fakela / mattermost-handbook

Mattermost Community and Staff Handbook

Mattermost Handbook

The purpose of this handbook is to iteratively increase clarity for Mattermost staff and community co-building the future of our company and our offerings.

It's Day 1 at Mattermost. We're a growing company and growing open source project out to support the massive transformation underway as open source software unlocks the massive potential of people and teams around the world.

The "Mattermost Handbook" is a continual work-in-progress for Mattermost staff--people who are paid to work on our open source software and to help run the company behind our software.

Early in our history, when we were a much smaller company, our staff handbook was included in our product documentation and we are incrementally moving out of our documentation and into the dedicated repository at https://github.com/mattermost/mattermost-handbook which is edited using GitBook as a frontend.

Some norms you'll see here in the handbook:

Growing companies are a work-in-progress

As an open source company we like to share early. Sharing ideas early gets us feedback sooner, so we can iterate faster, so we can better results.

We have a mindset of 1% and 50% drafts that express how complete our thinking is around proposal we're reviewing.

When a section of the handbook is at less than the 50% draft stage you should see it labeled in the page description with the % draft status. When a section doesn't have a % draft status, assume it's over the 50% draft stage.

We believe this system has two key benefits:

1. Be more open to feedback and iteration: Having something published publicly can make it seem overly "final". By having pages in our handbook at 1% and 50% we make it easier to go through feedback and iteration cycles.
2. Engage more non-technical people in the discussion: In the past, we've done reviews largely in GitHub pull requests, which is friendly and familiar for technical team members, but more difficult for others. Sharing 1% and 50% drafts in the public for feedback makes our process more inclusive.

There are trade-offs as well: There may be confusion among people who haven't been onboarded into the 1%, 50% draft concept. People who aren't comfortable with the level of early sharing may feel upset. For these reasons, this page itself is only a 10% draft, so opinions can be expressed and discussed.

Sharing feedback and updating the handbook

Feedback on this handbook is immensely appreciated. There are two ways you can share your feedback:

1. You can create an issue in the Handbook repository. Select New issue, and provide as much detail as possible in the issue. Screenshots and links are also welcome. Choose Submit new issue. The Handbook channel receives a notification and this begins the cycle of feedback and iteration. While not all feedback will result in an update to the handbook, we definitely want to hear everyone's opinion.

2. You can edit the page directly, and submit your feedback/suggested changes as a Pull Request (PR). PRs go through the same cycle of feedback and iteration. The only difference is that an issue is not an immediate change and may take longer to action. A PR already contains the changes, and has a quicker turnaround time. Learn how to update this handbook through GitHub for detailed steps.