You must have heard of hashtags. That is a rather clever way of organizing loosly-structured information. You would see hashtags used on social media sites such as Twitter, written like this: #gitwinch. When you see that word which starts with the “hash” sign ('#') Twitter allows you to search by that term by clicking on it. It will display all the posts on Twitter that uses the same hashtags.
We've expanded on the hashtags concept, which we call as “hashtag-values”. Let us explain how that works.
One of the disadvantages of the concept of hashtags is that sometimes people may use different hashtags for the same kind of information. If one person wrote an article or post on CAD drawings and tagged that as #CAD and the other tagged it as #drawings then clicking on #CAD may not get you the second person's article/post.
To avoid that, what many do is to tag the same content with multiple hashtags. That results in a lot of “hashtag-clutter” which again brings in its own confusion.
Hashtags
What we propose is to keep one common reference file for the hashtags that you want to use in the office. To avoid confusion, your office can agree on a common set of hashtags for different types of work..
For example: In an architect's office, people are doing #admin work, #clientmeetings, #accounts, #gfcdocs, #redlining, #designing, #rendering … so that office agrees upon the hashtags that should be used. Ideally, use only one word (i.e. without spaces) to define such hashtags.
These hashtags definitions should be saved into a file (as a comma-delimited file, without the # character). That file is then shared with everyone – so that when they do tag their work, they know what hashtag they should use without spelling mistakes.
Hashtag-Values
As hinted earlier, we have expanded on this concept of hashtags further.
In our system, you not only can place hashtags into some specific parts of our system. But you can also associate some numerical value with it.
For e.g. Some person in the office placed these hashtags: #admin:5.5, #accounts:0.5, #redlining:6.5
That means the person has done 5.5 hours worth of admin work and 0.5 hour worth of accounts work and 6.5 hours of redlining work. The owner or boss or manager of the office can then suitably reward that person for the work that was done (and can have different previously-agreed upon rates for each of those works)
Here is a summary, in case you don't want to read the entire topic.
Flexible and loosely-coupled
The concept of hashtag values is extremely useful in small/medium size offices where people may be asked to do different kinds of work. One source of anguish that employees often have is that they don't get recognized (aka paid) for the hard-work they put in different types of work they did for the office. Such hashtag values can be inserted in appraisals between an employee and his/her manger or owner as comments into the Kanban system.
This is a loosely-coupled system. Which means, we do not insist that you must use this. Maybe you may use this with other variations. For e.g. instead of giving the values as number of hours spent, it could be percentages, reward points or actual money or some kind of gamification points… that's all up to that office which uses Git Winch.
But if you do use this method (in whatever variations) our system can collect these hashtag-values and put give them as a CSV file to you. Then you can choose how to use that CSV file as per your office policies.
How to do Hashtag Value analysis
When you click on the 'Hashtag Analysis' button in the Manage page, Git Winch fill first ask you to load a text file which contains the hashtags you want to retrieve. For example; if you want to find out Hashtag values for the following hashtags: #admin, #accounts, #redlining enter this line into a text file and save that.
accounts,admin,redlining
If you notice, there are no # character there, and each hashtag is separated from the next by a comma. Do not use carriage returns. It is a simple text file, which can be created/edited using Notepad,Notepad++ and other such text-editors. Do NOT use word-processors such as Microsoft Word, etc.
So this is the file that you need to load when clicked the “Hashtag Analysis” button in the Manage page.
Then Git Winch will extract those hashtag-values and place them into a CSV file. You can then further work on that CSV file using a spreadsheet application such as Excel, and complete the analysis.
Who can do this analysis?
Anyone can invoke the Hashtag analysis. However; internally, Git Winch will assume that you are the owner of some Kanban Group in the web-app, and also owner of some repositories too. If you are not an owner of either, the generated CSV file will be empty. Git Winch will only search in Kanban groups and repositories where you are the owner.
Internally, Git Winch will check the backend coordination server's database and note down which all Kanban cards where you have commented, and all repository file-notes with your notes too. (Note: As stated above, I am repeating: only for the Kanban groups and Repositories that you had created). The first line of such comments and/or notes would be examined for comma-separated hashtag values.
It will find out the person who created the Kanban card. Or, in case of Repository file-notes; it will note down all members who had written notes for that particular file.
For example; on one comment for a particular Kanban card you may have written the following comment
#admin:4.5
In another file-note you had written the following:
#redlining:8;admin:9.5
As you can see; you did not write just #admin or just #redlining. Instead you also gave a value for those hashtags.
This is quite similar to a teacher in a classroom giving marks for various subjects to students in the class. So the students (aka other members) themselves do not write their own hashtag values. But it is the teacher (i.e. the creator of the Kanban group or Repository) who wrote the hashtag value as a comment or file-note.
Internally, Git Winch will place the values of 4.5 and 9.5 for #admin. And 8 would be the value for #redlining. Of course, the person to whom this value would be given would be based on whose Kanban card was being worked on. In case, of file notes, the values would be attributed to all those wh had put their own notes onthat file.
After processing those hashtag values, the CSV file is generated.
Here is the Hashtag CSV File Format, which will give you more details on how to read the generated CSV.
Hierarchical System
This analysis can be made hierarchical too. For e.g. Say the office has 3 tiers in its ORG tree. At level one is the owner (all by himself or herself) At level two are the managers and at level three are the regular workers.
The managers create Kanban groups for the set of workers they manage. These managers then do an 1-2-1 appraisal (at whatever time period is the office policy) of the workers and capture the hashtag-values as comments in the Kanban groups they had created.
The owner has also created his/her own Kanban groups – In these groups only the managers are present. The owner also does a 1-2-1 with each manager and creates the hashtag-values' CSV file. Now the managers individually can pass on their own hashtag-value analysis to the owner, and then the owner puts all of them together to get a holistic understanding of what kind of work and to how much extent is being done in the office.
The above is just an example. We are sure you can think of different variations to suit your own office.
Gamification System
You may have guessed by now that this is a gamification system. Everyone in the same Kanban group would be able to see the hashtag-values placed as comments in the Kanban and file-notes for files.
However, the CSV file is allowed to be downloaded ONLY by the person who created the group (and in case of file-notes; the repository).
So there is some kind of control on how this information is used.
Soft-rules
An office is free implement their own “soft-rules” for the use of these hash-tags. It is so flexible that you can have quite a different set of options to utilize this powerful feature.
For e.g. A manager may decide to have private 1-2-1 Kanban groups for each worker and use only that one for appraisals. i.e. Only the worker being assessed is part of that group. Why? Because the “soft-rule” in the office is that only strict 1-2-1 appraisals would be counted. In some other office, the manager may bring ALL the workers into the same Kanban group, and assess all of them together. That way, every worker would be able to see the values given to all the others in the group.
And of course, you can mix both the types of approaches too.
Some offices would only use the hashtag-values placed only in the last column of the Kanban group. Some others would allow such hashtag-values in any column.
Some offices may have dedicated hashtag-analysis Kanban groups for the above assessment. In some offices, the hashtag-analysis are placed as comments in any of the cards.
In some other office, the “soft-rule” could be that everyone in the group is free to do their own self-assessment by adding their own hashtag values into card comments and/or file-notes. Then the owner of the Kanban-group or Repository would study their comments/file-notes and accordingly place the final hashtag values.
The above method can be used where there is a more flatter structure, and all the members of the group are considered peers, including the one who created the group.
In short, there is a lot of flexibility on how to use this.