Proposal Summary:
A proposal to secure a budget for the bootstrapping of the Technical Support Guild for the first up to (4) months of operation
Proposal description:
The proposal requests from the Executive sub-DAO to reserve a budget to the extent of $66,000 for incentivizing members of the Technical Support Guild for the first four months of operation. This will cover funding for Q1 of 2022 and also December of 2021 as the guild has already been established and providing output. The First Month’s Guild Activity Report is included in this proposal and can be reviewed at the end of this proposal.
Moving forward into 2022 the Tech Support Guild’s priorities will be focused on the following:
- Improving documentation avenues such as FAQ and combining/creating product guides into a single public source in order to limit tickets
- Resolve tickets using the knowledge of members within the guild, consulting documentation, and thorough research in turn giving other guilds the ability to focus on their tasks
- Setup an official process for documenting and reporting errors
- Identify and research solutions that improve decentralization of the guild
The indicative split of the budget is:
- $12,000 per month to be distributed to guild members through a Disperse contract with a Coordinape circle as attribution mechanism
- $4,500 per month for bounties to incentivize larger deliverables
Proposal Rationale (How is this initiative adding value to the Aragon Network):
The Aragon stack offers a range of solutions with many technical possibilities but equally many technical intricacies. DAO creators and DAO operators often encounter questions and technical challenges they are unable to address themselves, as well as malfunctions. Being able to provide high-quality customer support is thus necessary to offer a great user experience and thus help increase the number of active Aragon DAOs.
Limitations and risks:
It is somewhat hard to predict how the attribution of this budget will operate in months 3 & 4. The guild has been quite successful so far and is likely to continue to onboard members and expand its scope.
There is also the risk the guild will not scale fast enough to complete its operational objectives and will not absorb the full scope of its budgeted funding. The current budget request is a linear approximation and it could be expected that as activity ramps up, the later months will be when most of the budget will be absorbed.
Duration, deliverables, and expected outcomes:
- Project duration is 4 months (Epoch 0)
- Each month the Steward of the Guild will publish a report detailing the achievements and learning from the Guild activities.
- Success will be defined by the minimum criteria:
- All tickets assigned and replied to within 24 hours
- Average ticket resolution within 1.5 days
- A majority of tickets will be resolved using resources within the guild itself
- A platform will be created to streamline reporting of errors and bugs
- A process will be created to propose changes to FAQ and to create an Aragon guide over all tools at Aragon
- Improvements will be made to move the Technical support guild’s tools and processes into further decentralization
- Upon successful completion of Epoch 0, the Technical Support Guild could be spun into an operational unit reporting into and receiving funds from directly the AN DAO. The specific format will depend on the Charter and/or other guiding operational documents of the AN DAO at that time.
Team Information
- Brent Russell, Brént#008 - Head of Tech Support at Aragon Association and Technical Support Guild Steward
- Artem, ArtemG#8172 - Patron, Oversight
- Ben, b3n#2074 - Patron, Oversight
The guild team is fluid as additional members will join from the community and others will leave.
- anson parker#4296
- barukimang#3560
- Carla78#9313
- jonesmac#6422
- Jup#745
- Spectra CV#6148
- Naresh#2518 - Onboarding
Strategic Alignment
Is this initiative aligned with the strategic objectives set forth by the Aragon Association and/or the AN DAO itself (if yes how, if no why)
Yes, the establishment of a Technical Support Guild has been identified as a priority by Aragon Association for two reasons:
- The first operational experiment in decentralizing the Aragon Network
- Freeing up of core engineering team time to focus on product development
More details can be found in the blog post announcing the Guild
Is this initiative symbiotic to the efforts of Aragon Association’s and/or other teams and initiatives contributing to the network (if yes how, if no, why)
No, this initiative is not directly symbiotic to efforts of the Aragon Association or other teams, it is meant to substitute Aragon Association’s core team in providing a service to the network participants.
Funding Information
- The ESD will make direct transfers to the Disperse contract based on inputs provided by the guild steward, namely:
- Total monetary value to be distributed, not exceeding $12,000 + unspent carry from previous months
- Coordinape scores of guild members
- Distributions will be a combination of USDC and ANT token. Exact percentage of each will be provided to the Exec sub DAO by Dec 22, 2021
- The ESD will pay out bounties directly upon confirmation of completion by the guild steward. Bounties will be given to develop systems and processes that aid in further decentralizing technical support, give an improved end-user experience when contacting support, consulting documentation, and interacting with the rest of the Aragon community. These bounties will allow the technical support guild to take on this workload freeing up other Aragon resources.
First Month’s Guild Activity Report
The technical support guild was launched on 30.11.2021 and has since completely taken over HelpScout ticket resolution freeing time for the core engineering team. Interest in joining the team has been positive with many responses. The team has grown to include six onboarded guild members, a head of technical support, and an eight guild member currently being onboarded. Eight other applicants are also currently on a waiting list to join the technical support guild. Monitoring the goals set and comparing with the output of the current members will determine the addition of other members to the guild.
Each member has taken it upon themselves to research and understand the Aragon platform and attempt to resolve each ticket using only technical support guild resources resulting in 105 tickets resolved with 173 messages (avg 1.67 replies per ticket), an average response time of 4hrs and 19min, and an average resolution time of 7hrs.
The team has agreed on weekly calls to discuss the current state of technical support tickets and projects that could further decentralize the guild and improve Aragon products. For the next upcoming call, discussion will take place over platforms and features used to improve documentation and FAQ which the technical support team will create as part of a bounty program. The team has also started discussions on how to route community questions in discord to the proper channel where they can be properly responded to by technical support and documented in a way others in the community can take advantage of.
Additional ideas surrounding how to further decentralize technical support has taken place with a few excellent ideas which may develop into a proposal over time.
First month’s (December) Distribution
- The proposed distribution for the first month is $5,625 total amongst all guild members. 20% of this distribution will be distributed to the guild members at the Technical Support Guild Steward’s discretion leaving the remaining 80% decided on by a Coordinape Circle of the guild members.
- The Technical Support Guild Steward will be providing the Executive sub DAO with each guild member’s wallet addresses and their weighted portion of the distribution by Dec 22, 2021. This will allow each guild member to receive payment by Dec 28, 2021