FUDCon wrapped up yesterday. Like a good constructionist, I am Reflecting on what we learned.
Responsibility requires authority - A key point that appeared over and over at FUDCon was the notion that responsibility requires authority. The most visible example of this is the release manager. The release manager is a tough job. He is the one who must look at the list of 100 new features that people want to include. On the feature freeze date he must say feature A is stable enough to go in while feature B must wait until next release. The tough part of the job is that the release manager must look at 100 features. An individual contributor, paid or unpaid, often has a favorite feature that they really want included. The individual contributor can then lobby full time to have their feature exempted from the freeze. If 10 people start spending all of their energy pushing for exemptaions, the release manager becomes swamped. Nothing gets done. The release slipps Often, we think of authority and responsibility as coming down from above. In community situations, responsibility come in the from of request from our peers. "Will you help us out on this." Authority is granted by not second guessing or undermining the decisions that that person makes. There will still be discussion and disagreement. But, at he end of the day, we must respect the fact that the decision maker initially raised his hand to to be responsible for a task. As such, we must respect them with the authority necessary to complete their jobs. I you don't like how someone is doing something, please feel free to raise you hand and be responsibility for that task next release. thanks david _______________________________________________ IAEP -- It's An Education Project (not a laptop project!) [email protected] http://lists.sugarlabs.org/listinfo/iaep
