Stewards

Stewards WG Manifesto

Steward

Tamara is the Steward of this Working Group.

Reach out to her on Telegram or our TEC Discord @Tam2140

Goals

What goals would you like to achieve with this working group?

The main goals of the Community Stewards are:

• Steward support. To allow community stewards to gather and discuss what we are feeling in the community and any issues or blockers they may be experiencing themselves or within their WG. This weekly space allows raised problems to be solved in a group setting with the benefit of collective intelligence.

• Nurture Community. Nurturing the overall culture/growth of the TEC community

• Planning. To plan and coordinate interdependent activities across multiple WG.

• Shared vision. To ensure all Stewards are aware of the other WG priorities and activities and are focused on our shared roadmap.

• Maintain knowledge. To maintain an active group of community stewards who are well versed in how the TEC functions and are ready to pitch in to help advance TEC goals.

• Vision and Values. Maintain alignment with the TEC mission vision and values.

• How will this working group benefit the TEC community according to its near term mission?

• Coordination between WGs will facilitate achieving the goals of the TEC through timely addressing issues and potential issues, shared knowledge and experience, and greater alignment.

• The various working group leads can sync up and surface issues and strategize all together to keep the TEC moving forward.

• It will help us move in the same direction towards a healthy and pro-active culture

• It will keep the horizontal structure of the TEC evolving to support TE projects and community

What would be considered a success vs. failure?

Success:

• A constant and strong coordination between all of the working groups.

• Visibility on WG outputs and interdependencies.

• A nurtured community that can grow while maintaining healthy cultural practices.

• Allowing for and protecting organic growth and decentralized activities/initiatives.

• Community engagement & high vibes!

• Every member of the community can request assistance when they are blocked and/ or request general feedback.

• Fractal development of initiatives.

• Have a clear process for onboarding Stewards.

• Have a clear process to offboard Stewards.

Failure:

• WG developing their objectives without connection between each other.

• Taking over “control” / too much centralization for decision making.

• Not staying aligned with the vision/mission.

• Not supporting the community when needed.

• Lack of transparency and communication.

• Please break down the goals into a roadmap with clear milestones

Zenhub TEC Coordination reflects all the work in our Product Backlog and all the work currently in progress in each Sprint.

Roadmap

A high level Roadmap of all working groups is visible on TEC Roadmap miro board.

What is the deadline?

This WG will continue for as long as it continues to benefit the TEC. This is a living document that should be updated periodically.

Working style & pace

Public discussions happen on the public #stewards channel on TEC Discord.

Private Stewards conversations happen on a private #stewards channel. The reasoning behind having a private channel is to foster greater intimate discussion amongst the Stewards and to have greater team cohesion.

Scrum Framework

We practice the light framework of Scrum.

Scrum Theory :

Scrum is founded on empiricism and lean thinking. Empiricism asserts that knowledge comes from experience and making decisions based on what is observed. Lean thinking reduces waste and focuses on the essentials.

Scrum Practice :

We follow a 2-week sprint cadence. We have bi-weekly Sprint Planning and Retrospective sessions and a weekly Community call that serves the purpose of Sprint Review.

• Sprint Planning. The purpose is to :

  • Refine the product backlog.

  • Prioritize issues against what else there is to be done.

  • Plan the next Sprint worth of work to be completed.

• Sprint Review. The purpose is to :

  • Inspect progress toward the Sprint Goal.

  • Show progress to the community.

• Sprint Retrospective. The purpose is to :

  • Plans ways to increase quality and effectiveness. How the last sprint went w.r.t. individuals, interactions, processes, tools and definition of done.

  • Identify the most helpful changes to improve its effectiveness.

  • The most impactful are addressed as soon as possible, possibly even coming into the new sprint.

Onboarding & Offboarding

The purpose of having a process for onboarding and offboarding is to define clear boundaries around stewardship roles in the TEC.

Onboarding

• A Steward is nominated by another Steward.

• One other Steward is required to confirm the nomination.

• There is a period of 1 week where any other Steward can block the nomination.

• Nomination blocks are routed through Gravity for greater clarity of reasoning.

• If the nomination goes through, we have a welcome party!!

• Warm welcome from all the Stewards, invitation to the weekly call and public and private #stewards channel, explanation of expectations, etc.

Offboarding

Onboarding is not necessarily a permanent action. Ex-stewards are welcome to return when their personal and professional obligations permit.

• Possible reasons :

  • Breaking our code of conduct.

  • Uncommunicated absence for period of 1 month.

  • Repeatedly failing to meet Steward commitments.

  • A steward can request to be off-boarded due to personal or professional reasons.

• Process :

  • One or more Stewards can propose offboarding a Steward. A good place for this to happen is during our weekly call.

  • There is a period of 1 week where any other Steward can block the offboarding.

  • If no blockers, the reasons for the off boarding are communicated to the Steward and they are the uninvited from the private #stewards Discord group.

  • If there is a blocker, it is discussed in our weekly sync and if not resolved then it is routed to Gravity for mediation. This process is currently being defined in Issue #194. Proposal document.

Commitments

• To advance token engineering!

• To be present, active and engaged in TEC working groups.

• To be representative of the TEC ethos within the community.

• To be committed to follow cultural processes based on Ostram’s principles as proposed by Soft Gov & Culture WG.

Expectations*

*These expectations are general and do not apply to all Stewards. There are Stewards that are unable or for whom it will be unnecessary to meet one or more of these expectations for personal, professional or other reasons. Harmony is achieved when these reasons are communicated to all other Stewards.

• Attend the Sprint Planning and Retrospective meetings (bi-weekly).

• Attend the Community Stewards weekly meeting.

• Share the progress of your WG in the weekly Thursday Community calls .

• Be part of the working group process to find ways to collaborate.

• Feel capable of leading weekly or bi-weekly calls for your WG.

Reference Documents

Onboarding Process to the TEC Cultural Build

Onboarding and Resources Guide to the TEC

Original Stewards WG Manifesto (output of group hack session)