Criteria for a Successful, Collaborative OSE Project

When engaging in a development project with OSE, keep in mind these points when doing your development, design, and build work:

1. Are you documenting? The key to open source work is building upon others' documentation. If your work is not documented openly in the cloud at a public site - it effectively does not exist from the standpoint of zero-barrier, global collaboration. Is your work on your Work Log? The Work Log on the wiki is OSE's most basic documentation venue for documenting one's work - such that other team members know where to find others' contributions over time - to promote collaboration. Wherever your work is located - have you communicated to the rest of the OSE community where your work can be found?
2. Working open source style. Are you publishing early and often (good)? Are you publishing 'as soon as you have a milestone reached' (not good). The key to working openly is that you disclose all of your work publicly as soon as it is generated - meaning that you work in the cloud. This allows for feedback and collaboration to happen immediately. When you publish a Google Doc, are you remembering to Share it immediately for anyone to view and comment? Are you opening Google Docs for edit to the world (good if you keep backups)? Does your work merit creating infographics via our Media Manager's assistance?
3. Past Work. Are you aware that past work has already been done on the topic? What measures have you taken to find, study, and build upon that work? Have you documented the past work, and communicated how you are building upon it or moving beyond it?
4. Team Effort. How are you working with the rest of the OSE community?
5. Leadership. Have you thought about communicating to OSE leadership about your work? Who are the key OSE developers relevant to your work?
6. Organizing your documentation. After you began documenting your work openly, are you taking any measures to organize it on OSE's platforms so that it can be easier to find and build upon?
7. Feedback. What mechanism have you established for receiving feedback on your work? Have you considered an update on your status on the OSE Facebook page? Is your work newsworthy for OSE to write a press release?

Technical:

1. Product Ecology. - What measures are you taking to makes sure that your work fits within the GVCS Product Ecology? Are you familiar with the GVCS Product Ecology?
2. Construction Set - Are you designing your machine or component to function as a piece of a construction set, not as a part of a dedicated machine? What specific features allow your design to be a Construction Set? What features are missing that limit its features as a Construction Set?