Path to Leadership

Path to CHAOSS Leadership

What does leadership mean to the CHAOSS community?

A leader🏅is someone who has specific decision-making power over some part of a group and thus additional accountability and can help with prioritizing and planning activities in the project.

I think that a leader in the CHAOSS community is someone who helps advance the project by contributing directly and coordinating work with others. Leaders should regularly attend the weekly community meetings to report on the work of their respective working group.

-- Georg J.P. Link, Director of Sales at Bitergia; Cofounder of CHAOSS

Leadership sets the tone for the culture, values, and communication style for everyone else. I think a CHAOSS leader (whether it be informal or formal) should embody and foster empathy, compassion, and respect for everyone else working on the project, no matter in what capacity. I think that being an excellent communicator and having a passion for helping open source projects prioritize and measure their community's health is also helpful.

-- Elizabeth Barron, Community manager at CHAOSS

Why is leadership important to us?

We are a volunteer-driven👥organization which means the work within the CHAOSS community is focused around the creation of metrics and software which depend upon the contributions made by external individuals and communities. We need people to direct the vision of creation, planning, and architecture of new initiatives within the community in order to drive through the better objectives.

The CHAOSS community has defined its different set of leadership roles under a specific set of community guidelines and governance policies.

How to become a leader?

Technical Leadership

Leadership that focuses on building amazing projects and good engineering teams across the community

Checklist✅before becoming a Maintainer

• Makes consistent contributions within the CHAOSS community

• Has the ability to commit directly to a project repository

• Holds knowledge of working groups, metrics, and software

• Attends community meetings

• Holds good knowledge in helping others achieve their goals

• Has knowledge of Git and GitHub

• Understands the workflow of the Issues and Pull Requests

Checklist✅before becoming a Website Maintainer

• Ability to troubleshoot website issues

• Strong attention to detail with an analytical mind and outstanding problem-solving skills

• Excellent content creation and writing skills.

• Proficient in GitHub, Markdown, HTML, CSS design, cross-browser and cross-platform compatibility, and JavaScript

Checklist✅before becoming a Documentation Maintainer

• Excellent written and communication skills in English

• Ability to translate highly technical information into easily understandable information for other community members and end-users

• Keeping the content across the repositories and other platforms updated

• Critical thinker and problem-solver

NOTE: Usually existing maintainers elevate others to become maintainers when they see it helpful for the project.

Governance Leadership

Leadership involved in the process of decision making within the community

Checklist✅for becoming a Board Member and Decisions Maker

• Long term and consistent contributor within the CHAOSS project

• Involved with the software or metric working groups

• Experience in a managerial/directorial position

• Holds knowledge and interest in the CHAOSS project

• Holds critical thinking and problem-solving abilities and can provide thoughtful input to the project

• Excellent Knowledge of performance evaluation techniques and key metrics

NOTE: New board members are nominated and voted into office by existing board members. Co-leads of the board are nominated and voted into office by existing board members.

Operation Leadership

Leadership that addresses every aspect of the community model

Checklist✅for becoming the Community Manager

• Prior technical community management experience

• Self-motivated with the ability to manage multiple competing priorities

• A growth mindset and an approach to new information and knowledge with curiosity

• A challenge seeker who desires and readily takes on new challenges and works towards solutions

• An understanding of how contemporary open source projects function

NOTE: The community manager is a paid position and is hired through a job-application process. Selected community members are asked to serve on the search committee to review applications, interview candidates, and make a recommendation.