Recently, a home project spanning several months has reached its finish line, which I will write about in much, much more detail later, because there will certainly be something. However, now I do not want to write about what this project was, but about the experiences and knowledge I gained by having a team of volunteers help me with this work.
Expectations
The project I came up with was something bigger, but it was also a good thing. In addition, I had a community at my disposal that consisted of countless great people who were enthusiastic and willing to help with such a cause. I thought that if I wanted to spread my wings in terms of my leadership skills, this community would be a gold mine. And I was right, and I wasn’t.
At the beginning of the work, I prepared a lot of things: I wanted to create something similar to a ticketing system on Google Spreadsheet. According to my plans, this table would have been shared with all my volunteers, which would make them know exactly what to do or how they could help. Everyone would keep the table up-to-date, and everything would run smoothly as far as possible.
Well, I didn’t think it was possible to tackle childish ideas so professionally.
Reality
The reality is that I was surrounded by a lot of very enthusiastic and supportive people, but everything worked in a completely different way, according to your own choir dynamics. Of course, this is not a bad thing at all, in fact. The team consisted of the following types of people:
System Administrators
Three colleagues on my team also supported me with technical tasks such as domain management, hosting administration, and setting up SSL certificate.
Graphic designer
A team member helped me fine-tune the design with her excellent aesthetic sense and creativity.
Ticket System guys
Two choir members had already started searching for a suitable ticketing plugin, finding it, and customizing it to the choir's needs.
Ideation Users
Many members of the community have provided ideas - and fortunately, the vast majority of them are feasible and actually a good idea.
Tester Army
Many choir members participated very enthusiastically in the testing, and within a few hours they found all the errors, typos, etc.
The following are the things I learned as a novice leader
Fontos ismerni mások tudását és képességeit
In a company, development is inherently done by people who are experts in their field, so you can communicate effectively with them using technical terms. There were a lot of people in the choir who wanted to help me, and their level of expertise varied greatly. Sometimes it was very difficult to figure out how to express myself, what their tasks would be.
Unfortunately, there were some who were very enthusiastic, but their knowledge was not enough to help in any way. However, there were also plenty of others who were able to help once I found the right way to communicate. Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of highly skilled people in this community. They are amazing artists, experts in other subjects, but their knowledge is lacking when it comes to web development.
I’m sure similar situations can arise in a professional environment, so it was good to experience this.
Even though I'm the boss, I have to adapt
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Ut elit tellus, luctus nec ullamcorper mattis, pulvinar dapibus leo.