Summary
Approving this proposal is would signal a continuation of budget funding for February 1st 2025 - February 28th, 2026, for an eighth consecutive term for the current Operations workstream that was established and renewed with passing of the previous proposals: [SCP-8], [SCP-59], [SCP-94], [SCP-125], [SCP-147], [SCP-165] and [SCP-179]. Unlike previous proposals, this one goes to 12 (months).
This proposal seeks to renew the Operations workstream with its current contributors, KPIs, and goals. The Operations workstream is always open and flexible to collaborative updates to future responsibilities, processes, and success metrics to continue to support the DAO as we continue to constantly evolve.
This proposal adopts [SCP-92] Definition of Workstream Leader
Abstract
The Operations workstream is an integral part of the growth and development of healthy systems for reliably producing and maintaining the ShapeShift product suite and its uptime, responsiveness and feature functionality. The Operations workstream provides front line assistance and monitoring of the products produced by the DAO in both customer support and feature testing throughout the release process. The workstream additionally provides similar support and structure to the DAO, its ecosystem, networks, and meeting structure.
Through Production Issue Procedure Best Practices, Triage Management, Deployment and Regression Testing, Customer Support and DAO Admin Procedures and Practices, the ShapeShift DAO Operations Workstream provides essential resources and tools for efficiency, organization, and overall product and services health that are vital to the success of the DAO, the product suite, it’s contributors, and $FOX token utility.
Motivation
Renewing this workstream will allow Operations to continue to work side by side with other workstreams to increase efficiency in individual procedural processes across the DAO and help progress deployment and testing processes while still verifying and maintaining reliability, health, and full functionality of all outlined responsibilities and services.
Areas of focus and Operations responsibilities maintained by the workstream also include: Hosting the Weekly Governance call and advocating the Governance process, Organizing and hosting the quarterly AllFox community call, Marketing support and release communication, Leading and collaborating in Product specs, Weekly Release Thread updates in the forum, Expected Feature Release Testing guidelines, Go/No Gos, Retros and other coordinated meetings or DAO processes, RDP management, Gitbook documentation management,and full coverage of customer support.
The Operations workstream continues to focus on the wider picture of the product suite’s uptime, functionality, and overall health and user support. It additionally mirrors that responsibility in the DAO Discord, Github, and Notion by synergizing and coordinating cross-stream collaboration further strengthening the DAO.
Specification
The Operations workstream Notion repo can be found here.
Operations maintains:
Triage: Known Issues
2024 Prod Issues tracking, Release Stats and testing fees,
Ops Sprint, Governance Call, AllFox, Go/NoGos, Retros, RDP program, Gitbook, Customer support (via Chatwoot).
The Operations workstream strives to keep the greater DAO agile and committed to maximizing efficiency, scalability, and transparency with a strategic lean into data-based decision making. At times, best practices and procedures may be challenged, modified, updated, changed, archived or revisited to maintain those objectives. (See: Marketing content creation support flow, The Bounty Process, Trusted Community Devs, Triage Report Tracker, Unsolved User Problems, the governance tracker, POAP minting, daily regression testing, the evolution of goat/no goats, etc)
The renewal term length for this workstream and its contributors is 12 months, from February 1st, 2025 through February 28th, 2026.
This proposal continues @Tyler | ShapeShift as the workstream leader, @MBMaria as Operations Coordinator, and @Reedthorfox as an hourly part time contributor.
Budget ask: $322,800 over 12 months to be sent monthly in Colony in USDC and FOX
Previous Monthly total budget: $28,000
Previous Monthly USDC: $19,625.20 (70%)
Previous Monthly FOX: $8,374.80 (30%)
New Monthly total budget: $26,900 (4% decrease in overall budget)
New Monthly USDC: $16,648 (5% decrease) (62%)
New Monthly FOX: $10,252 (18% increase) (38%)
Previous 6 month USDC budget: $117,751.20
Previous 6 month FOX budget: $50,248.80
Previous 6 month Total budget: $168,000
New 12 month USDC budget: $199,776 (15% decrease in annual spend)
New 12 month FOX budget: $123,024 (18% increase in annual spend)
New 12 month Total budget: $322,800 (4% decrease in annual spend)
Realized USDC savings from new proposal:
$13,200/year or $1100/month
There are two changes in this proposal’s budget from the previous renewal:
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Compensation increases were given to both Tyler and MBMaria. Tyler’s compensation in the previous renewal matches his compensation from the first proposal of the Operations workstream over 3 years ago, yet the job requirements, responsibilities, and inflation have increased over that time. MBMaria has proven to be a backbone of the Operations workstream and has continually upskilled to match the requirements and requests of the Engineering team in our testing and release processes. Her growth is evident in the numerous testing threads in discord and is very deserving of the raise proposed.
