On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 1:53 PM, Kim Quirk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Lots of things that we do don't meet any normal expectations of a > 'company'. Most people at OLPC will tell you we are not a 'company'. ... > I have been trying to understand it, explain it, live with it , > and improve it for a year now. What I think is going on is a unique > and somewhat chaotic (perfect storm?) intersection of non-profit, open > source, research lab cultures with the need to ship a real product.
This is excellent analysis. And I'd go a bit further than Kim actually in saying that I don't feel particularly bad that we are a bit of a mess. Being a bit of a mess means that we are breaking new ground so quickly that the ground is changing faster than the org gets used to it. Which leads to a few observations (which overlap somewhat with what Kim is saying) - IME, people complaining that "we don't know what we are doing" can be a positive indicator. The scenario outside the car is changing! - Learning to organise and handle new situation X is only worthwhile once we are confident that X is here to stay. - Therefore, there will be many situations that are impossible or not worth to be well prepared for. So "being a constant mess" is a reasonable approach. We can handle that by saying that "strange new situations" are common, and we have to keep an open mind and be ready to work w the team to get new and strange things done. - Prioritisation is important. Some things are too much of a distraction. Letting them go to hell can be less disruptive than an all-hands effort. This is - IME - the hardest part. When everyone is ready to take on whatever comes, it's hard to avoid getting the team distracted. Which can also be stated in more blunt terms: We are doing development of new stuff! If you want it predictable and organised, I hear EDS is hiring - the processes and procedures manual is 800 pages :-/ All of the above is from my experience in various organisations large and small, and govt and private. We are radically diffrerent from a big corp, and even from established non-profits. In this space you can expect us to be very good at a couple of very specific things, and a complete mess about a lot of other stuff. We will have to get good at "some of that other stuff"... in the meantime it'll be frustrating. :-/ There's a good book about this - Waltzing with Bears by either DeMarco or Yourdon, that says basically: if you are considering a project that doesn't take you into uncharted territory, *can it*. It's not worth it if it's not so new that you feel lost and helpless. It's written for big corps that are frozen in terror ;-) but it applies to what we are doing @ OLPC. Uncharted territory. So everytime we spot something in the horizon there's some fear that the earth might actually be flat. http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/EUR/2400-0070~Sailboat-and-Waterfall-at-Earth-s-End-Posters.jpg but I think we should keep sailing no matter what. m -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- School Server Architect - ask interesting questions - don't get distracted with shiny stuff - working code first - http://wiki.laptop.org/go/User:Martinlanghoff _______________________________________________ Devel mailing list [email protected] http://lists.laptop.org/listinfo/devel
