On 22 August 2012 20:34, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On 22 August 2012 20:18, Thomas Morton
<morton.thomas(a)googlemail.com>
wrote:
I'm
not a involved in technology professionally, but I did handle most
of the tech work for WMUK's first fundraiser in 2009.
Great! I've been trying to find someone able to give me a good overview
of
what exactly is needed (tech-wise) for the
fundraiser to little effect.
Any
chance you could fill me in on what was/is
needed?
Back in 2009, it was mostly creating web forms using HTML, javascript
and CSS and battling with CiviCRM to try and integrate them as well as
possible. We need something a little more sophisticated now, though
(actually, we needed something more sophisticated in 2009, but all we
had was me!).
Harry pointed me at this:
http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Fundraising_system_spec* *which rocks!
Looking at it my view is that a) that's about 2 weeks work (10 days). So
not insubstantial. But b) a lot of it is reusable for the future (i.e.
maintenance is a good deal easier than initial development).
So it is probably worth contracting this task out this year.
In fact I would factor it out of the developer hire as it needs to be done
this year, and we are not likely to hire anyone. But we do have a £30,000
budget for 2012 development...
True, some aspects are hard to handle remotely. But,
again, this gives us
a
tech resource to draw on and helps justify FTE in
2014.
Realistically speaking; if you're paying £35K for a developer/manager
(which
is what the last job description was looking for)
it's not a great use of
his or her time to be fixing laptops :) If this is a major issue there
are
contract tech support services we could look into
to fill this specific
gap
that would be more cost effective.
I think the best approach is to accept that you are paying an inflated
price at first so that you can get someone with the potential to be a
head of department once there is a department for them to head. In the
meantime, they can fix laptops!
But if there is a regular tech support demand then it's better just to
employ a part time guy to do it.
Think about it this way; if you were hired in to be the first technical
staff at a young charity, in a management role with hands on technical
things to do, a budget and potential for expansion... and you are fixing
laptops for an appreciable portion of your time it is de-motivating ("I was
doing this 5 years ago...").
Companies often think this way (lets hire a top guy, and he can cover the
whole gap whilst building a team); it's a bad use of funds and rarely works
out well.
So this just
needs prioritising; not everything will get support - but
that,
again, is another data point.
Why prioritise? Why not do everything? We aren't short of money,
either as a chapter or as a movement. WMUK has a tendency to be afraid
to spend money. Not being wasteful is good, but our donors have given
us the money so we can use it. It's no good sitting in the bank.
Throwing money at a problem might work, but it's never the best solution.
If that's what we want to do then fine; I'm perfectly OK with that. This is
an alternate "bootstrapped" solution.
This is a silly idea, as I said before, and we
should forget about this
for
a moment. Focus on our own tech needs.
It's helpful for us to do work that benefits the global movement.
Obviously, it is of benefit to the movement, but it is also of benefit
to us politically. One of the main arguments Sue Gardner (WMF ED) was
making for chapters not fundraising was that they only do local work
while the WMF does global work. We need to show people that that isn't
true. (It never has been true, and it her conclusion didn't follow
anyway, but that's not the point!)
I agree; but I think this should be on our two year goals. Expecting
someone to come in and work on MediaWiki is not going to work well. As I
explained the last time working on a major project of this sort is
non-trivial and you don't want to have someone who is being disturbed with
"can you set up this mailing list", "the server is down!" or "my
laptop is
broken" queries.
As you note we need to make a good effort on this; and saying "we have a
developer, he could write some MediaWiki code I am sure!" isn't going to
work IMO. We need to liaise with WMF tech, figure out the projects we want
to focus on (with detailed spec!) and make sure everyone is happy with the
approach.
What I am trying to say is that you're casually tacking on *a whole other
full time job* to the description :)
I have considered everything I've been told
so far about our own needs;
and
added on top of it my own experience in working
this way. So I am
confident
one day per week is sufficient in the short term.
Does your experience not tell you that there is always something
important that needs doing that you didn't think of before? That is
certainly the case in my experience and I can't see why tech would be
any difference.
Of course; but this problem exists whether we hire a contractor or a full
time employee.
I'm suggesting a short term solution to the technology gap. As we have
found out hiring someone with several specialist capabilities and
management experience is not workable; but you *are *quite likely to get
someone more along these lines via contracting. Because we have to be
versatile.
In fact,
companies almost always overestimate the tech time they need.
This
is because they see projects that might fill 4
days of work - and
extrapolate that the developer is going to be BUSY. The truth is you get
busy periods and lulls - and a good engineer will be able to manage time
effectively to spread this out (for example; fundraiser might need lots
of
work, but if you start in May...).
We're not a for-profit company trying to do the bare minimum, though.
If we have extra capacity, we can do extra work, and that's good.
It would be nice to enumerate what this "extra work" is. Often companies
say this; many years ago I started working at somewhere with a couple of
specific projects and "lots of extra work once your here". There was very
little of the latter in truth.
If we can identify "nice to have" projects then fine, I'll bow to this. But
otherwise I am skeptical.
What's the alternative? We can't find
someone to do all the stuff we
need at
the budget we have set. And a FTE is certainly
too much for our next
years
needs.
Then set a larger budget. As I've said, I disagree that we couldn't
make good use of a full time tech person. ("Needs" is actually the
wrong word - it doesn't matter what we need, what matters is what we
could do that would be worth the money.)
Well ok, I'm all for that. But it didn't seem to be getting great feedback
on the ideas page (i.e. all out tech team budget) so I am offering an
alternative to consider.
The best approach is to bring in a minimum
utility and work up from
there;
justifying a FTE for the 2014 budget will be MUCH
easier if we can say
"look
at X specific things we didn't have time to
do".
Then we'll continue having problems due to having too little tech
capacity for another year.
If you can get budget approval for a much increased tech budget, and hire
them at the start of the year then go for it. I am skeptical but I will
support the endeavour.
On the other hand this lightweight solution might tide us over :)
Tom