nasscom volunteer organization v2
DESCRIPTION
TRANSCRIPT
NASSCOM VOLUNTEER ORGANIZATION – SYSTEMS/PROCESSManjula Sridhar
Background
Nasscom product forum has been a great success in the last two years, primarily because of few individuals and a set of dedicated volunteers
However the goals and aspirations are bigger so need to institutionalize the systems/processes/models that have worked in the past. This would help the Nasscom product forum to scale efficiently and reduce the risks.
It has also been observed that sometime the tasks are not completed in spite of capable people on board !
Fundamental premise
The basic idea of volunteer driven organization is already proven in the Nasscom product forum.
Build a tangible self sustaining open volunteer based system that can run on the models of open source / wiki system. System will also will facilitate better
task/project management. Build transparency in the system for the
progress and activities and the people associated with the task.
Volunteer driven organization
Basic Principles: 3rd Generation Organization – a Volunteer organization. The first generation organizations were defined by hierarchy. Later, organizations used workflows and processes to structure themselves. Now with the advent of tacit knowledge work, an organization can be defined around challenges. This is the third-generation of the organization and has been central to the success of open source software and Wikipedia . We are using this organizational model to create a powerful volunteer team at NASSCOM.
* See original Sharad’s writing in the notes section
hierarchy
Process/workflows
Task driven
Volunteer motivators/de-motivators
NASSCOM Product Evangelists What motivates ?
True empathy for spreading the product eco system. Meeting like minded people ? Influencing the establishment so that it helps
everyone. Networking/Meeting influential people ? Many being product entrepreneurs recognize the
need and understand the pain points. Peer recognition
What demotivates ? Lack of clarity/information Denial of due credit
Volunteer/Task organization Structure
Sub tasks – set of volunteers (white shirts)
Tasks will have a primary
volunteer (Grey shirt)
Black ShirtsOverall
challenge/work
Specific task 1 (say
conclave)
Session on innovation
Session on Internet
product eco system
Specific Task 2
(say PR efforts)
Session on financial sectors
Currently there are about 20 grey/black shirts who can take the lead
Parameters of the System
System that can be used to measure, track the tasks and in turn effectiveness of the volunteer. Visible tasks and Visibility for the
Volunteer. (sort of mind map) Can run off of the emerge platform
! Tractability of the tasks. Easy creation of the tasks for the
black shirts. Rate volunteers(tasks) on their
work. Provide more seriousness about
the tasks at hand.
* Initially this could be an excel sheet with details filled and shared on Google doc.
Task N
Rating
State of completi
on
Schedule/
Timeframe
Key outputs
Primary/
Volunteers
Flow of events
Create volunteer hierarchy
Create overall task (recurring activity)
Create subtasks if any
The task progress should also have space for filling in notes, thanking
any help or credit, issues, flags etc.
Status updates as the task
progresses. (Task owner or grey
shirts should be able to trigger)
Volunteer attaches himself to the task (moderation may
be required)
Task closure (Successfully completed,
partially done, no longer relevant
Task rating/points declaration (for
rewards and future task allocation)
Volunteer assigned back to the pool.
Tangible rewards suggestions Access to Nasscom research materials. Membership discounts. Nasscom Event discounts.
Implementation
Volunteer
Guidelines
Collaboration/
Volunteer managem
ent Platform
Nasscom Volunteer
Co-ordination
System
Implementation
Open source systems are available. (The appendices has the information)
An Indian product startup also is available for collaboration management.
Google tools for collaboration management can also be used if one wants to keep things simple.
Ning based systems ? (closed social networking)
Schedule/Budget
A dedicated volunteer for 2 months to trial and set up the system. Someone who understands web based
collaboration platforms. Good with open source implementations Also need to check if a Indian product
company can do pro-bono. Some one to manage on the ongoing
basis (Preferably the same one who set up)
Open issues !
How do we take the risk out ? What is the measure of effectiveness of
the Volunteer ? How do you know the success can be
repeated. Implementation details; the system
needs to run off of the emerge platform. Rewards need to be approved by larger
nasscom bodies.
Appendix : Implementation/Miscellaneous
List of Volunteer management software
http://www.coyotecommunications.com/tech/volmanage.html
http://sourceforge.net/projects/vmoss/ http://sourceforge.net/search/?q=volunteer
http://sourceforge.net/search/?q=volunteer
List of collaborative software http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaborative_
software Some collaboration software allows users to vote, rate, and rank choices, often for the purpose of
extracting the collective intelligence of the participants. The votes, ratings, and rankings can be used in various ways such as:
Producing an average rating, such as 4 out of 5 stars.
Calculating a popularity ranking, such as a "top 10" list.
Guiding the creation and organization of documents, such as in Wikipedia where voting helps to guide the creation of new pages.
Making a recommendation that may assist in making a decision.
In the case of decision making, Condorcet voting can combine multiple perspectives in a way that reduces intransitivity. Additional uses of collaborative voting, such as voting to determine the sequence of sections in a Wikipedia article, remain unexplored. It's worth noting that no matter what voting method is implemented, Arrow's Impossibility Theorem guarantees that an ideal voting system can never be attained if there are three or more alternatives that are voted upon.
In addition to allowing participants to rank pre-existing choices, some collaboration software allows participants to add new choices to the list of choices being ranked.[16]
Voting in collaboration software is related to recommendation systems that generate appreciated recommendations based on ratings or rankings collected from many people.
Collabtive features
Main features (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collabtive) to-do lists milestones messaging / instant messaging calendaring file management role-based user permissions timetracking tagging search reporting (Excel, PDF) exporting (ZIP, XML, RSS, iCal, vCard) importing from Basecamp XML multi-language interface
Other Volunteer models.
Wiki Model (http://wiki.volunteermanagers.org.uk/index.php?title=Main_Page)
Open source software
Credits
Vijay rayapathi Sangeet Patni Arvind Jha
