CDIP Program Archive

Open twblack88 opened this issue 3 years ago • 0 comments

CDIP Program Archive

Motivation

Comm-Dev had lots of smart people with great ideas; in order to frame projects, we deployed a straightforward framework for project planning named CDIPs (community development initiative proposal). A framing tool for anyone interested in proposing new MakerDAO community initiatives or resources. Upon acceptance, they would receive funds to deliver.

Summary

At a high-level CDIPs were simple: fill out a doc, get feedback to approve the project, execute on a cadence, and deliver (submit, execute, complete). This process took most of 2020 to get right and went through one major revision. You can see the documentation on the portal including a visual guide for the end-to-end process.

Some key assumptions and design decisions were:

The template should be easy to fill out.
Each CDIP should punch above its weight class.
CDIPs need to provide impact or some way to measure the result on delivery.
CDIPs need a specific, measurable idea with somewhat clear estimated timelines.
CDIPs are not for research or already completed work.

Role(s)

Contributor (Proposal Owner): Creator of the proposal and the driver of the project. Leads meetings and communication, sets other contributor roles, goals, timelines, and expectations.
- Contributing Team: Contributes responsibilities or expertise to the owner or lead.
Adviser: Supportive role that can help scope, follow up, brainstorm, test, and keep Community Development abreast of communications and project updates.
Approving Group: Evaluators reviewing and approving proposals. A mix of Maker Foundation employees and seasoned contributors of the community.

Highlights

🎫 292 Badge Redemptions 📹 Comm-Dev Demo Day video 👥 Community personas presentation from CDIP 36 🏪 Dai-rectory page 🎙 Voices of the DAO

Program details:

41 Total CDIPs
- 27 Completed | 2 still executing
- 11 Paused, archived, VOID, Replaced
- 28 Unique Contributors
- 8 advisers
- Avg time for completion: ~ 2 months
- Avg time for approval: 3 weeks
- Program Lifetime: One year
- Extensions: 3 (Transparency dash, Badges, and Marketing)

What Worked

When the idea was clear, and the milestones were obvious, it was a really easy call to make for the committee.
Lots of ideas came through the pipeline; humans of MakerDAO are creative!
We learned a lot and supported 11 projects that grew from or were adjacent to this program.
We compiled a nice set of questions to evaluate any project.

Evaluating grants from the committee

It's worth unpacking all the work the team did to understand how to fund an idea or not:

Feasibility (Do the qualifications match the bandwidth?)
Dependencies (Does this block anyone or other projects? )
Flextime/Slack (What does this budget look like at 3x the amount? Where are the scope creep risks?)
Feedback (Is there feedback already, or does it need more?)
Promotion/Sharing (Plan for telling the community about the finished plan?)
Additional Resources (Can we route additional people to the proposal?)
Maintenance costs (Is there a plan to maintain or hand off maintenance?)

A short note on impact, the team spent a lot of time trying to think through the impact of CDIPs. The hope is that they would punch above their weight class.

Impact Estimate	Description	Numbers
S	Small Win	5-50 people
M	Medium Win	50-500 people
L	Large Win	500-5000
XL	Extra Large Win	5000 +

What didn't?

The adviser role, though completely well-meaning, created far too much telephone. Contributors would focus on the process instead of executing their plan, which added more confusion than it clarified.
- They often ended up serving as a quasi-owner to projects more than a process guide.
- It might have been easier to onboard more of them, creating a separation from the approving committee where many advisors would own updates but also approve projects they advise.
- It might have also been easier to have one person serve in a dedicated advisor role, responsible for documentation, execution, and promoting projects.
Group decisions are tough, and settlement by committee is difficult. It takes practice and needs a framework that gets used constantly.
We needed ONE central platform for most of the activity. We used Github, but Github is for software, not project updates. Engagement fell off pretty quickly after approval.
CDIP’s are for ideas; they needed a space for iteration. An open call and a chance to meet with approvers on a regular cadence.
We could have telegraphed to Governance and the wider community more often. Posting "state of CDIPs" to the forum and Reddit etc.
Framing a project as a whole and attaching a value was hard. Contributors would often default to hourly rates.
One CDIP was for a go-to-market field, and it never got included in the template. Probably my bad.
These are cheap in the grand scheme of things, more MVP’s, and we could have funded way more of them.
We over-documented this program.

Taking over CDIPs

If a team comes in to use this program in a new setting, here are some recommendations: 💰 a transparent structure for deciding on funding. Open the review to everyone (or record it and post to youtube at a very minimum), either on a public platform or on a public call. 🗓 Set expectations for regular updates upon funding. 📞 Remove the need for advisers. Anyone presenting a micro-grant to the DAO should just have an accountability buddy and regular updates. 📚 Make sure the process, whatever form it changes to, is visually represented and has a single page. 👍 👎 Speed up the feedback and MVPs. 👾 Rename them to mini-MIPS or project-to-hire (like a contract to hire but on a specific project with milestones as deliverables) 📣 Create a read-only chat channel or use one platform for updates and post updates same time every week. 👨‍🍳 Make sure there is a person who keeps documentation of different grants continuous in case contributors drop off or stop work due to other commitments. If a grant can be picked up by another team, then that would be awesome.

Mar 25 '21 04:03 twblack88

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