Automate Ankush Project [The AA project]

[entropyReverser]

Problem Statement:

The functioning of the group is highly dependent on Ankush. This leads to the following issues.

• All the work going through RDS goes though Ankush, leading to less time for better utilization like Design discussions, technical sessions, etc according to him.
• If Ankush doesn’t come to Discord, all the work in the group will quickly come to a halt. This can be caused by many things like him wanting time off, getting sick, or even getting married(or a relationship)

Suggested Solution

The various ways to decrease this dependency are.

1. Implementing App Owner

   The idea is one person becomes the owner of the app/project in RDS and they oversee the progress of the application. App owners are not a new concept in fact we currently have app owners and have had app owners in the past.

   Problem with this:
   App owners are inherently taken up by ambitious and driven people. So they quickly get jobs and move on to different challenges. The two ways to fix this problem are:-

   1. Retain App Owners

   RDS is a volunteer-driven community everything done by anyone is in the end optional.

   Folks graduate out of RDS once they get jobs. We could make it worthwhile to stay. This could a long-term goal to achieve.

   2. Get new App Owners faster.
      What we can do currently is make it easier to onboard new App Owners. The suggestion here is to create extensive docs in form of text or video. Making it easier for someone else to become an app owner and making it easier for an App Owner to leave as well. A leaving app owner shouldn’t feel guilt, thinking progress will be significantly affected if they leave.

                                                            Current

                                                             End Goal

PS: This does not imply devs can't talk to Ankush. They can, Adding those connections made the graph ugly.

2. Offload New member onboarding to existing members

   Problem Statement

   Currently, new folks have to do lift simulation, some even end up in hangouts asking what to do even though they get a welcome email with the task. Once they are done they have to wait on Ankush to approve the lift.

   Suggested solution

   The whole lift simulation be automated by: -

   • Central Doc that tells folks what to do. [This is already done via the Git repo] so whenever someone asks we can point them directly to them
   • A doc with all the edge cases to be given to existing members so that they can review and approve life simulation tasks.
   • A person needs 3 approvals on the lift and then they can be assigned a new RDS task, till then they can either build the local setup of RDS backend or Work on making the lift multiplayer.

3. Inhouse learning catalog

   Problem Statement

   Folks come to hangouts looking for resources on a topic or we suggest topics to study. When they ask where we point them to docs. The issues with this are: -

   1. Reading docs is hard.
   2. Good courses are expensive.
   3. Good courses are comprehensive. Most of the time they only need 1/8 of the info in the course for now.

   Suggested Solution

   Recording In-house session. This lets us

   • Have an easy to recommend resources
   • Can build on older sessions. e.g. Testing 101, 201, etc.
   • Lets up set baseline expectations for topics.