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Exploring Governance Models: Roles, responsibilities/authority, decision making process, communication mechanisms/frequency (GOV)

Exploring Governance Models: Roles, responsibilities/authority, decision making process, communication mechanisms/frequency (GOV)

Oct 03, 2015

Description: What governance models are working for other open source communities? What type of model may we want to pursue? Note: governance model will not be formalized at this meeting. This is a preliminary conversation.

Leads: Dykki

To Join Remotely: 

Join the call: https://www.uberconference.com/info3285

Optional dial-in number: 716-293-6106

PIN: 63498

Rapporteur/Notetaker: Sandy Hawley

Notes from Session:(See also Dykki's Slides)

What is Governance? General vs Direction

  • a method for equity- make people feel process is fair
  • share knowledge
  • a way to make decisions
  • ensuring continued coordination
  • visibility
  • simplify onboarding process for new members
  • reduce duplication
  • shared expectations of behavior
  • ensure activities are done as agreed, equity

DIRECTION - How much direction do we want in our Governance?

  • maintaining the roadmap- ensure community's objectives align with what is being built
  • ensure leverage donor $ as much as possible
  • In small groups like this, tend to have less governance - if gov. is more directive, might have a trade off with innovation

Models in OpenSource

  • Dictatorial
  • Enlightened
  • Delegated

  • Are we concerned that with such delegation, lack of leadership, the product gets watered down or won't be as high quality as with a tighter sphere of direction? 
  • There are many ways to do this
  • Tech group talked about one group develops something, and one person is nominated to say whether or not it should be committed to the core (avoid bureaucracy)- "Technical Board" ; sometimes there is more than one person in the review/approve role
  • Conflict resolution is a key part
  • Gates grant expects delegated model
  • How many resources would we put forth to bring in volunteers?
    • concern: do we think people are motivated to volunteer, or are they here because they are paid?
    • we want volunteers, but is that realistic?
    • people are motivated to develop personally; company pays them to participate because they believe there is value in participating, to be able to influence and shape the product, and to be recognized as a leader
      • motivation is within open source approach and the opportunities that provides – it can actually achieve objectives by nature of the development community
      • os communities are typically a wide variety and mix of corporate, personal and individual motivation
      • people are here for a variety of reasons, but we may not want to assume that is the structure of this community - what is realistic?
      • donor wants it to be sustainable- when the $ dries up, does the community end? Are we always going to be dependent on Gates and USAID to support the community?
        • fundraising and development skills are key
        • there are ways to keep the costs low
        • somebody has to be motivated to keeping the community 
        • Ideal: we are making a minimum investment that is "running itself"
  • Preference (USAID) non-donor funding play a bigger role
  • Companies find ways to make money as part of being in community- training, distribution, support services for product - but community largely maintains themselves with sponsorship from company or donor
  • Where would we get that sort of private sector sponsorship? Doesn't Gates empower VillageReach to sponsor this? The $ is coming from them right now, but if TW or another company were seeing large upside to being a partner/vendor of OpenLMIS, they could choose to sponsor, but it will be an evolution.
    • The more successful, the more opportunities there are
    • We could get funding from a Google/PS entity  
  • We either accept that its donor funded or....
  • Generally the interest in this is going to be non-profit
    • our purpose is to facilitate collaboration between members (each who have varied interests)- sponsorship through grants, other fundraising efforts
    • how do we cover the costs that exist?
      • JSI- we can all donate a portion of our free time, but if we're not billable to projects, we can spend significant amounts of time on this project
      • We should consider motivating our organization to sponsor the time required to participate – organizations need to determine the value, and then sponsor their employees to participate (find a way to invest)
      • Are we at risk of having only 1 or 2 companies running this, as opposed to  multiple orgs contributions
      • if 90% work is done by one, that one has more decision-making
      • we are trying to get more people to contribute
      • code is not the only way to contribute
      • if you want to have a vital and diverse community, you have to find as many ways as possible to engage- volunteers, academics, companies, etc.
      • we can choose and shape the environment that would allow from contributions from everywhere
  • iHIRS example
    • looked for existing solutions- proprietary too expensive, started small, came into capacity plus (USAID funding)
    • OpenLMIS is farther along than iHRIS ever got- more contributors, more diverse community
    • iHIRS- didn't want to upset USAID by taking it outside the project, the funding stream is greatly shifted - they didn't lay in the foundation to get others involved

