An idea about shadowing

Mozillians
#1

Hey Friends,

As we all know from the past days we are in some turmoil phase among contributors. This is not the first time this happen (even though I think it is the strongest reaction) and I am sure this will happen again in the future.

Large entities like Mozilla will shift focus. Like an eagle soaring high, objects that once drawn its attention might be left behind as it flies on its desired path. Unfortunately, unlike our hypothetical eagle, Mozilla has not done the best job it could do when cancelling a project. Persona, Web Runtimes, Thunderbird and now Firefox OS are all examples of Mozilla shifting its focus. We may not agree and complain a lot but that also doesn’t help. We all goes through phases and learn about our mistakes and how we can improve in the long run so instead of complaining more, I am coming with you all with a potential idea for the future.

I believe we should implement a shadowing system for projects that are being cancelled so that volunteers would have the know-how to move those projects along without staff intervention.

Shadowing: someone observing for a time, how some knowledgeable person does his job.

“Staff shadowcasters” would work with “volunteer shadows” to transfer knowledge and workflows related to some project. For this to work, Mozilla would need to maintain a little skeleton crew for a project it wants to sunset while the shadowing is ongoing. For example, in the case of Persona, shadows would learn about how the IdP works, and federation, where are the sources, how to transfer them to community ownership, etc.

Shadowing is in a simple definition the same as onboarding but at a very different moment. Its like offboarding, where you train people so that you can leave. This way the whole transfer of some projects to community ownership would become much more successful.

This is also an opportunity for leadership development and unlocking new skills on contributors. May they be organizational skills or technical skills. If we can get some success stories around community ownership then not only we improve the abilities and trust we have in our community but they also trust us more.

Attrition: the loss of volunteers/contributors

Currently we have a problem with attrition where contributors are leaving our community because of burnout, disagreements or just being angry at decisions done without transparency/consultation. This is a fact of every FOSS project and is expected. There are volunteers whose sole purpose is related to some project we are doing that we might decide not to do anymore. Unlike in employee/company relationships where the company might just try to accommodate that employee at a new position, in volunteer/community relationships the volunteer might just leave. This same person might be completely happy to keep working on that cancelled project if we unlock enough agency in them. I believe that shadowing can improve community participation while reducing attrition at the same time.

This of course requires a lot of effort and is not easy. We all know that the knowledge transfer is not like a download that completes at 100% but it is still a valuable process that has more chance to work and is more beneficial to everyone than switching things off.

I would like to know your thoughts on this. We should all ideate on more and better processes.

7 Likes
#2

I agree 100%. I think there should be shadowing in general, not just for
discontinued projects. Volunteers that are experienced enough could also do
the shadowing if staff time is a problem.

On Sat, Feb 6, 2016 at 1:47 PM Andre Alves Garzia < discourse@mozilla-community.org> wrote:

agarzia https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/users/agarzia Andre
Alves Garzia https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/users/agarzia
February 6

Hey Friends,

As we all know from the past days we are in some turmoil phase among
contributors. This is not the first time this happen (even though I think
it is the strongest reaction) and I am sure this will happen again in the
future.

Large entities like Mozilla will shift focus. Like an eagle soaring high,
objects that once drawn its attention might be left behind as it flies on
its desired path. Unfortunately, unlike our hypothetical eagle, Mozilla has
not done the best job it could do when cancelling a project. Persona, Web
Runtimes, Thunderbird and now Firefox OS are all examples of Mozilla
shifting its focus. We may not agree and complain a lot but that also
doesn’t help. We all goes through phases and learn about our mistakes
and how we can improve in the long run so instead of complaining more, I
am coming with you all with a potential idea for the future.

I believe we should implement a shadowing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_shadow system for projects that are
being cancelled so that volunteers would have the know-how to move those
projects along without staff intervention.

Shadowing: someone observing for a time, how some knowledgeable person
does his job.

“Staff shadowcasters” would work with “volunteer shadows” to transfer
knowledge and workflows related to some project. For this to work, Mozilla
would need to maintain a little skeleton crew for a project it wants to
sunset while the shadowing is ongoing. For example, in the case of Persona,
shadows would learn about how the IdP works, and federation, where are the
sources, how to transfer them to community ownership, etc.

