User:AngelinaBelle/SMF team manual/Team roles

The SimpleMachines Forum (SMF) project is a project team under the umbrella of the Simple Machines NPO.

The SMF team

The SMF project has a project manager and several sub-teams. The heads of these teams, along with the project manager, constitute the projects's steering committee, which is responsible for developing plans for the project and leading the project toward achieving its goals.

Moderation Duties

The purpose of board and post moderation is to maintain a friendly environment where community members can get the help and support they need.

It is the duty of every SimpleMachines team member to patrol every publicly-viewable boards, review every post for inappropriate content, and move, remove, split, merge or lock topics as required to maintain civility and good order. Language Moderators (not members of the SMF team) are responsible for patrolling non-English language boards.

When deciding what to do with a slightly-misplaced post, please be careful and extra-friendly. New users are often confused and frustrated when they make their first post. A simple message like "I hope you won't mind that I've moved your post to the XXX board, where I hope you'll get the help you need", goes a long way. Similarly, when users have double-posted in different boards (often because they were unsure where to post), a friendly post explaining the move, merge, or deletion will go a long way toward helping the new user feel welcomed.

Project Manager

The SMF Project Manager (PM) is responsible for representing the SMF project to the NPO and to the SMF community. The PM leads the team, maintaining the vision and spirit of the project. The PM encourages and supports team members, works with the steering committee to set goals for the project.

The PM's duties are:

1. To help the SMF team set goals.
2. To lead the SMF team toward meeting the team's goals, help solve problems
3. To help the teams collaborate, stay informed of the effect they have on one another, and work together effectively.
4. To mediate conflict between team members, or between team members and community members, in order to help the parties reach an agreement.
5. When authorized by the SC, to speak on behalf of the steering committee.
6. To serve as team figurehead -- representing the team to the community, answering general inquiries, turning some questions over to other experts on the team.
7. To identify areas for improvement within the project.
   • Inform or advise the responsible parties, bring it to the attention of the SC, or appoint someone to handle it.
   • The SC must be notified of all such appointments.

In order to carry out these duties,

1. The PM should have administrative access to simplemachines.org, and related sites.
2. The PM should have root access to the servers/VMs holding the infrastructure of the SMF project, in order to be able to help in case of emergency.

The PM is empowered to:

1. Perform administrative duties necessary for the team, such as changing groups (set as Friend, apprentice, etc.).
2. Intervene and make project decisions, in case of emergency, when the SC is not available. These situations include, but are not limited to:
   • The responsible team lead or member is inactive or otherwise unavailable, and immediate action needs to be taken.
   • The project is seriously endangered, as when immediate removal of a team member is necessary.

Restrictions on the powers of the PM are:

1. When the PM takes administrative action to change member access, removal of team members, or other emergency actions, he must inform the SC or the team.
2. The PM must provide an explanation for any decision or action, at the request of the SC.
3. The SC can reverse any decision or action of the SC. The SC may make a decision without taking a formal poll. If any member of the SC (including the PM) requests a poll on the matter, a poll may be taken.
4. The SMF team can reverse any decision or action of the PM.

Team Leads

Each of the teams within the SMF project has a team lead. The team lead are responsible for:

• Reporting progress during team meetings.
• Participating in Steering Committee discussions.
• Keeping the other teams informed of important changes or events.
• Keeping their team motivated & on task.
• Helping team members stay involved.
• Giving team members the recognition and credit they merit for their successes and accomplishments.
• Supporting the personal and professional growth of each and every member of the team
• Watching for new team members and recruiting them.
• Making sure apprentice members and new team members have a mentor, that the mentor works as closely with the new member as necessary, and that apprentices makes appropriate progress during the apprenticeship period.

Developers

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Developers create the software. Without them, there is no software community. For the SMF community to remain vital, the software must remain vital. The developers must lead in decisions about where technology is going, and where SMF needs to go to stay current. They need to consider everything from what the users want, to making the features run efficiently, to making sure all the pieces get tested properly. The development team must:

