[SCP-TBD] Renewal of the Operations Workstream for a third term

Summary

This proposal is for a continuation of budget funding for another 6 month term, August 1-January 31st, 2023 (Third Term) to the current Operations workstream that was established with the passing of: [SCP-8] and extended in a first renewal: [SCP-59]

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 workstream additionally provides similar support and structure to the DAO and its ecosystem and networks.

Through Production Issue Procedure Best Practices, Triage and Bounty Management, Deployment and Regression Testing, 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 (such as content review with the marketing workstream, bounty management with the KeepKey and Engineering workstreams, etc) and help progress deployment and testing processes while still verifying and maintaining reliability, health, and full functionality of all provided services.

This allows the Engineering workstream to spend more time building and deploying, the Product workstream to spend more time scoping, designing, and implementing, the C-Mods more C-Mod time, etc… Funding this workstream empowers Operations to continue to complete the above stated goals through our continually developing practices, and organize and provide updates, resources, communication, coordination, documentation and any other needs that may arise from other workstreams, the DAO Community and its processes.

The Operations workstream is the only workstream focused on the wider picture of the product suite’s uptime, functionality, and overall health. 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 tracker and Triage Report Tracker

The ShapeShift Dework Bounties Board, Trusted Community Dev timesheets, Bug Bounty Tracker

2022 Prod Issues, Release Stats and testing fees, Regression Testing Schedule

Ops Review in the Content Production Roadmap

Ops Sprint, Governance Call, AllFox, Unsolved User Problems (bi-weekly) Go/NoGos, Retros

The renewal for this workstream and contributors is 6 months, from August 1st 2022 to January 31st 2023. This proposal continues | ShapeShift as the workstream leader and @Lych, , , , and as Operations Assistants.

Budget ask: $303,831 - $330,000 for 6 months of funding minus $26,169 currently in Colony rolling over.

Monthly USDC: $39,275.00 - 69% of total budget

Monthly FOX: $15,725.00 - 30% of total budget

Monthly total budget: $55,000.00 - USDC and FOX blend

6 month USDC budget: $227,775

6 month FOX budget: $102,225

6 month Total budget: $330,000

Full budget details

The changes to the budget from the previous term are quite substantial to try and help the DAO decrease our monthly stable spend and increase our runway in every way possible. The stablecoin spend for the next term is down 50% from the previously passed budget. The USDC and FOX blended full budget is a 28% reduction from the previous budget and Operations now represents 11% of the total monthly DAO stable spend for workstream budgets (measured off of Kent’s most recent runway projections.)

Cuts were mostly made across the board to all non-essential categories in favor of keeping passionate and dedicated contributors to help us grind through the bear market. Budget items “Training/Conference/Travel, Technology, and Discretionary” have all been greatly reduced, combined and paired into “Bounty/Other.” This new “Bounty/Other” section is 50% less than the previously allocated $2,000 for bounties themselves. Test Funds have been reduced by 50% and then split 50/50 in USDC/FOX. These reductions were made possible by a dramatic decrease in the cost of gas to execute functions and transactions on the ETH network, and focused improvements in Operations testing requirements for triggering a test that requires a transaction. All contributors are now additionally taking a portion of their salary in FOX or boosted FOX.

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.

Rollover Budget

The first term’s FOX and USDC left over in Colony were rolled over into the second term’s budget/management. The unused funds from the two terms combined were then used to cover the complete USDC spend for the last month of the second term (July 2022) saving the DAO $73,925 from our monthly spend. There is currently $26,169 USDC and 52.18 FOX still in the Operations Workstream in Colony. These unused funds from the first and second term will be subtracted from the third term’s first month of USDC and FOX funded to the workstream’s budget. This will bring the total savings from the allotted budget for the first two terms of Operations to $100,094.

Total budgets for terms one and two combined: $136,400 + $411,000 = 547,400. $100,094 is 18.29% of the total spend budgeted for Ops so far returned back to the DAO.