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The potential new hire budget line has been removed. This allows for the compensation raises for both full time contributors while still presenting a lower monthly total spend requested. The team is still in need of extra resources and support in times of high traffic and to expedite the release process. This proposal acknowledges that Operations will start working with the C-Mod workstream specifically to cross train C-Mod contributors in Customer Support and Release testing.
There may be an additional budget amendment related to compensation after cross training and upskilling with the C-Mod team.
Operations would account for ~7.6% of the total DAO monthly stable spend if this proposal were to be passed:
Projected monthly total DAO USDC spend : $219,030 (projected 20% increase from last proposal season)
Operations renewal USDC: $16,648 (5% decrease)
If network conditions or the price of FOX decreasing dramatically alters or changes Operations ability to perform required deployment and regression testing, an additional proposal addendum for test funds may be proposed.
Operations will continue to be mindful and agile about its processes with the DAO to continue to provide proficient coverage and support in all of the outlined areas of this proposal while continuing to maintain our KPIs under this optimized budget.
Specific Goals and Success Metrics
The goals and success metrics for the Operations workstream are listed below, split into current Goals and KPIs.
Current measurables:
Production Issue Best Practices
Goals:
To minimize downtime of the entire product suite.
To resolve production environment bugs efficiently with minimal disruption to engineering processes, deployment cadences, or user experience.
KPIs:
99% uptime of the product suite and services:
August: 100%
September 100%
October: 100%
November: 99.9%
December: 100%
January: 100% (so far)
Average 6 month uptime: 99.83% (99.58% last term)
<8 Production Issue Escalations per Quarter:
1 escalation in the last 3 quarters: 0 Escalations in Q3, 2 Escalations in Q4, 0 in Q1.
<50 Total Combined DAO Contributor hours dedicated to Production Issue Resolutions Per Quarter: .5 hours dedicated.
Triage Management
Goals:
To discover, isolate, navigate, and manage resolutions of user facing issues in all ShapeShift products and services.
To provide known troubleshooting and mitigation steps for issue reporters and users during the discovery and recreation of triage tickets.
To mitigate and expedite time required from core contributors spent on bug tickets, issue reports, and production level emergencies.
To transfer correctly completed and accurate Github tickets of triage bugs to Engineering or Product to be posted for bounty.
KPIs:
Greater than 80% resolution rate goal: 88.39% this term, 96.8% Resolution term six, 75.3% Resolution rate term five, 71% resolution rate term four.
This goal was maintained this term. Operations succeeded in continuing our overall resolution rate term over term with improvements and optimizations to the Triage process and ticket review/clean up practices as a new focus the previous term.
Deployment and Regression Testing
Goals:
To catch 95% of prod issues during the deployment testing process.
To catch user facing issues in production environments in regression tests and #triage them accordingly.
A deployment test is completed by the Operations workstream during each release process and upon request in pre-deployment branch testing.
Specific regression tests are performed twice a week by an Operations workstream contributor to complete a full monthly regression testing schedule in accordance with regression testing best practices.
Operations prioritize blocking bugs, supporting engineers, and efficiency in the processes already in place over chasing non-blocking bugs for a ‘perfected’ release.
In the 85 releases deployed from August 1, 2024 to Jan 20, 2025, 2 total prod issues were experienced. 2 Production issue bugs in 108 releases = 97.75%
KPIs:
<2 Cadences missed per quarter due to bugs overlooked in Ops Testing (1 cadence missed last term)
<2 Rollbacks during releases per quarter due to bugs overlooked in Ops Testing (0 Rollbacks occurred last term)
DAO Admin Procedures and Practices
Goals:
To organize successful DAO meetings related to Goat/No Goat, Retros, Ops Sprints, and AllFoxes.
To track, organize, record, and optimize DAO repos keeping them current and relevant. To help in cross workstream collaboration projects that optimize efficiency and collaborative, transparent communication.
To provide assistance in projects that require support in generating procedures to be completed for the DAO or other workstreams.
KPIs:
Keep All workstream leaders and key contributors informed and involved in contributions to all Ops Sprints, Governance Calls, AllFoxes Slide decks, Go/No Gos, and Retros.
Benefits:
If this proposal passes, the DAO will continue to fund the Operations workstream budget to meet the deliverables and services outlined which are integral to the DAO’s success and current practices. Coverage for Prod Issue escalations, Triage Management, Regularly scheduled regression and deployment testing, Customer Support, Cross workstream alignment and stakeholder resources would all be focused, maintained and improved upon by the workstream.
Passing this proposal will continue uninterrupted support and services offered from the Operations workstream to the DAO.
Drawbacks:
Funding this workstream costs the DAO stablecoins and FOX during the duration of the proposed term. This workstream would cost the DAO treasury potentially $322,800 over 12 months ($26,900/month) if all funds are needed and exhausted in the budget costing the DAO $ from the stablecoin runway and FOX treasury.
Thanks