I have always been interested in computers, and would find myself hanging out with the Computer Science students instead of the Aviation Management or Business Management students I was a part of. At home and at work I have been largely self-teaching myself using computers starting with Excel and Access with VBA through ASP and SQL at work. Thankfully my current employer values education, and so I have been taking classes and not only learning the technology, but un-learning what I have been doing wrong over the years. At home, though, I have been teaching myself Linux, system administration, networking and the overall method of migrating our system from Windows to Linux. I am involved in the Danbury Area Computer Society (DACS.org) I have the opportunity to take what I've learned the hard way and hopefully help others.. I have been enjoying Open Source for a while now, and I am hoping to get a better understanding of the entire model and application.
Authored Comments
Jono, insightful article.
So if I am reading this right, projects are going to gather people of different opinions and different expectations and sometimes that includes people that are more detrimental to the project than beneficial.
Unfortunately with projects you don't have the same hierarchy to address the situation to a "boss" as a reasonably sized company. It is generally a very flat hierarchy except in the larger and more structure projects. But then there can be arguments of it being too controlling.
One attribute that helps is having a clear goal to focus on.
Questions can be framed around "how does this help the goal?" and depending on how well defined the goal is, can end many arguments before they start.
Smaller projects communication is more personal, while larger projects can have things fester out of sight. Focused goals provides a means for people to self-regulate.
Another part is defining clear expectations.
Expectations provides a focus and goal for the ego. It allows the individual to keep their thoughts in context of the situation. The more expectations lines up with reality the less stress there is involved for the individual. Expectations can also be called the "culture" of the group.
A Machiavellian corporate-owned project is going to have a very different flavor than a grassroots laid back group. Going into either group with the opposite expectations is going to cause friction.
I laughed when I saw training for the Boy Scouts on the subject of "removing unwanted volunteers" but when I thought of it, it makes perfect sense. People don't know how to remove a volunteer or how to counteract the "but we are only volunteers" counter-point.
All this sounds like business/entrepreneur/non-profit management. Are there resources available for the project leaders or potential leaders, focused on open source and volunteer groups?
It will be interesting to see how scopes are adopted by the users, a rather fickle lot. Some of that may be related to how intuitive or easily the user sees how it works for them!
Great to see you putting some columns here. I look forward to reading other articles. Your experience should provide some insight not readily noticeable by people who haven't been that involved.