Project Lifecycle Management Working Group 2.0

Grants/Funding
1

Title: Project Lifecycle Management Working Group 2.0

Authors: 0xRene, links, Dside, Swol Chasse, Bo I BanklessDAO, 0xJustice

Squad:

  • DSide
  • Swol Chasse
  • Bo | BanklessDAO
  • links
  • 0xJustice

Date Created: 31/12/2021

Date Posted: 09/01/2022

Summary

The proposal seeks consensus on the mission of the Project Lifecycle Management Working Group (PLM team) and the proposed funding mechanism for contributors.

The PLM team was founded in Season 2 and has created value by creating a project management best practice database. For Season 3, we want to implement the following changes:

  • Offer retrospectives for funded projects. We propose to make these retrospectives part of the grants renewal process (1-2 hrs time of investment per project per Season).

  • Ask for remuneration of the PLM team for managing the retrospectives, documenting the results and making them available to the DAO. Furthermore, we will implement the learnings into our best practices database.

BACKGROUND

Projects are the main driver of expansion and success for Bankless DAO. We are rich in talent and ideas and through projects we can target them to achieve the Bankless mission.

However, we face two challenges that we propose should be addressed through the PLM team:

  • Running a successful project needs strong coordination. This can be a struggle for projects. In part because there is limited documentation on best practices on running a project in the DAO. But also, because projects may not always have the project management skills they need based on their complexity. Therefore, projects can find themselves in the situation that they do not have the right tools to address challenges when they arise.

  • As stakeholders of projects, BANK holders have limited visibility on the challenges projects face during a Season. There is no structured way of knowing if a project struggles, hence there is no way of targeting help in time to make sure the goals of the Season will be achieved.

In the view of the PLM team, overcoming these challenges is vital to keep the delivery pace of projects and hence optimizing the DAO’s investment of BANK. This will help the DAO to make the right decisions at the right point in time. But most importantly, projects that run smoothly are more likely to have a happy project team. It therefore directly promotes the positive and ambitious culture of Bankless DAO.

MISSION & VALUES ALIGNMENT

Every project of Bankless targets our mission and values. By supporting projects to be successful, we help the DAO to work towards its goal.

SCOPE OF WORK

Achievements in previous Season

Founded in Season 2, the PLM team tried an iterative approach to best address our mission. In Season 2 we cooperated with five projects, identified eight challenges, and discussed best practices to overcome these. In addition, we identified 12 best practices that these projects already use. The outcome of this exercise is documented in the PLM best-practice database (https://www.notion.so/bankless/Project-Lifecycle-Management-Working-Group-162a6cb6ef4949ce9776da165c0bd15b#73e178123ebc48268a00edf7629c653b).

Proposal for Season 3

In Season 3, we propose to tweak our approach to be even more targeted to the challenges that were outlined in the Background.

We propose to make it a mandatory part of the grants renewal process for projects to have at least one project retrospective during a Season. A retrospective is a structured tool used in agile project management that helps projects identify what their challenges are and how to help themselves overcome them. The PLM team would facilitate those retrospectives with the projects, develop solutions, document the outcomes and make them accessible as best practices to all projects.

In addition to helping the projects, we create a growing database of project management best practices in the DAO that could serve as a separate product of Bankless DAO. As our knowledge grows, we also envision a fusion of the PLM team with Bankless Consulting to offer those battle tested practices to other DAOs.

SPECIFICATION

We want to offer retrospectives to projects. The PLM team currently is comprised of eight team members. We therefore do not have the capacity to offer retrospectives to all projects. We propose to require projects of a certain funding ask (e.g. above 500k BANK) to do at least one retrospective mid Season to be eligible for grants renewal going into Season 4.

How does the retrospective work?

A retrospective is a guided session with the project team. The goal is to reflect on how well the team functions and what the team can improve upon. The focus is on enabling the team itself to solve the problems. The PLM team will help with their skills and document the results of the session. This documentation will be made available to all other projects to help them learn for their own project structure.

What else is the PLM team doing?

In addition to performing retros, we offer projects the opportunity to voluntarily bring their challenges to the PLM team to seek non-partisan, expert guidance. We use our Discord channel to create threads on reported challenges, discuss them async and cover them in our weekly PLM team meeting. Solutions to challenges will be documented as best practices into our already existing best practices database (https://www.notion.so/bankless/Project-Lifecycle-Management-Working-Group-162a6cb6ef4949ce9776da165c0bd15b#73e178123ebc48268a00edf7629c653b).

FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

tl;dr

The PLM working group asks for 150k BANK funding + max. additional 60k BANK (6k BANK for every proven performed Retrospective; we expect up to 10 Retrospectives in total).

Finding request in detail:

We propose a funding logic, where the PLM team would be remunerated by the Grants Committee monthly based on the retrospectives performed. A retrospective is calculated to be three hours of work for two PLM team members. Therefore, per retrospective, we ask for remuneration of 6000 BANK. We expect to hold maximum of 10 Retrospectives and therefore this part will have a maximum funding ask of 60k BANK,

In addition, we ask for a total of 75k BANK for Season 3 as a PLM team internal Coordinape round to compensate for the work being done to continue to grow the best practices database and perform consulting services to projects that have challenges and seek help by the PLM team.

