[mch2022-orga] Proposal re Buildup: work-hours/structure

[Juerd Waalboer]

tl;dr: fewer work hours might even lead to greater overall productivity.

Janneke/Rizoom via Orga skribis 2022-06-22 19:50 (+0200):
>If 07:00 to midnight are not the work times, what would 
>the proposed work times be? 9:00 - 19:00 ish?

We have little say in how early "we" start, as this is in part dictated by external suppliers. While that doesn't require the entire volunteer force in the earliest hours, some of us will have to start way earlier than 9:00.

>Part of why work went on so long (and I agree, that was 
>not healthy and we should not do that) was because 
>everything took way longer than expected.

Not everything, but many things did indeed take longer than expected. But honestly, I feel that many of those delays would not have been necessary. Paradoxally, I think some delays were caused by the insanely long work days.

As for many delays not being necessary: several teams did not have their priorities clear, and "wasted" time by doing things that weren't needed yet, while other tasks were more important. Then, when people finally took a much needed break, they began to realize that they were close to missing deadlines because OH MY GOD THAT SUPPLIER WILL BE HERE EARLY TOMORROW MORNING AND WE HAVEN'T DONE THE THING YET.

 From LHQ we had a unique perspective on how people work, from the relative comfort of our couches and office chair. At the end of the work day, many people really just aren't productive anymore. They're working hard, but also making many mistakes (that take time to fix), and not thinking straight anymore. I don't know how to idiomatically translate "kip zonder kop" but it's the best way to express the somewhat zombielike state many people enter at some point. Communication about simple things becomes hard, as really noticable in the trouble people begin to have to even describe the kind of tool they're looking for. Many become frustrated and irritable, especially those who started early and work the hardest. It was not uncommon for people to have 14+ hour work days. That can only last for a day or two, and it did.

I'm convinced that the buildup crew can be at least as productive, maybe even more productive, if we work fewer hours.

The second phase of buildup was weird in a different way. The first few days during the early buildup (when volunteer coordination consisted of not much more than a post breakfast row call and lots of ad-hoc "I'm looking for people to do X"-"Well good luck with that" exchanges) things were ahead of schedule. But then fatigue kicked in, we had a somewhat less productive weekend, and by the time many more volunteers arrived on Monday, several team leads were already exhausted to the point of not being able to give instructions to the new arrivals anymore. If I recall correctly, that's when we began to fall behind, and everything took longer than expected - but we also had people on site doing essentially nothing, because they weren't getting instructions!

>How can we make sure we rest enough but the work does get finished? That might
>require some very good preparation.

Some things that come to mind:

- Work smarter, not harder. (No offense intended.)
- Get deadlines and priorities clearer earlier; ignore the nice-to-haves until you have nothing better to do.
- It would help to have a central place where people can review every other team's buildup plan; that saves a lot of time wasted on communication. One of the reasons teardown worked efficiently was that there was a central to-do-list and many people had the same overview that had just the right granularity.
- Don't allocate every last volunteer to all-day tasks, but keep some volunteers available for small tasks (such as delivering duct tape to people in the field, so the people in the field don't have to walk 2 km across the terrain to get that roll of duct tape; one person who rides around on a bicycle is much more efficient, but the person has to be available for this idea to even work.)

We're already going to do some things differently, and I expect huge productivity increases from having proper volunteer coordination and care during buildup.
-- 
Met vriendelijke groet, // Kind regards, // Korajn salutojn,

Juerd Waalboer  <juerd at tnx.nl>
TNX