Abstract: Collaboration Ecology (CE) is OSE’s term for - an effective development team structure that carries out an Open Source Product Development (OSPD) process. Collaboration Ecology revolves around fitting contributors as much as possible to use their Unique Talent and Interest (UTI), while blending the development process to achieve specific team goals. The process involves shifting from one’s UTI only when necessary, while continuing recruiting to fill gaps to optimize total UTI. The assumption for maximizing UTI is that it promotes flow or deep work (Cal Newport).
The term Ecology in CE in is used to refer to the complex systems nature of the OSE development process, and to signify that the process is open source transparent - as no collusion occurs in systems that follow natural law.
The OSE Development Process - or OSPD - is comprehensive in that it seeks to document a wide range of OSPD phase for any technology. A technology is defined here as any human-made artifact - whether a machine, computer program, process, etc. The comprehensive nature of OSPD means that it includes - such as captured in the OSE Development Template:
- Background - how something works, why it works, why it is economically significant, OSE-specific Technology Assessment, and its state of art. Any OSE Developer should be able to do Background research, and Ad-Hoc Developers (ADHD) can help. If the different aspects of Background work are defined fully - then the Background research process can scale to a Mediawiki level of rapid development.
- Development - starts with Requirements and Concept drawings and diagrams. Requirements are defined by translating key OSE Specifications into specific suggestions for implementation - such as defining Admissible Parts, Admissible Mechanisms, and defining specifics of scalability, modularity, Product Ecology, lifetime design, and Design for Extreme Manufacturing. A person who is skilled in translating OSE Specifications, and who understands the rationale of the Product Selection Metric, and who understands the minimum but sufficient, evolving, universal, and Construction Set nature of the GVCS kernel - qualifies to draw up Requirements and Concepts for development. People who qualify to do this are OSE Lieutenants, after the Linux model. The OSE Developer opportunity is the first step for any interested Lieutenant Candidate.
- Technical Due Diligence - Once Requirements and Concepts are drawn up - technical fleshing out of design can follow. The key design asset to be generated is CAD, including mechanical and electronic CAD. With the availability of CAD, a wide range of supporting documentation activity can occur. Individuals familiar with fabrication and production engineering qualify to design build procedures and workflows.
- Enterprise Development - once a product is built and tested, it becomes a candidate for an Extreme Manufacturing workshop, which is OSE’s main - though contrarian - strategy for scaling. The XM workshop is the current OSE experiment of implementing Distributive Enterprise.