Task Team Examples

Here are some outlines of task team goals an powers to help you when writing your own.

Content team

Goals

• ensure that Foswiki has an attractive "web presence" designed to draw in users and potential contributors.
• Redesign the gateway pages
• Ensure that content is regularly audited to meet expectations of independence, fairness, equality, truth, justice and the American way.

Powers modify any topic. Priority service from the admin team to help make it happen. Use comms channels (such as existing wiki and mailing lists) to advertise the activity and draw in contributors).

Recognition contributors and commercial sponsors will be identified as the "Web Presence Team" in a prominently-linked page on the finished site. Launch communications, issued through the Press Relations task team, will include links as appropriate.

Timeframe TBD

Major Release planning

Goals

• write a roadmap that (1) reflects the Our Mission (2) reflects the requirements of the open-source community (3) is achievable and timeframed. The roadmap does not have to be detailed, and may not be adhered to 100%, but should as far as possible reflect community requirements for Foswiki.

Powers use community mailing lists to gather inputs

Timeframe TBD

Patch release

Goals

• integrate and test Foswiki patch release
• Ensure unit and interactive tests are completed.
• Complete release checklist.
• Communicate release availability (press release).

Powers final say over releasability. Reject checkins if necessary. Generate press release on behalf of the community.

Timeframe TBD

Contributor sharing environment cleanup

Goals

• improve the environment for better initial experience for new contributors
• provide taxonomy and search tools in Foswiki site webs to create a better experience for new and returning contributors.

Powers delete topics. Mark topics as obsolete. Refactor anything. Move subsets of content to new areas (e.g. webs) or sites

Timeframe TBD

Server Admin team

Goals

• provide admin support for the project servers
• ensure service availability for Tasks web and subversion repository.
• Ensure all standard admin expectations (backup, security etc) are fulfilled.
• Audit registered users and ensure that spammers are dealt with quickly and effectively.

Powers root access all the servers. Recognition as the "admin team" prominent on Foswiki site. Solicit funding on behalf of Foswiki to support mirror sites (subject to published constraints on recognising sponsors). Remove spam and legally infringing content.

Timeframe TBD

Press relations

Goals

• Communicate with the press on behalf of the open-source community
• ensure broad, balanced and unbiased communication of significant events in the TWiki project.
• Raise the profile of Foswiki among technology commentators, including bloggers and the tech press.
• Maintain commercial independence.

Powers all press communications will be channelled through this team, which must sign off on content.

Timeframe active up to and including the next major release

Test monitoring team

• Proposer and team leader: QuisCustodiet
• Team members: IpsosCustodes

Goals

• provide regular feedback on test status of the Foswiki trunk and active release branch
• ensure daily runs of unit testcases and automatic result reporting to developer mailing lists.
• Ensure tests on at least Debian/Linux.
• Run tests as many platforms as practical.

Powers

• mail lists, and individual community members, in the event of failures.
• Obtain sponsorship on behalf of Foswiki for the maintenance and support of test platforms.

Timeframe TBD

user conference

• Proposer and team leader: BillyGates
• Team members: JonnyShirley, StevieBallmer

Goals

• The conference team will organise a Foswiki user conference
• The conference will be somewhere in Europe
• The team will use commercial sponsorship to raise funds to support this work

Powers

• The team will be able to use the Foswiki name to raise sponsorship funds
• The Foswiki users mailing list may be used by the team for announcements, including requests for funds
• The team will have unlimited rights to modify the site's content to support the conference
• Commercial sponsors will be granted the right to use the Foswiki name and logo in promotional materials, as long as it's linked to the conference
• The team will have final say over all advertising materials.
• This charter expires 31 September 2021

Multiple teams working on the same task

An important aspect of the system is that in a highly active community, there is scope for two or more task teams to work to address the same problem. All you have to do is specify their rights and responsibilities appropriately. Here's a charter for one of two task teams working on a store module:

• The DB Store task team 1 will design and code a database store
• The work may or may not be selected for inclusion in future Foswiki releases. Task team 2 is also working on an alternative implementation.
• The work will be based on a branch of Foswiki
• The team will have it's own web on Foswiki site (and bug database) for management and discussion of its work
• If the work may require modification of the Foswiki core. If so, all unit tests will be maintained and all documents updated.
• 100% compatibility with old Foswiki data and templates will be maintained.
• This charter expires on the 20th December 2009
• The team will deliver benchmark results and user experience stories for evaluation by the BoD, who will take the final decision
• Sponsor X has committed a prize of $2M for the best implementation. It is up to the successful team how this is shared.
• If their solution is selected, the team commits to merge its work with the trunk
• Team members will have the final say on any advertising or marketing materials generated referring to their work

Task team 2 would work to an almost identical charter.