Intended audience: DataKind Volunteers
Setting up all the necessary technology before launching a project is essential to set volunteers up for successful collaboration and engagement. From our experience, saving set up until after project launch means you’ll be playing catch up and constantly reminding volunteers where to look for things throughout the project. It’s best to have all the collaboration spaces set up from the very beginning, and introduce this technology during team orientation.
Make sure to enable the team to get their needed tech set-up. Especially for projects that require cloud infrastructure to contribute, it can be helpful to create clear instructional materials on how they should access the project workspace and data. Here’s an excellent example of what this looked like for one DataKind project. Another option is to walk volunteers through the technology set-up requirements live on a call.
Technology that needs to be set up before project launch includes:
| Technology | Purpose | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Project GitHub repository | Hosting Code | Where the team will be doing their work (include a README, an Issue Tracker, and clear tasks for the team to get started on in the README). The team stores and shares code on GitHub to collaborate. This creates a record of the analyses and code, ensuring that the project work lives on in a form others can use. Please keep data out of the project repository, as this can cause delays and limit the ability to make the repository public since sensitive data is difficult to purge from history. You can also use GitHub actions to set up your repo. Read more about this method in the Playbook article! |
| Project private channel in DataKind Community Slack | Team Communication | The team should have a private team Slack channel for the project’s duration. This is where we encourage teams to interact and share updates, questions, and collaborate on project deliverables (don’t be afraid to use emoticons and gifs!). |
| Project Google Drive folder | Project Documentation and Data Storage | The team uploads and stores all worksheets, deliverables, data, and documentation on Google Drive. Google Drive may also be where you store your project’s data. DataKind provides access in advance to the project folder and we recommend having folders for meeting notes, presentations, code, and handoff materials. |
| Project cloud workspace (if relevant) | Data Storage | DataKind teams typically store data on Amazon Web Services if they aren’t using Google Drive, but there may be exceptions given a partner organization’s needs. DataKind will provide additional information about any sensitivities relating to the data or restrictions on storage, access, and sharing. We recommend you speak with your DataKind contact should there be any concerns. |
A note on task management software
Most successful projects stick to the above 3-4 channels for online collaboration, but occasionally projects will also use Asana or Trello for task management. It is recommended that you keep project management within GitHub for most projects, though, so the team does not have to remember to use another log-in or system. When working with volunteers, it’s best to use as few different softwares as reasonable for project management and communication, even if they are data scientists! We recommend selecting one project management space for the duration of the project that allows your team to (a) remotely access what they need to work on and (b) allows DataKind to see at a glance where your project is at.
Contributer(s): Benjamin Kinsella, Mallory Sheff, Vignesh Kumaresan
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If you would like to learn more about us, partner with us, or get in touch, email us at community@datakind.org
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