About

Template:Webpage Organic Design is an organisation set up to facilitate the development of a number of projects being worked on by a small group of people working together as a team. The members of the team all share common ideals regarding free software, decentralised solutions and the general idea of maximising re-usability of these solutions and actively sharing them with others.

Since all the members work together as a functional unit, each can confidently take on jobs that they otherwise wouldn't have the expertise to complete alone, and since all the members are associated with many potential clients, the availability of good projects to work on is also improved.

The Organic Design System

There are many software tools required across the diverse spectrum of projects and organisations we're involved with, but its the common system that ties them all together into a single unified structure. This site is our ongoing effort at creating an organised and reusable system for organising all these aspects using open source collaborative software.

This system involves establishing and refining a set of best practices which are conventions for all the members to adhere to when working together on projects managed within the site. In addition to these, all the procedures are documented and refined through use which optimises re-usability and knowledge sharing. It also reduces human error and makes tasks require less mental energy to perform.

Our site is based on the MediaWiki software which was designed for the Wikipedia online encyclopedia. Wikipedia is a massive project involving thousands of tasks being performed by thousands of users, so it's a very good example which we've learned a lot from during the development of our own system. Some of our ideas for wiki organisation are more specific than Wikipedia, so we've developed many extensions to the software to help it support our way of working more effectively, see wiki organisation for more detail.

Even quite diverse projects tend to have many needs in common, such as financials, contact management, invoicing, stock and suppliers, document and knowledge management, code development, web sites, printed material, LAN's and servers. We have built up a number of procedures and best practices covering these aspects of organisation as a result of documenting its own administration requirements during working on internal projects and taking on work for other clients.

The documenting of procedures and the establishment of conventions is the basis of the organisational system we're refining and distributing. As we structure this knowledge more effectively, our means of allowing it to be re-used by others will also improve. Eventually the distribution of this system along with all the free software and knowledge necessary to use, refine and redistribute it will form the foundation for seminars and workshops that we'll be putting on around the community.

We've found that in working together as a group, some concerns come up once in a while amongst the participants regarding their contributions and the distribution of profits made from the work. Following are the main concerns that have cropped up within our group and our perspectives on them, which may be of use to other groups wanting to work in a similar way.

Working on Commercial Projects Together

The Organic Design members working together on projects are using our freely available system of procedures, extensions and best practices. The site has no ownership or relationship directly with these projects. Each project is an agreement purely amongst the client and those working together to complete the project. Any profits or losses generated by the projects are the responsibility of those who accept payments or contracts for work covered by the project.

The site procedures, templates and structure provides guidance on which aspects should be discussed and agreed upon before moving to each phase. This way of working is very similar to using sites like RentACoder and eLance, except that the infrastructure is not taking a cut and is more casual and therefore reliant on a certain level of trust and professionalism among members working together. In fact many of the jobs we work on together have come from bids that members of our team have made in RentACoder or eLance, and some of the aspects of projects that we can't handle ourselves have been listed on those sites.

The projects we're working on tend to become prioritised based on a balance involving how interesting the job is, how much it benefits our own R&D and how much the work can be charged out at. This prioritisation determines how our available time is apportioned amongst the projects.

From the paying client's perspective, they're looking at what value has been delivered for the time they're paying for. If for whatever reason, the value delivered is lower than usual, then some of the time will need to be unchargeable. If a person is consistently delivering lower value in their role, then a lower charge-out rate will need to be accepted until the ability for that person to become more productive is achieved.

Work done improving Organic Design

Some of the people working together on projects within the site have put significant time into developing software and content solutions used by the site and the organisational system. All the software and content is free to use and modify under the GPL or LGPL licenses, and most work done on it is done voluntarily, because those developing it realise that working on good freely available software brings opportunity, for example the ability to offer consultation, installation or administration services. The content that the members and public are spending time refining and improving is freely available to be set up on any of their own servers, and the method of doing that is documented clearly as procedures, so all such work is beneficial to all contributors.

Some of the work on open source software in the site has been funded by clients requiring various functionality, their incentive to allow it to be open source is that we usually offer a lower price to work on open source projects, and often refuse to work on proprietary software regardless of price. Most of the paid work we do is content and procedure oriented rather than software development so this concern rarely arises for us these days.

Some of the work required by this site and the system may require financial incentive before any roles will commit to working on it. These situations are handled as projects in the system for the members to discuss the resource requirements and allocation as they would for any normal client project.

Organic Design revenue & affiliates

This aspect has started to become relevant because the site has begun to build up a small online community mainly around MediaWiki related expertise and resource. The organisation may generate revenue from hosting other sites, or selling products for clients through some of the sites running on its servers. These revenue streams are independent of the members working together on projects within the site, and some such projects may be completely unknown to the members - i.e. the Organic Design organisation was set up specifically to support a number of open source projects and goals, but is also a business entity representing one member who is entitled to work on private business operations. All the other current members also have one or more of their own businesses and sites and are free to use the resources and knowledge learned on this site to carry out their own private business ventures in addition to those carried out together in the site.

Some of the members have set up pages in the Organic Design wiki which generate revenue by selling products. If the product is sold on behalf of a member, then a percentage of the total sale price (default 15%) is retained by Organic Design. If the product is being sold on behalf on an external affiliate on a page which a member curates, then the member will receive a percentage of Organic Design's cut of the sale (default 85%).

Projects funded by Organic Design

Organic Design has a number of projects under way, some of the work is done voluntarily by the members, some is paid for by clients who need certain aspects put in place for their own needs, and sometimes a bounty is agreed upon amongst members to help get some aspects developed faster. In these situations, determining how to allocate income fairly amongst participants can become difficult. For Organic Design these issues are minimised by all members accounting for the time and resource they commit to the various projects using our wiki-based organisational system.