[bisq-contrib] Please post daily #standup updates when actively contributing

[Chris Beams]

TL;DR: If you are currently contributing to Bisq—and especially if you plan to issue a compensation request for any upcoming DAO Cycle—please begin sharing daily updates about your efforts in the Bisq Keybase team's #standup channel [1].

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As some are already aware, a number of Bisq team members are in the process of putting together a budget, a prioritized list of goals and other important organizational changes for the Bisq DAO. These will be announced soon and will begin taking effect with DAO Cycle 10, which is just starting as I write this. Stay tuned for full details, but in the meantime I have a request for current contributors, including anyone who plans to issue a compensation request for Cycle 10. You may have seen that a number of us have been submitting updates every weekday in the #standup channel for the last month or so. I am now asking everyone who plans to submit a compensation request in Cycle 10 to begin doing the same.

If you're not familiar with what a "standup" is, it's a name for a short meeting that many professional software teams hold every day. Team members get in the same room and literally stand up while giving updates on what they're doing. The discomfort of standing helps ensure that the meeting goes quickly. Obviously we can't actually get in the same physical room together and you don't actually have to stand up when you send your update, but you get the idea.

Updates should be short and clear. A good guideline is the "three questions" [2] common to many standup meetings:

 1. What did I do yesterday that helped the team meet the sprint goal?
 2. What will I do today to help the team meet the sprint goal?
 3. Do I see any impediment that prevents me or the team from meeting the sprint goal?

Nevermind the "sprint goal" for now. As we roll out the budget and priority list, it will become clear what the current goals are, and you'll be able to determine whether what you're working on is toward those goals or not, and therefore whether what you're working on is eligible for compensation or not. For the time being, please just send an update that says what you worked on today and what, if anything, is standing in your way of making progress.

If you don't work on Bisq every day, that's just fine and there is no need to send an update every day. Just send an update every day that you do work. In any case, if you don't send an update the assumption will be that you did not contribute anything on that day.

If you're someone who typically works most or every day and you know you're going to be away for a while, send an update that says so.

Those of us that have been doing this for a while try to post our updates around 8p Central European Time, but our contributor base is widely distributed, so if 8p CET is not convenient for you, please send your update at the end of your workday, whenever that may be. Note that there is a recurring #standup event in the Bisq calendar [3], which you may want to subscribe to.

The goal of doing these standup updates is to help us focus together on accomplishing the most important things and to help control costs as we do so. They also have the wonderful effect of making it feel like you're actually part of a team. I and the others who have been doing these updates see them as the bare minimum amount of communication required for a distributed team like ours to stay in touch and succeed. See [4] for the original proposal that got this process started.

If you have other questions about how to submit these updates, please ask them in the #standup channel. If you are unwilling to accept this request, please consider emailing me directly or sending me a direct message in Keybase to explain why; I will appreciate and take seriously any feedback. Please hold off for now on questions about the larger set of changes we're rolling out; it's my number one priority to deliver an announcement about that as soon as possible.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to seeing you in #standup!

Chris

P.S.: This is the first substantive message sent to the bisq-contrib mailing list in a while. I intend to use it a bit more frequently for communications like this that all contributors and BSQ stakeholders are likely to be interested in.

[1]: https://keybase.io/team/bisq
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-up_meeting#Three_Questions
[3]: https://bisq.network/calendar (redirects to Google Calendar)
[4]: https://github.com/bisq-network/proposals/issues/137