About

The Organic Design Peer Group

The Organic Design Peer Group is a small trust group whose members work well together as a team on various projects involving common interests. The team members all share common values, covered in our manifesto but include, amongst other things, 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 peer group has been working on a long-term project that involves defining a standard system we call the Organic Design System. This system allows organisations to operate in accord with the principles outlined in the manifesto. We've been working on this in the background for over ten years as a long-term research project, and even though we've done a lot of development, it's all been in the context of research and prototyping.

We're now at the stage where we have a clear idea of the software and content we'd like to see in a packaged-up and releasable form. The peer group's role in this phase will be that of project architects. The input we'll have in terms of the software development will be focussed high-level technical direction. Our hands-on work will be mainly focussed on the ontology, which includes documentation, procedures, educational material and other system-oriented aspects.

Our aim is to minimise the amount of software development required, by using our current wiki organisation framework as a unified interface that effectively glues together a number of other applications into a mashup.

Organic Design Limited

The company is being run by members who are not part of the Organic Design Peer Group so that the two entities can maintain full independence from each other. The purpose of Organic Design Limited is to create and implement a service-based (SaaS) business model on top of the free and open-source solutions composing the package as defined by the peer group. As the business grows, it will help fund further development of the Organic Design System.

The Organic Design System

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

This system involves establishing and refining a set of best practices, conventions to which the members should adhere when working together on projects managed within the site. In addition to these, all the procedures are documented and refined through use, optimising re-usability and knowledge sharing. This practise 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 from which we've learned a lot 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, LANs and servers. We have built up a number of procedures and best practices covering these aspects of organisation as a result of documenting our own administration requirements whilst working on internal projects and taking on work for other clients.

Documenting procedures and establishing conventions is the basis of our organisational system. 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, once in a while, some concerns come up amongst the participants regarding their contributions and the distribution of profits made from the work. Following are the main concerns that have cropped up, 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

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

The site procedures, templates and structure provide guidance on which aspects should be discussed and agreed upon before moving to each phase. This way of working is very similar to that used on sites like RentACoder and eLance, except that the infrastructure does not take a cut and is more casual, and therefore, relies 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 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 of how interesting the job is, how much it benefits our own R&D, and how much may be charged for the work. This prioritisation determines how our available time is apportioned amongst the projects.

From the client's perspective, they look at what value is 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 improving Organic Design

Some of the people working together on projects in 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 spend time refining and improving is freely available to be used 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.

Income generated from the Organic Design wiki

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%).

Income generated with Organic Design technology

Our system which is currently in the form of Wiki Organisation is able to be deployed much more easily now, and will soon be able to be set up for people by anyone who invests sufficient interest to learn and practice the procedures. The system is free software licensed under GPL and can be installed by anyone. They can install it for free or can ask any amount they wish for their time, but the software itself must remain free and must always be shipped with its licence. If people who are installing the system for others require expertise from outside their own organisation, then Organic Design or our affiliates such as Adeft or Mint Media may be available depending on the nature of the project and other circumstances at the time.

Other Organic Design income

Organic Design also generates revenue from hosting other sites, selling service subscriptions or selling products for clients through other 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.

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.