Assembla CEO Andy Singleton notes similarities between campaigns and agile development teams, including relatively short project cycles and the need to maximize quality information while reducing overall conversation. See Andy’s blog posting about the StandUp tool here.
http://blog.assembla.com/assem…
Why do a standup report?
* It saves time for the person doing the reporting. The form takes only a minute to fill out, and it saves time in email, chat, or meetings.
* It saves time for the manager, who can quickly browse and see what people are working on.
* It gets stuff finished faster by focusing people on the most important tasks. After you read through the reports, you will see if people are working on things that are important, and you can ask them to work on higher priority tasks.
* It gets problems resolved quickly, by flashing a little red “needs” sign from the people that have obstacles
* It increases productivity. Studies show that the act of writing down a goal makes the writer more likely to achieve it.
“StandUp” refers to the technique used in various process management programs wherein employees must stand up to speak and issue their reports, thus reducing the time they actually speak.
Another benefit of using a StandUp tool on a campaign can be a by using multiple spaces for different teams. While the overall campaign can use a StandUp, each project manager or area manager on the campaign can create his or her own StandUp space for that particular team or task.
If you have questions or comments about StandUp, please post them here or on the blog.
I STILL cannot get aPebble to work…
We need VAN, yesterday:
<
p>http://www.voteractivationnetw…
<
p>It’s my understanding that it would be free to the state party if they ponied up an IT person to keep it running. It’s well past time for a change – we’re stuck with aPebble for this go-round, but we should look to VAN for 2012 and beyond.
…one with 40 years of experience who is unflappable and good at dealing with fresh fish of all varieties; of course, I am biased on that score, it is my spouse I am talking about.
Apebble is a personal organizing tool and strikes me as Facebook for campaigns, plus it is very decentralized.
<
p>VAN/Votebuilder is basically a voter file that has functions for list sorting, turf cutting, and other database management functions. From what I can tell Sage is very similar in what it offers.
<
p>StandUp sounds like an internal mechanism to keep everybody on the same page and could just as easily be used in business as in campaigns.
We have VAN. Candidates running from the Democratic Party can get VAN at a pretty darn affordable rate, at least compared to other voter databases on par with VAN (or better than it). aPebble, on the other hand, is a freebie tool that can be used by anyone and serves a somewhat different purpose, almost a cross between a voter database and a facebook. It attempts to give people many of the same tools of a VAN, but without loosening up all that information or allowing just anyone to see the entire campaign’s list of voters.
<
p>To be frank, I’m not sure allowing something like VAN to be available for free, by anyone, is a good idea. Furthermore, I tend to doubt the campaign itself is using aPebble instead of a VAN. It seems to me that they’re pushing aPebble on local activist organizations and the grassroots, organizations that aren’t firmly a part of the official Patrick camp.
<
p>They’d probably be smarter just to give each town committee and ward committee one VAN account if they can field at least one person who’d head up the Patrick campaign in that local community, but campaigns are always going to be risk adverse whenever it comes to lists. They may also not want to pay for each and every town and ward committee to have a VAN account, as I’d have to imagine that would be very expensive — whereas aPebble’s free. (I still think it’s worth it.)
this serves an altogether different purpose than aPebble. One seeks to keep track of voters, the other seeks to keep track of the people keeping track of the voters (and other facets of the campaign).