Thank you @Jen and @danielle for this conversation which is important in so many ways!
I also welcome the opportunity to learn in a supported context, and in fact a bit more structure would work well for me. If I knew there were a set of things I need to know or be competent at (and that people in the global team could assume have that knowledge or competency) AND I had a way to acquire and test that competency, I think I would have way more confidence that I could be successful with my own instance and contribute more globally. In the dev world, there is a kind of “rating” system that explains how senior a person is and therefore how big or complex a job they should take on. I would argue that becoming a new instance can be a really complex undertaking, so something like that would be really helpful for new instances too - jumping or throwing a person in to the deep end of the pool may not always result in drowning, but I don’t think it’s the best way to grow a swim team.
I would suggest that a scaffolded, skills-development approach (rather than a sequential walk-through of the process of getting an instance up and running) would give people the tools they need to get up and running, but more importantly, to sustain and contribute. Some initial thoughts/incomplete list of what skills or experience a new instance/instance manager would need to be successful:
1. Organizational/cultural
- OFN’s Vision (guess what, we’re not a software company)
- How we work and communicate/behavioral norms/the pledge
- Building the team: what skills does an instance team need?
- Resource planning: what’s your market, what’s your business (funding, legal entity, how the work gets done) model?
- How do you find team members, customers? Who are your customers? What problems are you solving?
- OFN language (t shirt size, ATAP, train, epic, etc)
- Global communication and collaboration tools, conventions, and strategies
2. Technical: - Infrastructure: what’ are the topology and configuration possibilities? How do you choose? What can you control?
- How to use OFN in different contexts (different users, sysadmin/configuration - I can see that this could mean shadowing a tech support person in another instance, or having a set of scenarios to work on in a test instance and get feedback on from a more senior person) - this includes onboarding too.
- How development works - tools (github) and processes (train)
Wordpress and your website - How bugs are reported and fixed
3. Becoming a part of the OFN Community
- Getting to know the other instances
- Global prioritization processes
- Contribution to the global pot
- Self care and staying on top of things
- Collaboration and becoming a mentor yourself
Each of the above, and others, could involve recommended reading, research, reflection, and connection with a mentor or person more experienced in this area.
A couple months back, I became frustrated with my own process of working in OFN for the US, which was/is “not know something, try hard to figure it out, usually not have a clear understanding, decide who in the global community to bug about it, bug that person by hopefully asking the right question, have that one answer but not usually more questions but I have already bugged the person I bugged enough, go back to step 1”.
In response and in a bid to be less reactive and needy, I put together some questions and slowly started doing some interviews with folks in the global team. The questions I asked are below. It has been really useful for me but I wish I had more time to talk to more people! I can see where something like this (asking about other instances and answering them for yourself) might be integrated into the kind of action learning that would help new instance managers be successful. I am not suggesting that the below would be any kind of curriculum, I am just sharing how I approached it for myself, in the context of “why isn’t this working for the US? What do I/we need to do differently?”
You (interviewed person):
How long have you been involved with OFN? What brought you?
How do you describe OFN to your friends?
The Instance:
What is your server setup like?
What’s your funding strategy?
How do you spend the money you get?
User Support:
What does a user do when they have a question?
How do you onboard new users?
How many users do you have actively using OFN?
How do you recruit new users?
Team:
How many people are on your team? What do they do?
How do you recruit new support staff?
How do you handle staff turnover and knowledge transfer?
How do you communicate within your team?
How are you organized? How do decisions get made?
Who are the most influential people within and outside the organization?
Vision:
What do you see as the biggest threat or danger to OFN’s continued existence? How is your instance vulnerable?
If you could have 3 wishes for OFN today, what would they be?
If unlimited money and every other resource were available to the team for one week, what would happen? What if it were available for 5 years? What would OFN look like?