Daily and Weekly Reports Formats

We do need daily reporting  so that we can mark attendance and contributions - we are expecting this only on 5 days a week or if you send your weekly report on Friday then on 5 days. If you worked on Saturday and Sunday - you can also send. 

Send email to lareeffect@gmail.com and fectboard@gmail.com and your direct supervisor or close collabator as well.  

 

However, use a separate email to write about details of your work - so that it can be copied and forwarded and has the appropriate subject lines.

You can use a subject line such as 

Daily Report: LZ 

Or 

Weekly Report: LZ

And keep that same subject line the next day. 

In these emails, do not add descriptions of research or particulars of admin work - you can add links to your gdrive however - also send a separate email with a suitable subject line for substantive responses. 

Details are below - we welcome any feedback on this. 

------------

Weekly reporting essential - sent to lzfect and fectboard and your direct supervisor as well. 

Plan for the Week

Include 

Time worked 

Work Undertaken: 

Outputs: 

By day and the overall outputs, carryover to the next week, tasks to be reassigned, abandoned 

Plans for Next Week: 

——————————

The Daily report Should have: 

Time worked 

Work Undertaken: 

Outputs: 

Plans for Next Day: 

Google Form:  

For both daily and weekly output to be tried out. 

As suggested by AA and practiced in the past, we shall look at alternatives such as a google sheet/form.

Why Weekly Planning is Critical for Team Work

Let me try to persuade you that weekly planning is critical 

Without the weekly report 
- no opportunity for the supervisor to provide sensible feedback
- key tasks get stuck
- tasks  that are critical for the work of others to follow  

- tasks that are urgent is not priortized 

- tasks can be duplicated 

- tasks that others can do more efficiently is not allocated 

- there seems to be a need for repeated emails  

If the weekly report is done late then it is no longer a plan and we also lost time with priority tasks. 

If someone is overburdened or unable to complete tasks, we should drop tasks such as that or re-assign. If you are overloaded, we can re-assign tasks, and some tasks can be done 80% with the available time. 

Therefore, we should consider weekly planning as the highest priority.  

Making Zoom / Team Meetings Effective

By preparing and circulating the agenda first, doing the preparatory work beforehand - and then minuting these and deciding on the he follow up action.  

Then you can minimize the time spent on zoom. I am scheduling less of these and minimizing the time taken 

- as people are passive in these - and there is no follow up - without minutes of the meeting there is no way to keep a record. 

Zoom meetings for work are more effective in a small group. 

Asana - Project Management Software - some videos

All this information is available in text format -
https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/asana

and get a feel at https://blog.asana.com
but if you want videos and have DATA plenty - maybe at night - you can see these.

Key need to keep under 15 - can you remove the old members - this forum discussion is informative.

BETTER USE OF ASANA
This youtube description by Natasha -  who runs a video production company - with 6 persons and an
organizational nerd as she calls herself - is from an entrepreneurial small organization with
contractors role. Her work involves IT related folks but not IT alone - graphics, video production, marketing.

This video is relevant for us as it is authentic by someone who runs a company to accomplish tasks.

She talks about
- how to schedule Repetitive tasks
- how to gestate ideas in a Pile-Up - and then Do it, Delegate, Delete,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXOg6eH5cAU

If you want to see only one - see above.

ASANA vs TRELLO

Pro-Asana: This video is about comparing Trello and Asana - this is someone who does not run a company with staff    - or doing videos on
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lkgni3o9SM
In summary
- some people like the list view or the calendar.
- The ability to see what you have accomplished - rather than archived.

Pro-Trello: This video is comparing Trello and Asana - but from someone in favor of Trello
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QLHID69rjw8
A bit irritating.

FECT Transition to Online Operations Guide - DRAFT

It must be clear now that working remotely is going to be essential with the Virus situation. This is not going to ease up for many months or year and even then we may have relapses. 

There is many enterprises and jobs that shall be not affected.  

 

So it is fortunate that we can still continue to function on at least some work due to the nature of our business. 

We are fortunate that a few of you could try to make this work with short notice. There are others who can pick up with greater effort. And we shall need to transition others out who are not able to adapt. 

PAST ONLINE COLLABORATION AT FECT 

Because we had some history in working remotely, and the use of web-based tools such as DL,  trying to address tasks with others in other parts of the world, we have a bunch of different efforts.

ESTABLISHED CLOUD BASED WORK 

--Trello Boards - SaaS 

- Blogs - Blogger - Freemium, Wordpress - OS

- Mail-chimp - Freemium  

- Canva - Freemium 

- gDrive - Freemium 

- Dropbox (early staff) - Freemium 

- WhatsApp, Skype - Freemium

- Wordpress - web hosting - OS

- R Statistical Software - OS

- Thunderbird - mail client - OS

TRIED 

- video conferencing  - Zoom

- some secure systems of online communication - Signal  - OS 

- Encrypted Email  - Protonmail  - OS 

- Collaboration Board - Freedcamp for the Tea Project - Freemium SaaS  

- GIMP - Photoediting - OS

- Torproject - OS 

- qGIS - OS 

EXPERIMENTED WITH 

- secure systems for communication - Telegram - Freemium  

- TAILS Secure OS on an USB - OS 

- LibreOffice - Office package  - OS 

TO BE DEVELOPED

- Freedcamp or OS alternative - Collaboration Software 

- Wave - Financial Software - Freemium 

- 

REPORTING BY MAIL 

All along, we also required some Daily or Weekly Reporting by email.  

Lately, we have sadly let things go - Trello Boards, Blogs, Dropbox, OSF. 

Which is a shame. 

ADDRESSING SHORTCOMINGS FIRST 

So there is work needed to make it possible for you to work effectively from home. 

