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Project Definition

The Hack for LA Guides project is creating guides and templates from the effective practices that HfLA has developed and iterated from our projects. HfLA Guides aim to share replicable processes and practices from Engineering, UI/UX, Product Management, Data Science, Marketing Fundraising, DevOps, Admin, and Professional Development. The project seeks to further grow HfLA’s peer learning and iterative culture, and ultimately improve outcomes for the entire civic tech ecosystem.

Introduction To The Project

What is the Guides Team?

The Guides Team is a group of people dedicated to managing the guides that were created by members of the Communities of Practice in Hack For LA

Why do it?

The Guides Team manage guides in order to help both Hack For LA volunteers and anyone on the internet find the necessary resources they need to do a practice

Hasn't it been done already?

We have surveyed many Civic Tech organizations, from 18F to Code for America. They all have some guides, but none have a comprehensive set.

So how is this different?

We aim to create a set of guides with practical examples from real projects. Ideally, you would take guidance, from working projects. Meaning, guidance without proof that it's coming from a successful example is less valuable than one that you can see working. For instance, people often reference practices at companies like eBay, Amazon, Google, etc. As evidence for the quality of the practice.

What are our guiding objectives?

Make guidance so simple to follow that even a total novice can do the process or practice effectively. Work with people who are doing the practice to understand what works and what does not.

Project One Sheet

You can access our project one sheet here.

FAQ

What is a Guide

• A document with step-by-step instructions and examples of how to do a process or practice

How is a Guide Made?

• Overview
  • Volunteers and organization leads identify questions people have about how to do things on Hack for LA projects
  • Issues are Made to create a Guide and sometimes a template to go with that guide
  • People self assign a guide and connect with other teams to find out if they have experience/examples of doing the process or practice on their team
  • After gathering the examples, the assignee writes up a guide, using the guides templates, on how to do it, and then tests that guide with other teams, that were identified during the gathering examples stage.
  • The guide gets a leadership review
  • The is published on our website
• You can look at our comprehensive slide presentation on how to start working on a guide: How to Gather Examples & Interview Teams (WIP)

What is the difference between a Process and Practice?

• A Process has a defined set of instructions for how to execute something from beginning to end.
  • Example: Setting up and Deleting Slack Reminders for your project
• A Practice is a set of guidance and examples for how to organize something. Each team who uses the practice will execute it differently from the others that come before, as the needs of their project dictate.
  • Example: How to Write a Research Plan

Where can I find instructions for working on Guides

• On our Guide Resources page

Where can I find Hack for LA Guides now

• Work in progress issues for guides can be found on the Guides Tracker
• Guides Tracker column for Guides that are almost done

How will Guides Authors Get Credits?

• Authors add their names to the Guide document
• They also include their social media addresses such as LinkedIn, GitHub, and Email
• Future feature: we plan to have a drop-down search to see all guides contributed to by a specific author. Authors will be able to link to all the guides they worked on (can add a link to their portfolio).