. We'd been told by an experienced facilitator that even for a simple org like ours, it would take four hours. We set aside just two, rushed in parts, and it still took four. When we were done, we had created one of the most valuable documents the org has ever seen.

      Which is all to say: this one piece of the process may need more detail here, or a link to more detail on approach and technique.

    2. Facilitation

      This section is great, and necessarily thorough. It would be easier to navigate while reading if the points were numbered, and at the start there was a short summary of what's to come. E.g. 'First we'll cover Facilitation techniques, including 17 important guidelines. Then we'll describe the Phases comprising a full CDS.'

    3. Open Source, IMHO, has turned a blind eye to these experiences and left a lot of learnings about engineering and collaboration on the table. It is perhaps time not to be so stubborn and look at what we can learn from past mistakes and successes experienced and extensively documented in the proprietary product development sectors and see what we can place within our own unique, and sometimes hard to understand, free software context.

      This paragraph seems out of place here, as if it's a whole other argument -- full of implicit depth and complexity -- tacked on in summary. Maybe it needs its own section or subhead, or could come out completely and be dealt with in a separate post.

  2. May 2014
    1. “Mobile” money/payments are being done, and done well, already.

      This is a very specific project genre example, not a general guideline, so it seems an odd one out. Perhaps better moved to a section or sublist elsewhere, gathered with other similar examples.

    2. their idea for social change

      Referring to funding/supporting a person's idea often troubles me, because there is an infinite difference between (a) an idea as a smart thought and (b) an idea as a working hypothesis that a person has begun testing. I think the Foundation supports the latter: working hypotheses that are already being tested in some small way. Is there a way to suggest this without complicating things?

  3. Nov 2013