A few critical gaps have been identified throughout the rapid expansion of the Giveth DAO, I’d like to propose some changes that will help us have a more clear path for judging our salaried contributor’s performance and creating clear standards and processes for dealing with issues with contributors as they arise.
big props to @freshelle @WhyldWanderer @Griff and @karmaticacid for the intial feedback!
Developing Standards for Buddy Reviews
The Work Agreement (WA) should become the focal point of a buddy review. The Reviewer should use the Reviewee’s Work Agreement as the talking points for a review call. Regular Contributors should use what they have agreed to contribute and the hours they have promised to contribute as the base metrics for their performance. The Reviewer is not there to necessarily critique but rather to pose questions, cause reflections, observe and record. If there’s a clear discongruence between a work agreement and the work the contributor is doing they need to either revisit their work agreement or revisit the way they actively contribute so the work agreement aligns with the work being done. Salaries should be consistently disclosed on work agreements since they provide important context in the relationship between hours worked and the type of work done, with the compensation received.
Work Agreements should have a copy stored in an ipfs link, allowing it to be universally available, uncensorable and change resistant.
A loose set of questions should be developed based on work agreements, reviewers are required to ask and record responses but can also add in any flavour they wish to personalize their buddy calls. The work agreements should be open during the buddy call. Questions that should be added to the already established buddy call review questions:
- Average hours worked per week
- Which working groups they are contributing to
- Hours spent working in each working group
- Deliverables/tasks completed for each working group
- If they would make changes to their WA or leave it as is
- ???
Iterating on Work Agreements
A contributor who wishes to update their work agreement can do so at any time, however it must pass a governance vote. This is invaluable for contributors who would like to break into new working groups, expand their talents and serve the org in greater capacities. This is also useful to keep contributors and their work agreements aligned. There must be, however, some sort of consensus and feedback process between the contributor and the org/working group so that the right people are doing the right work. Updated Work Agreements must pass a DAO vote on the nrGIV DAO. If a contributor wants advice on their updated work agreement they are invited to make a forum post, however it is not mandatory. In general, the advice process will almost always improve the chances of any proposal passing a vote. Work Agreements Including Iterations will be tracked by the Governance Working Group. The WA document should be linked in the DAO vote and changes made should be outlined either in a forum post or in the #governance channel on the Giveth Discord.
Creating Channels for Critical Feedback
Ordinary Critical Feedback
A Typeform template will be created for any contributor at any time to send feedback regarding another contributor, typeforms will be tracked in a database managed by the Governance WG and Gravity. This typeform will ask questions relevant to the contributor under review’s performance, work ethic, behaviour. Feedback will be passed on, anonymously, to the contributor’s buddies who will present it on the subsequent buddy review.
Escalated Critical Feedback
For more serious feedback that needs to be escalated, we will have a space in the typeform where the submitter can indicate whether the contributor in question should have their work agreement terminated based on their typeform feedback. Going this route would open a Gravity case, allowing for important feedback to be worked through in a productive manner. This is the first signal to a contributor that potentially they need to improve their work. This is also a requirement in order to escalate to a Termination of a Work Agreement.
Terminating Work Agreements
A reasonable amount of time after an Escalated Critical Feedback has been submitted, the submitter can call for a termination of another contributor’s work agreement. This can only take place minimum 1 month after an escalated Critical Feedback, up to a maximum of 6 months afterwards. A vote is created on the nrGIV DAO to terminate their Work Agreement. If this vote passes this contributor will have their regular payments discontinued and access credentials revoked from all Giveth systems and platforms. Context for termination will be provided by Gravity inside the #DAO channel on Discord, Gravity will also help facilitate any discussion.
*In future systems I would envision this process also involves the proposer posting collateral in the form of GIV, which would be forfeit in case of the vote failing. Technical validation pending…
Intra-Working Group (WG) Governance (Step 2)
As Giveth scales we’ve quickly realized that some governance processes don’t need to take the bandwidth of the entire org. We need to create scoped governance systems so that working groups can govern themselves and make collective decisions for issues that affect only it’s contributors (Big props to Willy and ShapeShift for the inspiration). We can do this using our current DAO tools - using the nrGIV DAO we can add in more voting apps, agents, finance apps, voting tokens to create independent voting and fund management systems for Working Groups that require scaling up. Effectively we can create sub DAOs that can be observed and engaged with, under the same parent DAO.
Minting WG specific voting tokens will allow WGs to have independent token-weighted voting that is separate from nrGIV tokens. Distributing voting tokens among WGs I suggest should be 1 contributor, 1 token with perhaps the WG lead having an extra weight of 3 total voting tokens, given their extra insight into the workings and nuances of the WG. A standard 5 day vote duration should be used (this cannot be changed once set), Quorum and Support Required can be dictated by the WG wishing to create their sub DAO within nrGIV. nrGIV tokens would not have voting weight inside a WGs respective voting app. Minting and Burning tokens as contributors shuffle in, around and out of the WGs can be done via normal token-manager functions.
The UI would feel something akin to Discord, seamlessly checking in on channels and interacting if you have the right permissions/tokens. I believe this can be carried out via EVM-crispr. A lot of testing will have to be done to make sure we don’t wreck anything crucial in our DAO but I’m pretty confident this can be done with Aragon Apps.
Once we implement this second step we can transition many of these processes to scope them to working group decisions, alleviating the sometimes unnecessary overhead of the entire org being called to make decisions.
Iterating Work Agreements (Step 2)
Once we have unique sub DAOs for WGs requiring extra governance controls we can modify the structure of work agreements to include a breakdown of hours spent working for each WG and the requested compensation for their contributions. When a contributor chooses to modify their WG they can of course choose to go through the regular advice process via the forum and instead submit a vote to the WG relevant to the changes they are proposing to their WA. This process will requires changes or additions relayed via a forum post or via Discord to the relevant WG channels. The WG will have its own voting app on the nrGIV DAO that these votes are submitted to. Current work agreements will need to be modified to match these updated requirements. Contributors need to have an approved work agreement within a WG in order to receive compensation from it.
Terminating Work Agreements (Step 2)
A fundamental change of this component will be that instead of terminating an entire work agreement, we can remove a contributor from a WG, thus ending any compensation agreements and revoking relevant credentials to the WG. Any contributor from a WG can propose this, given they meet the aforementioned timing requirements relative to escalated Critical Feedback. The DAO vote will instead be scoped to the relevant WG instead of the entire org.
Big props to @willy and Shapeshift for the inspiration for this system.