We can try our best to overcome the obvious problems 

We have used our email system as an UNSORTED PILE to find things - which is not efficient. We identified a lack of 

secure file storage as a key shortcoming. 

We have used the gdrive mostly to share documents - but we need 

- OSF or Freedcamp or some other system for collaboration  

- and a better Filing System - digitally - which remains a problem when we hunt for documents. 

We have a good filing system which is paper based - but its not updated or used. 

UPDATING PAST SYSTEMS AND ONBOARDING STAFF WITH THEM 

In this regard, you shall see 

• Trello Boards are being updated - TASKS, DCSL, STEM, KMV,   
• Blogs are being updated - fectorg.blogspot.com 
• OSF projects are being recovered  - starting with DL, KMV, Maldives Dengue 
• soon you shall have an interface to access these at a Trello Board, Internal Page or in the Blogs

We have been working on 

• guidelines on IT, Work From Home, IT Security, Common Tools 
• A string of emails bulding up to these guidelines has been sent out by me - this included -  and these shall be compiled. 

We are also trying out - being careful not to overburden you with the figuring out the role of  

• Zoom.us  -for video conferencing -  effective - need to figure out DATA costs 
• Clockify.com for Online Time Keeping - but Clockify.com required attentively that not all of us have. So we rely on self reporting. 
• Slack.com  - for communication - the jury is out on this - don’t think we are using it well. 
• Freedcamp.com  or one of the open source Collaboration alternatives in our fectorg blog  -  - We have used it in the past - and Sanjaya recommends it -   we shall try this for Admin and/or IT to begin with. 

When we work at home, we may have different software and to the extent possible its good if we can standardize on multi-platform, open source free software or software from Open Source organizations (OSF, Libreoffice, GIMP) at least free versions with stable companies such as Google,Trello (it got bought out, so have to be cautious) Canva and Yumpu. 

• Canva.com - seems the free version is sufficient and stable even if it is proprietary (freemium they call it) - IT staff find value for laying out 
• Yumpu.com - (freemium) IT staff find value in being Able to convert pdf’s to flip books. 

We also need to try our 

• Wave for Financial Management - Initially receipts and accounts for Online Work can be handled through it. 

• GIMP - is free open source software for graphics  

• OFFICE - LibreOffice - enables you to save documents in .docx - and since we are going to be going between different versions of Office - its good we can standardize on that. 

——— YOUR EFFORT AND CHANGE IN DISPOSITION REQUIRED -------------

It requires effort on your part as well to work as close to effectively as you do from the office. 

If you are in the office, some of this happens incidentally even if partially as you or your supervisor or collaborators stop  for a chat. But now you need to take this a lot more seriously. 

As per all the guides  on working from home (e.g reference - Indian Express Article (Adapt yourself to the New Normal) 

• you do need to separate out an area at home for work and organize yourself 
• get others around you to respect you the work time
• get the equipment in order - computer  - check camera and mic 
• address any software shortcomings 
• use open source software (see post in fectorg for guides) 
• addressing communication shortcomings is mandatory - have alternative systems and overcome DATA issues
• plan the work for the week, the day, the month 
• help with reporting our work in a timely manner 
• communicate and monitor the work of the teams that you are working with 
• update the work on the appropriate collaboration spaces. 
• back up your work 
• take time for IT disaster recovery  systems - see our IT guidelines. 

Improvement your WEEKLY and DAILY reporting. 

- Send your weekly TASKs list - as completely as I want and on time - alert others involved as to what you need

- See how to represent this in the Trello Board

- Work on Making TASKS SMART  

- Update the Trello Boards as you complete your tasks. 

- Check at the end of the week whether you accomplished your tasks. 

- It shall help if you send a daily report as well to your team members.  

The understanding of how to make a TASK smart is  POOR and is undermining our work planning. I have provided some further guidance at 

https://fectorg.blogspot.com  

COMMUNICATION 

No collaboration online or even remotely  is possible succefully without planning and self reporting. 

At the least, if you are not paying attention to emails on weekly reporting and other matters, or query when things are not clear, then you are not able to function with the Online Transformation. You shall thrive to the extent that you can excel in this. 

 

GTD - Getting Things Done by Mark Allen - Schematic

We have this book in the Akurana library. The wiki link for GTD it provides a description of the book Below is the schematic from the main reference.


Source:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:GTDcanonical.png#/media/File:GTDcanonical.png

Open Source Software - Reliable Guidance

Open Source Foundation is a portal to guidance on open source software - they are endorsed by orgs that we can trust.


Here is a list of open source software 
Out of this, I am using

TorProject
DuckDuckGo
Signal
Telegram
Protonmail
Wordpress
LibreOffice

Considering
GanttChart

Trello's new owners want to reduce services

Earlier they reduced boards that we can have to 10

Now they are reducing the control that admins have in their groups - per email received.
https://help.trello.com/article/1215-team-admin-permissions

This is the background

As with everything online that is free and not open source there is that risk. 

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/19/atlassian-aims-to-make-more-money-from-trello-users.html


Trello Alternatives are there  - seems TAIGA is one to try. It is also a project management tools. Another may be LibreProject.

Making your Tasks "SMART"

PLEASE TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY.

Link for image From: 

There are big deficiencies with meeting the above standards for TASK making.
This is not only true for the about TRELLO boards but in the weekly planning too. So please read up and take to heart what a SMART task is before writing down the task. Here are some references:

• Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria is quick. 
• Wayne University HR program is reliable https://hr.wayne.edu/leads/phase1/smart-objectives And has some pdf’s which you can print for reference.
• if you want someone to talk to you there is https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/smart-goals.htm and bit more expansive guide - for dummies.

Federation for Environment, Climate and Technology - Organizational Chart