Lastly, we ask for retroactive remuneration of 75k BANK for Season 2 for the consulting services that the PLM team provided to the five projects and the best practice database created.

SUCCESS METRICS OR KPIs

  • Minimum of 6 retrospectives performed during Season 3
  • At least one improvement measure per retrospective identified and taken up as improvement by the projects.
  • Results documented in best practices database.
  • NPS > 50 from teams that we’ve assisted.

NEXT STEPS

  • Seek community feedback on Discourse.
  • Seek grants approval for described funding.
  • Reach out to projects to plan retrospectives

POLL

  • I want the PLM working group to work as outlined in this post
  • This approach needs revision

0 voters

2 Likes
2

I was unclear what the full purpose of PLM working group was, and this post gives clear understanding while also setting comprehensible KPIs for Season 3. I voted to continue as outlined, although I would also like to see some additional input from PLM in terms of long term sustainability of each project. In particular, it would be good to understand if a project is better suited to evergreen funding from BanklessDAO, or if it should be given a runway to achieve financial independence, and possibly even spinning out of the DAO entirely.

3 Likes
3

I agree with the proposal, but being it for a team that will review the work of others, I think it needs to be more detailed.

For this working group to work, it must be scalable and must be able to contain different experiences and skills, so as to understand and evaluate the work of others and be able to face the revision of an increasing number of projects.

Furthermore, the authority and authoritativeness of the group is not defined, whether it expresses decisions or opinions, from whom it receives the authority and what its limits are, who controls the controller and many other points that the proposal does not cover.

From my point of view, the current proposal lacks these fundamental points:

  • specify the work flow
  • present the people involved and their experience
  • better detail both the financial request and the assignment of the same to the team members
  • indicate if the team is closed and / or the criteria to be able to be part of it
  • the timescales envisaged for the reviews
  • how to deal with any discrepancies
  • if a binding opinion or just an address will be expressed
  • who will decide on the merits
  • to whom the “unsuccessful” projects will be able to appeal
1 Like
4

Thanks for taking the time Grendel, actually your are expanding the idea beyond the scope that we plan.

Retrospectives are not a project review in that sense. They are a method to allow the project team themselves to evaluate how good they work as a project. It will not necessarily look at the KPIs and the performance of the project. It would, in that sense, be a binding requirement to the project to reflect its own work mid Season and implement improvements where needed. The PLM team will be the moderator, helping the project team to stay within this line of thinking. It is vital to ask: what can the project do, to improve their work. It should result in a list of external factors but rather strengthen the projects capability to help itself through creativity.

This way we do not assign any authority to someone outside of the project. Rather we induce a temperature check of the project to see if anything internal has them slowing down. The PLM team will help the team and document the results.

Will make those points more precise in the second version. But let me know if this makes sense.

2 Likes
5

Thanks @0xRene , it makes sense and because of your reply I personally don’t think more revisions and I’ll vote for the proposal.
Have a great day

6

As the one is receiving a Retrospective session, I would be interested in how this works in greater detail. So a visualization of this retrospective process might be helpful. Also what happens if we figured out, that more continuous support would be helpful for the project? Yes, I would definitely describe the experience. What happens before, during and after a Retrospective.

There is also another concern I would like to surface and discuss:

Let’s assume we, as the PLM group, intended to sustainably improve project delivery performance in the long run. Would we want those projects to receive a Retrospective for free? Fore sure, value will emerge out of a well-crafted retro session and therefore I am suggesting that the project has to provide a certain amount of BANK for the service received. Moreover, I believe, if it were for free to the project, it might not take it that seriously…

Overall, I love the idea of facilitating Retrospectives for projects, because this is a vital step to learning and getting better at scale.

We could even host a Retrospective for reflecting on Season 3 and the whole DAO. If I could be of any help with this, pls let me know :slight_smile:

1 Like
7

Thanks for your input tigress. We still have to develop the process for the Retrospective but wanted to get a feels for the acceptance already at this point in time.

I think on the “pricing” of the Retrospective we were thinking that in the first Season, this could be regarded as public good that helps the grants committee and hence the whole DAO to support the projects in being successful. Also if required for being eligible for the grants renewal there should be a strong incentive for the projects to take it serious. We would also make the results available to the whole DAO so I assume it would be in the interest of the project to surface the problems. Else they will come up at a later point anyway :wink: Does that make sense to you?

Assuming that this proves as useful I think we could then plan for Season 4 to support projects as a service in depth. Maybe this was also what you had in mind. This is then definitely something that the projects would pay for.

To your last point of the Retro for the whole DAO after each Season. I love this idea a lot! I will surface this in the PLM working group channel and tag you. Let’s see what we can do there.

Again thank you for your input, much appreciated :pray:

1 Like
8

Thanks, Rene, for your details. :pray:

Yes, okay, from the “public goods” perspective I can better understand your approach. Make sense :+1:
Also :+1: to supporting projects as a paid service. An idea to elaborate on for Season 4.

