Collaboration

We had the pleasure collaborating on the creation and succesful development for more than 10 high tech startups.

We realized that the way how we collaborate defines a big part of the outcome.

A lot of this knowledge can be found on https://threefold.info/cocreation/

Working together with the OurWorld / ThreeFold ecosystem means you agree and are committed to above as such its highly appreciated you take some time to go over the info.

Summary lets choose the best of the 2 ways

There are 2 ways how to collaborate:

The typical pyramid system, where a boss manages (directs) a sub boss until the required results are achieved and any non compliance results in “fixing” the issue. This results in harsh cultures and not even that effective.
A circular system with clear stakeholders, examples are scrum, … These are more agile methods and leave a lot of freedom but require a certain discipline. To let 2 work agreement on how to interface (tools, process reports, …) needs to be agreed upon between ALL stakeholders because it's more dynamic and more interconnected compared to 1.

Obviously we are not a believer of 1, this means certain discipline and agreement to following existing tooling is a must.

2 is a commitment though, often we see people wanting to combine the benefits of 1 into 2, that often doesn’t work e.g. “TRUST me, I know what I am doing, let me alone…” these are statements which can work in 1 not in 2.

In 2 we trust each other by design but we require transparency and ability to comment on the work we are doing.

Tools

TF has adopted a set of tools to work following “2”, these tools are maybe not something you are used to or comfortable with. But don’t panic, millions of people have been able to do this before you,
so I guess you can do the same (the system we use is the same as github but actually easier).

Our tools

We use Gitea for
- Task management
- Story Management
- Websites
- Specs, Code, …
- E-Books, Wiki’s, Manuals
- There is continuous integration & deployment.
- Gitea is the basis for our own future vision of how to collaborate deploy on TFGrid see https://threefold.info/tech/tech/roadmap.html
We use GDrive for all our other documents
- All Info is in a GDrive folder dedicated for Project INCA
We use Telegram for internal communication
- Also groups, you can have topics just like we do in Slack.
- I am sorry but I don’t want our team to lose time by using yet another tool

Not enough reporting

A common complaint is that gitea doesn’t give enough reporting, there is a plan to fix this

A portal is being created to make it easy for all of us to collaborate, will be done in Summer
- Company/Project Directory
  (what are all projects our larger community is working on)
- People Directory
- Nice overview of Stories/Tasks/Milestones/… will get info from Gitea
- Priority management: will warn user when we are getting behind on tasks, stories
- Reward dashboard (tokens, shares, reward pool, …)
- Information overview (what is most relevant info per project)
- Contract overview (with security of course), includes our SAFE’s
Phase 2:
- Internal chat/messaging
  (might replace telegram for internal communication at one point in time)
- Integrated sort of forum for discussions
- Video Conferencing

We work in an agile way

As such we want everyone to understand and endorse that we are not a pyramid and are ok to work in a more Teal Based organization structure:

No-one is the boss of a pyramid, we don’t do politics.
Instead we have coordinators and they make sure that stories, milestones are understood, these are on gitea, they make sure there are stakeholders and stakeholders do agree on the stories & milestones. (do note stories are high level and have nicely described deliverables and requirements).
All information worked at all times is transparent, and on the right location, no-one keeps it on their own drive not even to prepare, people are disciplined to make sure files no longer relevant go to _archive folder.
We avoid too many meetings, we make stories, we make specs, we review specs, we use git… to get to consensus and then the occasional stakeholder meeting is used to find consensus. We log (comments) on the stories. We make everything accountable.
We accept our wiki as a single source of truth even if it means learning how to use it, we will not ad hoc put all kinds of documents everywhere which of course cannot be followed by the team and will need endless meetings.
We are aware of victimhood and try not to be there, we take responsibility for our own actions first, if the story is not clear and we accepted it it's our own fault, if we didn’t escalate to the right stakeholders it's our own fault, if we didn’t report our progress properly it's our own fault people don’t know,...
We avoid as much as we can centralized tools, only when there is really no alternative (yet) we use them e.g. GDrive and the stakeholders do agree. No-one has the power to choose another tool unless OurWorld, Project INCA & TF together agree. This is super important to make sure that we can create this portal and work together efficiently.
Whoever cannot work this way is not welcome to be an active contributor to the Project INCA Team. The coordinators make sure this section is enforced.

We do believe

Our Team Members are passionate and truly Believe TF has something to offer.
Our Team Members DO not do it to make a quick win (tokens),
Our Team Members do it in the first place because they want TF to succeed.
Our Team Members are capable of collaborating and being inclusive and respectful.
Our Team Members do understand we are different and want to be different

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