[gcd-software] Pre-introduction message, and what we're trying to do

[Henry Andrews]

Hi folks,
I've been a bit distracted with the questions on gcd-policy and the Board about how to make decisions. Which I consider a rather urgent and overdue topic. As some folks have asked me off-list, I *do* still intend to get this committee started with an initial agenda message, so please hold off on bringing up topics until I've managed to do that. Hopefully I can wrap up the immediate work on the decision stuff tonight and move on to composing the agenda for this committee.

In the meantime, I'd like to share Tony Rose's example of what we want to produce from these committees (and we can discuss the example if folks want):

---quoting Tony----
I went through an extensive strategic planning initiative when I was on the Little Rock school board. We hired an expensive facilitator and he spent a full day explaining the rules. I have the notebooks and stuff from that exercise somewhere, I think.
What I recall was that there needs to be a clear statement of core beliefs followed by a clear statement of goals. Then each goal needs a plan and some way to measure success, like for instance:

Belief: At the very heart of the GCD Project is the intention of indexing every comic published. Period.

Goal: The GCD will encourage more indexing of Japanese language comics and increase their number in the database.

Plan: Find Japanese speakers among current members, name them as a committee to contact Japanese comics fans and get those fans involved in the project.

Measurement: By 2014, there will be at least 500 Japanese comics in the database.

Like that.
---end quote---


The "Belief" part may seem a bit touchy-feely, but it's actually pretty important- it answers the question "Why do we want to do this?", which helps us guard against things where the only reason we want to do it is "because someone thinks its cool." Which might actually be a good enough reason, but we should be clear about that. :-) A single belief may produce numerous goals and plans. For instance, the above example is targeted more at the membership committee, but that same belief can motivate various I18N / L10N goals for us here in the software committee.

Goals (== "What") and Plans (== "How") are pretty self-explanatory. Measurements can be trickier, especially as we have a very small set of volunteers right now for software, and it's not clear how much growth we can sustain. I look at measurements for us primarily to help make the goal more concrete. We don't have to issue a quarterly earnings report, or anything like that, so it's more for motivating ourselves than anything else.


Commentary on this structure is weclome at this time! Just hold off on suggesting specifics for the agenda until I have time to lay out a foundation.


Here's the original Board thread from which that was quoted, which set up these committees.
http://groups.google.com/group/gcd-board/browse_thread/thread/7bc316a16dbe8b53#

thanks,
-henry