glad to see the link Tuxide. Thanks, now we know the topic for sure. Not sure that will keep it on topic, but at least we know what you meant this thread to be about. It looks like out guesses were really close.
I have been involved in many organizations and I BELIEVE it see both sides of this issue. Of course having said that I also realize that many will disagree with this. (Reminder, you may disagree with me, or anyone else. I am not your boss, relax when someone disagrees with you on the internet people, and try to have a little fun.
The Leaders of a volunteer project need to keep their eyes on the milestones and general direction and usually can not spend a lot of time with minutiae and details. (I met one that could do both, but he was 1) retired and as such had no day job. 2) had about 50 years of experience in many areas that helped. and was 3) probably the smartest nice man I ever met (We still miss you Henry..) As such leaders of these volunteer projects tend to seem distant, and keep themselves isolated from the day to day arguments that do not affect the big picture.
Then you have what I call the champions. They dig in and do the big often unglamorous jobs that are vital. They pick up a huge piece of a project and run with it, often with little or no pressure from above. (those that need hand holding soon are fired or quit... as some people are more effort than they are worth. That decision is a tough one, but no volunteer project can succeed without it being made sooner or later, usually made by default, as in no moretasks being assigned to them, and when they stop working on whatever they are working on, they are just allowed to wander off into the sunset.)
Then you have the foot soldiers. They do smaller tasks, but most of your volunteers will be a foot soldier. they can be counted on in a pinch, and they do significant work and many have specialized skills. The champions and ususally the foot soilders themselves are acutely aware of the danger of burning them out. Like a real life foot soldier, if you swarm them, they will be over powered. A few foot soldiers would make great champions, but over all, a volunteer project depends more on a constant and long lived supply of foot soldiers than anything else. Some Champions try to be foot soldiers and some almost pull it off, but it is like a manager of an office spending too much time typing while the rest of the office wait to be told what to do.
Then there are what I call snipers. They join to do a very specific task, one shot, one kill. They may not stick around and become a foot soldier, but they sometimes do so, especially if y ou get them working in a group for that first small job and get them to like being part of the team.
Now they need ideas. sure. But whenever a vendor rep, for example would come to me and tell me "you should do such and such" and there was no foot soldier I could spare, and there was no reason he could not do that himself, I would often tell them: "great idea, here are the resources we have, you need anything else?" and invite them to the team. (see how this is NOT
? )
Most do not care enough, or think being part of the team is too much involvement, but if you want to see it done, you becoming a team member is the best way of doing it. They work for PlaneShift, not for us, we do not pay their bills.
Now having said that, sometimes the team wants to dump new people in as foot soldiers. I would make it easy for people to do small tasks. let the foot soldiers recruit snipers to help them on the tasks they are already working on. let someone who has a good grasp on the graphics and models set up a training/production team to work on it. Of course the FS (foot soldier) would be responsible to send up what they think is a good fit, and the champion would still have final say (unless the Project leader gets involved with that small stuff still.)
another important point. DO you know what an idea that may or may not be decent is called when it comes to a project team without resources? Project creep.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creep_(project_management)nothing can doom a project more subtly.... I bet the DeV Team is not just sitting around thinking "man, if only Bamko would give us an idea of what to do next, we could crank it out this weekend, but we have nothing to do... bummer." heheh, no, they have more work than they can get done quickly, I bet. and we often want them to do our pet projects as well, without helping?
So, when we ask them to do 20 hours of work ( a very small task) and they ask us to join the team if we want to see it soon (rather than Soon(TM) ) we should decide how bad we really want to see the change. Put your time where your mouth is, or say "well, whenever you get time, maybe in a few months I will have time to help you out, thank you though!"
