Thanks to @zaatar and the rest of the GRIP team for their work on completing the first “season” of GRIP
I have a few points to make around the current design of the program, as I don’t believe it is currently fit for purpose.
Measurable impact of output
When analysing any proposal to spend DAO funds, particularly a retroactive one, it’s important to start with the impact delivered.
It is clear that the GRIP group has spent a lot of time in the past 3 months, but can any proposal writer point to the measurable impact they experienced from this? If so, how valuable was it to you? Would you be willing to pay for such work yourself? Was the cost to the DAO proportional to the perceived value you received?
I cannot speak to the direct impact of GRIP’s work as I haven’t been on the receiving end of it to date, but it would really help all of us to determine this if the GRIP team spoke in the language of impact and told us all about how they believe they made a difference. Ultimately, none of us can challenge how much time anyone spent on something, but if we are told that the DAO is to be charged $500 for economic analysis of X proposal that led to changes Y and Z, at least we are having a more productive conversation. It would be really helpful if those that GRIP helped would comment publicly on the value they received.
And going forward - if this program is to continue - I would recommend for the GRIP team to seek feedback after each contribution that can be made public or aggregated privately and released anonymously (TBD on the best way to do this to encourage the most honest feedback…), so all of us - as DAO voters responsible for stewarding the treasury - can understand the value received and the relative cost/benefit of the program.
Regarding the other elements of the GRIP team’s impact, I think the new proposal preparation guide is undoubtedly helpful. My only negative on the work is that it seems to suggest GRIP a little too much for my taste as the primary option for feedback and community support, as opposed to simply engaging with the community in the relevant channels before asking for formal support.
And regarding the updated proposal templates, I have seen the PEP template here, which doesn’t appear to be finished? Is there a projected timeline for finalising this @zaatar ? And do you have an estimate for when the updated proposal templates for PIPs and PUPs will be released?
I think we should align on the impact delivered to date and how best to measure impact delivered going forward before this new proposal can be approved.
Compensation structure
There has been a lot of talk about the issues of 1) charging for internal meetings and 2) the difficulty with charging an hourly rate.
My perspective is that the main issue with the current design of the GRIP system relates to the lack of a feedback mechanism.
In any sustainable system, too much of a good thing (money, carbohydrates, etc…) leads to a negative feedback loop to maintain a healthy equilibrium. However, in the case of GRIP the tap is always on. And there is no mechanism to turn it off, leading to a build up of chargeable hours, but no connection to the impact delivered.
If GRIP is to continue, I would strongly recommend that GRIP be treated like an in-house consultancy service that proposal authors can leverage as they require. Proposal authors should engage GRIP for specific services - eg technical review, grammar checks, etc - and they can challenge how much they are charged at the end of the service. For example, if I am charged for 5 hours of work to do some grammar and spelling checks on a document that took me 1 hour to write, then something is probably amiss, and as a DAO voter who cares about the long-term health of the treasury, I would likely challenge and negotiate such fee before it could be submitted to the DAO for reimbursement. In this case, the customer should always be right unless there are egregious reasons to think otherwise.
Also, making all of these conversations public puts the rest of the DAO on notice about the perceived value received. And should lead to an emergent oversight mechanism and set of precedents on what to do and what not to do in terms of delivering “impact” that is also value for money.
Such a workflow should also remove any need for internal meetings: 1) a proposal author asks for help; 2) a relevant member of GRIP puts up there hand to say they will help; 3) they do the work if chosen to do so by the author (who could also choose someone else); 4) the GRIP member says what they did and how much time it took them; 5) the work is approved by the proposal author based on the value they believe they received.
GRIP is a special forces team of experts that assembles when duty requires. Meetings shouldn’t be necessary. And learning and collaboration can happen in the open on an async basis. As a result, there should be no need for GRIP to charge the DAO for internal coordination and planning.
Membership of GRIP
As per my comment on the initial GRIP proposal:
This should be clarified and made very simple.
A naive model would allow anyone to “join” GRIP, and for the proposal author to choose who they wanted support from. A public record of each member - and the skills they claim to be most useful for - and feedback from every proposal author that uses GRIP would enable an emergent reputation score that proposal authors can leverage.
Next steps and vision for GRIP
As the first season of GRIP was said to be an experiment, before supporting another season I would like to understand what the learnings are and what the vision and proposed success metrics for next season of the program will look like. In short, how are we to know that the GRIP program is working as expected?
Once we agree on the impact delivered to date and what GRIP should look like going forward, I think it will be much easier for DAO voters to determine whether or not they want to support this for another season.