Shadowing is in a simple definition the same as onboarding but at a very
different moment. Its like offboarding, where you train people so that you
can leave. This way the whole transfer of some projects to community
ownership would become much more successful.

This is also an opportunity for leadership development and unlocking new
skills on contributors. May they be organizational skills or technical
skills. If we can get some success stories around community ownership then
not only we improve the abilities and trust we have in our community but
they also trust us more.

Attrition: the loss of volunteers/contributors

Currently we have a problem with attrition
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customer_attrition where contributors are
leaving our community because of burnout, disagreements or just being angry
at decisions done without transparency/consultation. This is a fact of
every FOSS project and is expected. There are volunteers whose sole purpose
is related to some project we are doing that we might decide not to do
anymore. Unlike in employee/company relationships where the company might
just try to accommodate that employee at a new position, in
volunteer/community relationships the volunteer might just leave. This same
person might be completely happy to keep working on that cancelled project
if we unlock enough agency in them. I believe that shadowing can improve
community participation while reducing attrition at the same time.

This of course requires a lot of effort and is not easy. We all know that
the knowledge transfer is not like a download that completes at 100% but it
is still a valuable process that has more chance to work and is more
beneficial to everyone than switching things off.

I would like to know your thoughts on this. We should all ideate on more
and better processes.

To respond, reply to this email or visit
https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/an-idea-about-shadowing/6928/1
in your browser.

To unsubscribe from these emails, visit your user preferences
https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/my/preferences.

To stop receiving notifications about this particular topic, click here
https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/an-idea-about-shadowing/6928/unsubscribe
.

–
Errietta Kostala
errietta@errietta.me

2 Likes
#3

This is a great idea. Would shadowing be in-person/on location? Or remote?

1 Like
#4

Floriano,

I believe all cases are possible but that the most comon one would be remote.

Cheers

#5

I love this idea, @agarzia. And I agree with @errietta that it’s the kind of thing we can and should do on projects at more than just the ‘tail end’ of the project.

#6

Similar reaction: excellent idea!

I’d love if we could find a couple of things to try this out with right
away. b2g makes a lot of sense for obvious reasons, but I agree with
@errietta and @davidaascher that having a “normal” project as a second test
case would be good.

@agarzia how can I help you get this rolling?

#7

I don’t like being the pessimistic one, but isn’t this what transitioning to community ownership is supposed to be?

I would note that both Persona and Thunderbird moved to community ownership years ago. For Persona it happened 2 years ago, was there any effort from the community to take the lead of this project? Can we blame the lack of involvement from staff? Assuming there was indeed lack of involvement or availability.

For Thunderbird it happened 4 years ago, and there are volunteers working on it (see this post from 2 years ago). And yet we’re here, talking as if Mozilla “killed” Thunderbird only a few weeks ago.

#8

I quote Flod. Also I think that a Mozilla project without a mozilla employee that work on that will be dead.
The volunteers help a project that they use it, Thunderbird is a project that can live alone but there no much announcement about his state actually.
Persona is used in Mozilla services and web site but is a project where the volunteers are few chances to help on that.
Firefox OS is not a project, is a operative system with an UI that is not a little project that can live only with volunteers.

Also a project without an employee but only volunteers not It ensures nothing about his future. The volunteers help the project when they have time that is not always possible.

So for my shadowing is always happened in open source projects but in the Mozilla case the powerful part of the projects is the foundation that help not only with the money or hosting but also with skilled employee.

Quote at 100%, for me this is the real problem.
As an example we do weekly calls to update about the status of program or projects but is difficult for volunteers join the decisions in important project.

#9

What about this proposal https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/firefox-os-connected-devices-announcement/6864/91?u=erotavlas?

#10

maybe reach out to lukas to get learning from this initiative:

#11

I 100% agree with @agarzia . This problem is not just with projects, even some experimental forums face similar issue, like Mozilla Guides. Mozilla Guides Forum is a good Initiative for helping lot of willing new contributors who are not from FSA or other sources background. Now it is left almost as a zombie. If there was some sort of shadowing, knowledge of about forum, the contributors might have helped/tried to keep it alive .