As with the previous proposals, all unused funds will be returned to the DAO treasury or rolled into the next term at the end of the proposed term here, January 31st, 2023.

Specific Goals and Success Metrics

The goals and success metrics for the Operations Workstream are broken into two sections in this term, current measurables, and focuses for future KPIs next term.

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 (99.94% last term)

<8 Production Issue Escalations per Quarter - 5 Escalations in Q2 2022 (Previous KPI was <10)

<50 Total Combined DAO Contributor hours dedicated to Production Issue Resolutions Per Quarter (Q2 2022 - 215 hours)

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 (91.5% resolution rate last 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 once a day 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.

KPIs:

<2 Cadences missed per quarter due to bugs overlooked in Ops Testing (0 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: (New this term)

72 hour max response time for all PR review requests from Marketing in the Content Production Roadmap.

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.

Provide full bounty insights to build future goals of % or # of tickets bountied per week.

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 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 $330,000 over 6 months (~$55,000/month) if all funds are needed and exhausted in the budget.

Vote:

For: You support funding the Operations Workstream’s anticipated budget for 6 months, totaling a potential $301,609 to the DAO, and continuing the roles, responsibilities, and expectations outlined above in the Operations Workstream during that time.

Against: You do not support continuing to fund the Operations Workstream.

has posted in previous renewal proposals questions about what each renewal would look like with a budget allocation of 10% and 25% less (and more) as a practice in understanding our budget spends and its effects and functions on the workstreams KPIs, expected responsibilities, and output.

The current proposed renewal budget outlined runs at $55,000 USDC and FOX blended per month. A 10% budget cut would be $5,500 less than currently slated. A 25% budget cut would be $13,750 less than currently slated.

A 10% cut would result in both the loss of a salaried contributor and a thinning of the available contributor hours available to meet the needs of testing. This would result in Operations not being fully equipped for a 4 releases a week deployment schedule as well as renewed lower expectations for DAO admin meeting management and call organization. More bugs would make it through to production and increase the cycles required from other workstreams (namely engineering) in #Prod-Issues, and deployments. Regression tests would be spaced further than once a month to additionally cover the loss of a contributor.

A 25% cut would result in the cut of 3 contributors. This would dramatically affect the workstreams ability to meet the expectations and requirements of anything outlined in this proposal. Operations would not be fully equipped for a 3 releases a week deployment schedule. Major meetings and project organization would no longer be able to be covered inside Operations expected responsibilities. The bounty program would be reduced/shuttered to minimal hours and contributors. Deployment Testing would be reduced to smoke and feature testing only and regression testing would go to less than once a month testing on some features. Triage recreation response time and bug reporting would be substantially affected. The DAO would lose quality and uptime of services, see a decrease in development productivity, an increase in production bugs, increased resolution time of issues.

In short, increasing cuts beyond the 49% cuts already introduced in the stablecoin spend in this proposal would create substantial change in the contributor list and expectations defined in the workstream proposal. it would not be able to be fulfilled as drafted and pillars of responsibility would be shifted, reduced, or abandoned affecting DAO productivity, output, success, uptime, and contributor cycles.

A 10% increase would allot another contributor to be trained and hired. The extra cycles could allow us to expand into further efficiency and process minded projects to help the DAO organize and produce more successful output. We would see improvements to KPIs and metrics related to Prod Issues, deployment and regression testing, triage, and DAO coordination.

A 25% increase would allow us to take on another major focus in Operations minded DAO responsibilities. We would be able to make multiple new hires, adjust budgets to not be so shoestring, and take on prioritizing projects that have not had the focus to be maintained in the same way our current workload is (governance insights, moar bounties, DAOwide accounting, documentation and platform unification, etc.)

This current proposed budget was designed to be a little on the uncomfortable side of the Goldilocks “Just Right” to assure success and strive to get more out of less through continual agile based practices.

This has been moved to official ideation here: [SCP-94] Renewing the Operations Workstream for a Third Term