Retrospective
It’s been a blast. Another two months flew by just like that. Some highlights during this period include being able to demo Guilds, delving deeper into building smart contracts, and being able to, in a small manner, contribute to some of the fixes requested from the interim audits. And lastly, of course, ETHAmsterdam. Finally, getting to meet everyone and being in an atmosphere where people are excited about building for the future felt truly exciting.
These two months have also been quite testing for me on a personal note. I handed in my resignation, turned down two manager positions (Head of compliance and also a manager position in a big consulting firm), applied for my own company, and dealt with all the administration that needed to be in place to contribute to DXdao. Somewhat of an overwhelming period, but necessary to get one step closer to becoming a full-time contributor.
Let’s go!
Went well
Guilds
During this period, I started to align with DXgovs other epics. I worked closely with @madusha and @ross to move the roadmap for Guilds. Some of the highlights include:
The landing page
The REP mint functionality
Tech planning
At the beginning of this period, I suggested to @ross to try out having a tech planning session and mapping out the workflows and the tasks that need to be solved. Since then, we have accomplished several tech planning sessions, which have increased both alignment and understanding of DXdaos products in the squad.
Refactor Session
Decoding call data
Supporting additional guild implementations
Mob sessions
Another promising initiative we tested out was doing more mob sessions. During the latest sprint, I had the opportunity to work with @madusha. Working closely together in this manner is beneficial for new contributors. You can brainstorm together, increase the quality of the code base, and get a fast feedback loop. Thanks to @madusha for being an awesome and pedagogic coding partner.
In addition, we also had a coding session where we went over the codebase together in preparation for refactoring the code in DXvote. I am looking forward to more of these sessions in the next two months.
Testing
After seeing that we were lacking tests in DXvote, I proposed to the squad to start to add tests before merging code into DXvote. Credits go to the squad for being responsive to making a mutual effort to make it happen more. For this, I suggested drafting a Working agreement. Basically, an informal protocol that defines how DXgov wants to work together (in this case, regarding testing). The purpose is to increase transparency, manage expectations, and align how we work together. The draft is still in-progress.
Could have done better
Time Management
During this time, the bane of my existence is still managing my time. Context switching between my regular job and the DAO is still difficult. I have noticed that I am losing hours of focused work due to this. In addition, my schedule often conflicts with the times for daily standup and other sessions, which makes it more challenging to be in sync with the squad. For the coming period, I’ll be defending my time more rigorously in order to be more efficient.
Ways of Working
One of the things I’ve noticed after being with DXgov for three months is that we’re lacking ground rules for how we work together. Let me explain. Coming into the space as a new part-time contributor, I found it incredibly difficult to understand the things we were doing and our means of making decisions within the squad. Many decisions affecting the squad were made synchronously over Keybase, which made it impossible to catch up on those discussions under a wall of text. This creates tension, lowers contributor experience, and heightens the threshold for new contributors and contributors joining part-time (Here’s a retro from @CarlB partly referring to the same issues). Obviously, working in a DAO means a high degree of autonomy for each contributor in exchange for fuzzier processes. However, I think the squad would be able to scale and work more efficiently with better alignment on our ways of working.
For this to not be just a paper tiger, I’ll be proposing and taking more ownership for introducing and continuing the following practices:
- Ensure that there are “Acceptance criteria” for each issue (I proposed the change to @ross and kudos to him for immediately adding the proposed change to the Github issues).
- Continue to require and encourage writing tests in DXvote.
- Continue to hold tech sessions with the squad for new epics and other code base changes that affect the squad.
- Continue to encourage documenting tech decisions in Github Discussions (or a database in Notion?) instead of having it disappear under a wall of text in Keybase.
- Continue to have mob sessions between contributors
The above are some measures I hope will bring better alignment and increase contributor experience. But like most things, it’ll be done in an iterative approach. The ways DXdao is working are very different from most work environments and have to be approached accordingly. The end result is hopefully getting more alignment and increased transparency within the squad. For new contributors it’s hopefully lowering the threshold and making it easier for DXdao to onboard more people!
Compensation
- 2000 xDAI
- 1200 DXD
- 0.1333% REP
I also talked with @Melanie about adding the contributor stipend for forming and maintaining my new legal entity Zanarkand AB. The fees came up to:
- 265 USD (registration fee, proof of company registration, registration, and proof of beneficial ownership)
In total: 2265 xDAI
Completed work
DXvote PRs
DXdao Contracts PRs
