Freely you have received, freely give – Part 2

While waiting for people to volunteer, I started thinking about the execution…

What is the project size

1. Authoring: As of Jun 8, there are 36535 messages.  Assuming 10% of the messages are job postings, 33000 messages to sift through.  Assuming one message takes 1 minute to read, and another minute to do a basic copy-paste if the message is useful, it is 30 messages per hour.  Or, 1100 hours.
2. Reviewing: 50% of the effort at step 1. So, 550 hours.
3. Correcting: 10% of the effort at step 1.  110 hours.
4. Production: 10% of the effort at step 1.  110 hours.

Total: 1870 hours.

If we get 10 people dedicated enough to put in 5 hours every week, this takes 38 weeks.  Looks do-able at the moment.

What process do we follow

1. Take up discrete chunks of posts, say, one month or two months.
2. Ignore useless posts.
3. For useful posts, copy-paste the question into a category. If the question has several answers, copy-paste ALL the answers (with the name and email of the answerer, and the date of the answer post).
4. Begin the review process after a year’s posts are mined.
5. Decide later about handling corrections and doing the production.

Action items

• Prepare guidelines for what is useless, what is useful.
• List the categories.
• Prepare guidelines for what goes into each category.
• Prepare a template in which to copy-paste the stuff.
• Prepare guidelines for doing the review.

What tools do we use

• Authoring: Multi-author, multi-location project, so use a free, Web-based content management system. How about Googledocs?
• Production: Compiled online help (in a CHM format) is easiest but runs only on Windows. Think….
• Project Management: Hmm. Spreadsheets.

Web is a cloud, so baseline the GoogleDocs stuff every third day on an external media (get myself some rewrite-able CDs). Keep reminding people to NOT work on their local machines.

What challenges do I foresee

• People may drop off once they realise the enormity of the commitment needed from them.
  

  Do nothing. What can be done? Assume a 20% drop-out rate and rework the schedule.

• The team is virtual. No one knows the other.
  

  • Create a virtual teamroom; ask them to introduce themselves and talk to each other.
  • Create a scrum_space. Absolutely forbid people from emailing me directly. All stuff is to be dealt ONLY on the scrum_page.

• The work is new.
  

  • Draw up a “required things” list for team.
  • Share the guidelines, the template, and the workspaces.
  • Do a test-run with, say, 50 posts and be around round-the-clock to respond to teething problems.