• Maintain a roadmap to plan for the short-term and long-term development of SMF software
  • Review current and coming technology, to make sure SMF stays current.
  • Provide direction and leadership to discussions of the future of SMF.
  • Review and select features for future versions.
  • Monitor the bug trackers and get feedback from the beta testers.
  • Monitor and address security reports, and keep the SC informed of all security issues.
• Develop new versions of SMF.
  • Work with beta testers to make sure new features are tested adequately.
  • Fix bugs.
  • Provide useful "changelog" comments with every code check-in.
• Release SMF versions to the community
  • Determine when the latest version of SMF is ready for release
  • Provide a changelog, derived from commit comments, to accompany each release of SMF.
  • Prepare the upgrade, update, and full install sets for each SMF release
  • Make the install sets available on the SMF website
  • Work with the SMF team to make an announcement of each SMF release
• Work with and communicate with other SMF teams and the community.
  • Assist with support, when advice from a developer is needed.
  • Keep the other teams up-to-date on changes (Support needs to support it, Doc needs to write about it, and Customization needs to know about new best practices).
  • Manage the code repositories, including user accounts.
  • Communicate plans and progress to the SMF team and community.

Support Specialists

• Helping our users have an exceptional SMF experience.
• Providing special attention to the Charter Members.
• Monitoring the help desk & getting tickets to a “closed” state.
  • Check HD first.
  • Check CM boards.
  • Check Support boards.
• Revisit your old posts and mark as solved when they are.
• Perform upgrades and installs for CM’s.
• Support the core software by answering questions, suggesting fixes, etc.
• Act as a filter for bug reports, reporting legitimate ones to the bug tracker.
• Look for common problems/errors and suggest documentation or code changes to reduce them.
• Assume nothing. Always ask questions, no matter how tedious that can get. If a post is unclear, don't make assumptions. Ask for clarification.
• Some posts may seem trivial, to you. Remember that they aren't trivial to our users. Always strive to be friendly and helpful. You are SMF's "Front line". The way you are perceived will reflect on SMF, not just you.
• Always try to remember to tell users to backup, before attempting anything. If you don't remind them, they'll almost certainly forget.
• If you begin helping, on a certain topic, try to maintain an interest in that topic, don't just leave it, if you're stuck. There's a "Support helpers" board. Use that to alert other support team members of your plight.
• If you're going to be away from the boards, whilst you're helping someone, try to let other members of the team know, so that they can take that topic over, for you, rather than letting the person you're helping just "Hang".

Customizers

• Watching for feature ideas that should be put into mods.
• Updating SMF's official mods as necessary to maintain compatibility.
• Designing new themes.
• Updating SMF's official themes as necessary to maintain compatibility.
• Theme Site maintenance.
  • Approving community-created themes.
• Mod Site maintenance.
  • Approving community-created mods.
• Graphics images (i.e. Buttons & smileys).
• Other graphics as requested/required.
• Give support to people trying to create themes and modifications.
• Suggest changes to make theme and modification create easier and more powerful.
• Write mods that follow the coding guidelines and as though they were writing a default SMF feature.
• Provide support in the Coding Discussion and Graphics boards.

Doc Writers

• Maintaining the Online Manual.
  • Write clear, accurate, and easy to understand documentation.
  • Review and update update text as needed.
• Work with localizers, site, and dev teams to enable document translations.
• Review/proof other SMF team publications.
• Spelling/Grammar checks on the site and in our public postings.
• Maintain Team Manual.

Localizers

• Coordinate the activity of Translators and Language Moderators.
• Validate new translation team applications.
• Manage the [email protected] correspondence.
• Add /remove new translators.
• Enhance accessibility to translate the wiki docs.
• Informing community regarding language related topics of interest.

Others who contribute to the SMF project

These individuals also volunteer their time on behalf of the project, but are not members of the team.

NPO teams

The SMF project depends on the Simple Machines NPO for Marketing and to maintain its site and its servers. These teams are not part of the SMF project. The site team is responsible for upgrading SimpleMachines.org and re-installing necessary modifications. The server team is responsible for specifying, configuring and maintaining all of the NPO's servers and have all the account access required to get these tasks done.

Forum Administrators

Forum administrators take care of routine tasks like banning and deleting accounts, as well as less-common tasks like creating membergroups and adjusting membergroup permissions. These tasks are generally handled by site and server team members, by the SMF project manager and by other SMF team members.

Friends

Former members of the SMF team, some of whom are still members of the NPO. They often share their experiences with the team. Some Friends may re-join the team when they again have time to commit to the SMF project.

Community Helpers

Many members of the community contribute in one way or another without holding any title at all. Others may join, or be invited to join, community support groups. These include

• Language Moderators -- moderate and provide support on non-English language boards.
• Beta Testers.
• Documentation Helpers.
• Support Helpers.
• Translators -- with their work SMF is available for many languages.