Looking forward to your tag! :love_letter::seedling:

9

Between the weekly project checkpoints outlined in the CC revision proposal and these seasonal retrospectives, S3 is going to be an absolute game-changer.

2 Likes
10

I voted “This approach needs revision”.

It seems a little centralized to force a team to do this.

I would prefer an opt-in approach.

Teams that weren’t meeting their goals could be forced to do the retrospective in exchange for funding.

I don’t know how much benefit a successful team is going to get from one meeting. Maybe though?

I browsed the best-practice database. Seems like reasonable recommendations.

I would be more likely to vote for an opt-in pilot program rather than a now all projects have to attend this additional meeting.

I guess I instinctively balk at at being told a successful project has to do anything.

11

I support this proposal not because I totally agree with all aspects as presented and like others have some concern but I have total faith and support those proposing. This to me is a step towards a web 3 effort in our experiment and a fantastic approach toward advancement of excellence and accountability. Analytics can and will use the data to advancement toward an outstanding process of evaluation. Evolving practices as we experiment part of an external revenue offering. The investment will pay off. Rewarding people for their contributions even as a make up is critical for talent retention, only fair. LFG frens

2 Likes
12

Thanks for taking the time to vote! This is much appreciated. I can understand, where you are coming from. And a part of me reacts that same. Things somehow feel weird if they seem ‘forced’. At the same time, maybe it is not really forced. This is just another part of being a project in the DAO like you have to have a forum post with your Seasons budget to be eligible for the respective grants. Maybe that is a way to look at it that works for you?

Retrospectives ideally are being done every two or three weeks. If a project wishes to have more than one Retrospective the PLM team would of course support that as well. If you would do the Retrospectives like you proposed to force them on projects that did not reach their goals actually that would be too late. We would like to implement an instrument, that helps projects to identify challenges early on to be able to adjust. Also this approach will make the DAO as a whole more aware of those problems and help may be offered.

Actually we did kind of an opt in thing in the previous Season where we asked six projects to allow the PLM working group to follow their project process. Now we want to make this a wider approach for the whole DAO.

I really hope it makes sense to you. We want as much support as we can get!

13

As a member of the PLM group, I have the same instinct! In fact it was a big discussion point in one of our meets…are there really such things as “best practices” when it comes to decentralized project teams? Whatever works, right?

In the end, I stand by the idea of retrospectives being a “best practice” - that every team should do them at some sort of regular cadence. I really do believe that only by having space to reflect, can we improve, and I also believe that continual improvement should be at the heart of every project team.

4 Likes
14

My question is I totally get the logic outlined for specific funding amounts but I sometimes worry about allocating $ all around where there is not a sufficient return in value and then we end up with all these things but are out of money. The best practice database is useful but is it generating enough revenue / being used enough to justify the cost? I am new to this all and not even quite sure how the treasury here operates and this is just a general concern I have about DAO spending as I learn more. Looking forward to discussing.

In my work, any project that is proposed has a proposed value return (quantitative and qualitative) and assumptions lined out on how those were calculated. I think that would be beneficial to see for funding requests and in order to iterate on the proposal further.

1 Like
15

Thank you for putting this together and for being so thoughtful and strategic about helping project teams perform even better. In general, I am in favor of efforts like this to strengthen the teams and the work being done in BanklessDAO.

I would like to respectfully ask that you reconsider the funding request. I am generally not in favor of funding projects without an endpoint / spinning out point / self-sustainability point. You estimate that 75K of foundational work has already been completed, and 75K more needs to be done in Season 3. That 150K is well defined and we could say, “here is a grant to launch your initiative.” But the 6,000 BANK per project for X months/seasons/years gives me pause.

How could this PLM initiative sustain itself? Could BanklessDAO require that any projects/guilds with a budget over X include 6,000 BANK for a retrospective in their funding request? Could you offer these services to other DAOs or web3 companies in order to generate revenue to compensate your guild contributors? Some other path to self-sustainability?

Thank you again for this! I believe it will make the BanklessDAO stronger.

16

Definitely on the cards to allign this work with BC and package it into the ‘DAO in a box’ offering

17

The value added is strengthening the project management skills gap within the DAO, from a coaching and critical friend stance. So, if our assistance and guidence helps ship a project on time and at cost, then it’s adding value everywhere.

We wont be running these retro’s as ‘You need to do X,Y,Z’, it’s a much more cathartic process and transfer of knowledge through our best practises database and our collective skills as project managers.

The ask for BANK is due to the PLM working group being a public good service. We could charge individual projects BANK to facilitate this proccess but we felt our proposal would make this accessible to all. Also, this pays for our time in facilitating, conducting followups to measure how our ‘interventions’ have helped the project move forward.

Hope this helps

18

Hi Chuck, thanks for pointing our that the part of 6000 BANK funding request needs more clarification. Actually the idea was to implement an element, where the PLM team will only ask for funding retroactively if they performed Retrospectives and prove this. We thought this to be an approach that strengthens the accountability of the PLM team. We expect to do max 10 Retrospectives so the max additional ask that we will raise during the Season is 60k BANK.

Hope this helped. Let me know. And thanks for your vote!