Squads have become more than a collaboration space: they are self-managing, meaning that the squad decides on their deliverables, approach, and timelines together. For implementers contributing to squads, this puts them in a position to directly influence squad deliverables, technical approaches, and timelines to better align with their roadmaps.
With multiple implementers collaborating through various community squads and several people involved in squads on this week’s S&O call, we dove into the question: How exactly does the community facilitate and support collaboration that can lead to valuable squad work that implementers can use? Can we define what we do?"
We decided to work with practical examples, starting with the “community support” in four main areas: product management, quality assurance, technical guidance/architectural context, and community management/operations.
Here are the results of our initial brainstorming - at least for product management and quality assurance.
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Product management. Make sure work has value and is getting across the line, support squads to make meaningul milestones and deliverables, help the squad keep focused and on track, remove blockers by facilitating communication among external groups (i.e: other global goods like OCL, OpenELIS, Bahmni, etc), highlight needs or solutions in the community, coordinate roadmaps, call attention to where issues arise, increase visibility/bridge the squads and the community.
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Quality assurance. The QA team actually explored this in one of their August meetings. Essentially, they have found themselves focusing on knowledge/skills transfer and supporting squads to figure out the right QA tools and processes for their scope/needs.
In regard to technical guidance and architectural context, we only got as far as to note that the TAC has been providing overall technical, strategic guidance. And we didn’t very far into community management and operations.
We’d like your help growing and getting this list right.
- How have these teams/committees supported your squad?
- Which actions do you think are particularly valuable?
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