Trusted Web of Colleagues

"I not only use all the brains I have, but all I can borrow."

Woodrow Wilson, Speech to the National Press Club on March 20th 1914

THE PROBLEM: the Overstretch Challenge...

We are professionals. And we are honest. There are limits to our pertinent personal knowledge, experience and time resources — but not to our number of trusted competent colleagues.

We have customers that are happy to pay us for what we help them achieve. And they rely on us. Sometimes our customers require services of a certain kind and/or so quickly that it overstretches that pertinent personal knowledge and experience and those time resources of ours.

THE SOLUTION: a Trusted Web of Colleagues (TWebC)

Currently, there are the following fundamental aspects to TWebC:

TWebC Aspect "Deputy Service"

If we are unavailable to respond to a customer's request, he or she can contact another TWebC colleague:

chosen from either a list that forms part of the SLA in place, or
chosen from mwstake.org/TWebC/colleagues.

If applicable and due to our honesty, we do not hesitate to relay that customer's request to another TWebC colleague of course — deemed more competent and/or resourceful for the task at hand.

TWebC Aspect "Resources Contraction"

If we face an overstretch challenge, we can fall back to TWebC:

We can ask a TWebC colleague directly for helping with or handling the task at hand.
We can "auction off" the task at hand — relying on TWebC's "trust service" to ensure corresponding competence and resource requirements are met.

TWebC Aspect "Single Customer Relationship Manager"

From our customer's point of view, we remain his or her only relevant contact and assume the full responsibility for all services provided by TWebC colleagues. We invoice our customer and pay our colleague.

TWebC Aspect "Colleague Profile"

TWebC colleague profiles are where both customers and colleagues turn to for:

finding help,
gaining trust in colleagues and
endorsing other colleagues for a usefully specific combination of aspects regarding tasks, subjects and actions.

How are colleague profiles organized?

TWebC matches tasks/competences and colleagues based on corresponding signals and features:

A task signals an Template:Mo to be performed on a Template:Mlg in a Template:Mlb. 
A colleague possesses a competence by featuring the Template:My to perform an Template:Mo on a Template:Mlg in a Template:Mlb.

TWebC Aspect "Colleague Trust Levels"

Which aspects of a colleague's competence are covered by an attributed trust level?

These aspects form part of TWebC's Decision Support System.

Customer relationship criticality (CRC): If you entrust a colleague with a task and the customer is not satisfied, can you rectify the issue yourself at a later time without jeopardizing your customer relationship?
Data safety and system security criticality (DSSS): If you entrust a colleague with a task, does carrying out that task potentially jeopardize data safety or system security?
- E.g. unintentionally disable Apache SSL, remove backup cronjob, reset standard passwords
Funcionality criticality (FC): If you entrust a colleague with a task, does carrying out that task potentially disable or alter functionality?
- E.g. unintentionally disable extensions, disable Ajax by introducing JS errors, slow down semantic data integrity and consistency by disabling runJobs.php

TL1: Entrust a colleague with immediately reversible, non-critical system management tasks without potential affection of non-focused functionality

CRC:Low, DSSSC:None, FC:Low/easily reversible
E.g. edit template instances, form definitions, form templates, common.css, etc.

TL2: Entrust a colleague with TL1 + system management tasks with potential affection of non-focused functionality

CRC:Medium, DSSSC:Low, FC:Medium
E.g. edit templates affecting data semantization; install, remove, configure extensions; edit common.js; add/edit/remove Lua modules, etc.

TL3: Entrust a colleague with TL2 + complex data layer tasks

CRC:Medium, DSSSC:No, FC:High
E.g. ontology engineering, programmatically manage SMW pages' content/wikitext and metadata, etc.

TL4: Entrust a colleague with TL3 + system components architecture alteration and/or extension

CRC:High, DSSSC:High, FC:High
E.g. add Solr/Elasticsearch, alter storage backend, alter general infrastructure like web server, database, caching, etc.

TL5: Entrust a colleague with TL4 + initial and strategic customer relationship aspects

CRC:Very high, DSSSC:High, FC:High
E.g. advise large new/existing customers in strategic aspects and in your name