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Open Collaboration in BrainBase

Distributed decision making for small activities​

To increase speed and prevent bottlenecks, we want to invite all members to both make decisions and execute them without asking for permission. This goes for all small activities, like updating a modal on our website, contacting organizations for perks and benefits, and making content for social media.

Just make sure that the thing you want to do:

  • Is consistent with BrainBase’ purpose and values.
  • Doesn’t cost more than 5000 kr. (If it does, ask first.)
  • If you can check both conditions, you’re almost ready to start. Remember to inform the network on Slack about what you’re planning to do. If nobody objects within 24 hours, it’s time to get started!

Decision making for bigger activities​

Before we start working on bigger things, we put them through a decision making process. Any member can come up with ideas to what BrainBase should focus on. The work is presented in a Kanban board in Trello, where each activity move through a series of steps:

Idea -> Voting -> Selected -> In Progress -> Completed

When you submit a new idea, remember to attach a short summary of why you think it would be useful and the expected outcome is.

The board is here:

Trello board

And you can follow this link to join the board in Trello:

Join the board

Voting​

We’ll then use Lazy Voting to select ideas. Lazy Voting is a method to speed up inclusive decision making and make standards for when suggestions are approved.

We use four different types of votes:

  • +1 “Yes,” “Agree,” or “the action should be performed.”. A thumbs up to the idea, with a willingness from the voter to help in making it happen.
  • +0. A thumbs up, but the voter isn’t be able to help doing it.
  • -0. A thumbs down, but the voter isn’t too concerned to prevent from getting done.
  • -1. Big thumbs down. This vote counts as a veto on issues where we need consensus. If you cast a veto, you need to add an explanation of why you want to stop or change the original idea. Vetoes with no explanation doesn’t count.

Source

We specify a time frame for voting on the ideas. We prefer short time frames, since this will increase the decision making speed. For work up to 1 week, a two day timebox (48 hours) is enough. For activities bigger than this the timebox should be extended, but in general we should prefer to make activities small enough to be delivered through a weeks work.

Approvals​

Every idea has to describe what type of approval it needs.

There are four different types of approvals. Different actions require different types of approvals

  • Consensus Approval: Consensus approval requires 3 binding +1 votes, and no binding vetoes.
  • Lazy Consensus: Lazy consensus requires no -1 votes (‘silence gives assent’).
  • Lazy Majority: A lazy majority vote requires 3 binding +1 votes, and more binding +1 votes than -1 votes.
  • Lazy 2⁄3 Majority: Lazy 2⁄3 majority votes requires at least 3 votes, and twice as many +1 votes as -1 votes.
  • For smaller proposals Lazy Consensus is appropriate. For bigger decisions Lazy Majority or Lazy ⅔ Majority is more appropriate.

The BrainBase - Open Collaboration framework builds on elements from LiquidO.