  • What if a few months down the line, the contributions get smaller and smaller- that impacts the product - what motivates beyond an enabling environment?
    • other priorities can impact timelines; we may not have power to decide as individuals to participate as long as it takes
    • the only solution is diversity- can't depend on one
    • near/long term: not seeing enough clarity that this organic growth would happen, but in the near term, is it possible for us and the donors to come together, to create an MVP to move it forward?
    • coalition-based props to support the community is possible
    • have to have vision that there is value in the community beyond the countries- it has value to organization's goals and objectives
    • support and help people be successful with the product - if we do that, they will want to participate
    • when the "payback" is 12+ months out- we need value in a shorter time frame i.e. re-architecture-- can that be the priorities for community> participants motivation is tied to time?
      • people may find better options if we can't move quickly,
      • rather have commitment by core group that we will achieve goals in realistic time frame- WHAT WILL BE DONE WHEN
      • could we have a core group to set objectives and resources to achieve those objectives-- would like us to see the path forward, steps to get there>

COMMUNITY COUNCIL RESPONSIBILITIES- DELEGATED GOV (We agree)

  • have to be specific about responsibilities, structure, membership, communication - need to articulate the responsibilities of the governing bodies
    • Community Council, Governance "team" - (teams are not governing bodies, they collaborate, but don't have authority on direction)
    • Technical Committee (decided) 3 members 1 CHAI, TW, VR- decision making power over tech contributions; propose committee select direction moving forward
      • people felt like they could commit the time, CHAI on hold, PATH should make a case to join if they have interest or time (time wasn't an issue for those partners) 
  • Community Council and Tech Committee have equal authority - collaborate on key decisions; sample responsibilities:
    • membership prop
    • conflict resolution
      • OpenLMIS needs an EMR (clients demand it) - this group would make that decision 
  • Values and product principals, stewarding that and revising
  • Processes (onboarding,
  • Ordaining gov bodies
  • Direction
    • Community
    • Product (this seems the most challenging)
  • Format:
    • Annual Meeting + one off sessions
    • Product Dev- how do drive the community that is flexible,  but not schizophrenic
      • We don't want to move forward without good process
      • HOW does stuff get on the roadmap?
  • We heard/We want
    • move quickly
    • not have a lot of process

Product Team/Product Management

  • Role of Product Manager - build the right product (we don't have this roll filled right now- so Governance board is driving that)
  • Product Architect- build it the right way
  • Collaborate on Roadmap- but eventually define Product Manager role and evolve
  • Do people want to be on the PM Committee OR this is something that the Community Council decides?
  • Do we empower one person (PM) to be the leader or committee has ability to hire the position? Committee has oversight on the person 
  • TECH COMM (proposed : Josh, Elias, Jeff)- build the product right way
    • every other week 2x month 
  • PRODUCT COMM (Proposed: Kevin, Rene, Chai (TBD) - build the right product- seek advice and direction from gov. group and others via Annual Mtg)
    • manages risk of partner development outside scope; we need technical resources 
  • GOV COMM: (Enabling Comm)
    • we need people to drive/lead community beyond Comm. Manager, resolve higher level issues, funding
    • advantages of formalization - avoid risk of alienating people when there is no structure
    • unusual for a group not to have a formal group
    • "grab bag"
    • funding and advocacy- somebody needs to do this, manage this (not urgent, but needs to happen, PM and TC shouldn't be their priority)- if you don't assign someone, it won't happen
      • if effort of community to allocate resources should be highly focused on PM and TC, GOV enables/supports those roles 
    • community processes (values, principal maintenance,
    • communication- emails
    • MONTHLY conversation (record)
    • monthly emails
    • power to help with conflict management- review, provide comments (if things required a vote committee members vote when you can't reach consensus)
    • Annual Meeting give opportunity for input from community- PM and TC execute
  • We need consensus on priorities of roadmap-PM needs to be empowered to make decisions, unless overruled or there isn't consensus within PM Committee

CORE vs. COMMUNITY MODULES 

  • Community-Supported vs. "other"
  • Isn't as simple as "it's part of it, or not part of product (Core v/s Universe)
  • 1) Core Product +
  • 2) Opt-In  Modules are either Community Supported OR Custom
  • If you're implementing "quick and dirty", either  it's not important to community short term- OR I'm going to spend more, take more time so that other people can use this as a community supported plug-in because community may want to use it (bar coding)
    • if country can't support it,
    • OR spend more money to make it more useful
  • If bar coding is not on the community roadmap, but there is funding to do it, could meet the code standards but it's not on the roadmap - there is a place for such things
  • How do we incentivize partners to contribute back- defining the distinction is key- it will guide implementers on ability to contribute (or not because of time and $ constraints)
    • We have to have an architecture and supports to distinguish core vs universe; with  "optional" capability (PRODUCT vs TECH!)
      • "community supported" and modules have specific meaning and mean different things to different people

 

Artifacts:

 

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