I had a great conversation at FOSDEM about how activist projects often lack skills and tools that they don't even know they'd benefit from, because... they don't interact with people who have the expertise.
Many Free and Open Source Software projects are mission-based, or at least driven by something more than just "making some software". Fedora, for example, works for _a world where everyone benefits from [FOSS] built by inclusive, welcoming, and open-minded communities ....
... many projects, of course, are more about "let's make some software!" or "make a great community to make some great software". That's fine too.
I think we (community-built software projects) have a lot we could learn from the non-profit world — groups that try to affect change for the better, usually relying on donations and sponsorships and grants.
...
... Because "give us money -- trust us, we'll do good things with it" is not very effective, these groups have a lot of expertise in making plans, convincing others that those plans are good, getting resources, and getting results from those resources and plans.
And, of course, they've developed a lot of expertise and tools around doing this.
Community-built software projects — even those where there's no Grand Purpose! — can benefit from these tools...
... One such tool I personally find helpful and think would be good is called a "logic model" — it's a way of expressing your _theory of change_.
And all of this is to say, I wrote a short post about this tool in Fedora -- we're using it as a framework to plan and structure our strategy for the next five years.
Check it out if this is at all interesting to you:.
https://discussion.fedoraproject.org/t/theory-of-change-how-we-plan-and-explain-our-plans/46632
We[1] are working on a [new strategic plan]. We’re using an approach called a “Logic Model”. I like this because it is explicit about our theory of change — the links between what we want to happen and what we do and back the other way actual results You may have heard me talk about logic models before. This post is a quick refresher — or introduction for anyone to whom this is new. This is an example Logic Model from a talk I did at Flock in 2016[2]. It shows a theoretical logic model for th...
@mattdm thanks for sharing- this “Logic Model” artifact is new to me.
A similar approach is Wardley Mapping. It’s about the same thing but (1) rotated 90 degrees to flow bottom up, (2) focuses on selecting a single goal, (3) adds a way to think about which of the links in the chain are most valuable for your organization to lead vs outsource
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Thanks! I've played with that some but not a lot. I can see it as helpful for understanding (or, least, thinking about!) where plans have room to actually add value. Maybe a good tool for validating one's assumptions about Outcomes -> Impact links.
@mattdm This is very interesting! Thanks for sharing!
(and of course, old Star Trek references are always appreciated)
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Matthew Miller
Peter Bronez
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Bill Seitz