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FIT

Inter-cooperative Workflow Group

What is intercooperation?

It is sharing a project or delegating it to another co-operative, following co-operative principles.

FIT In a nutshell

  • Began a few years ago, as a result of the need to keep in touch between co-ops

  • As time went by, the idea of sharing projects emerged, helping to solve scalability issues

  • Nowadays, it is the channel through which we work in collaboration and share projects

Values

  • Co-ops are not outsourcing: It is definitely not a space for "hiring resources", instead it's a space dedicated to build based on cooperation.

  • Non-competition: FIT helps cooperatives to avoid competing with each other.

  • Transparency:

    • When we talk about transparency as a way of interaction, we refer to the agreements with the clients involved and also to the communication of the problems that may appear.

    • We value the talks in a sincere and open way, keeping in mind that we are all working to get good projects that allow the development of our cooperatives.

Interaction

  • Mailing list
  • Mattermost Specific Channel
  • Monthly meetings
  • CRM (New!): A tool for commercial management used to track commercial opportunities that are shared through the FIT.

Advantages of intercooperation

  • We help strengthen other cooperatives
  • We exercise cooperation
  • We increase the scale of our cooperative
  • We generate friendly relations between cooperatives
  • We improve the visibility of the sector
  • By increasing work flow, we encourage more freelancers to join cooperatives
  • We expand the development capacity from the social economy, being able to create technology with values
  • We generate a network that may keep your co-op safe from any external or internal problem.

Known Issues and possible approaches

  • Although intercooperation has many good things, not all experiences were positive, at least not at the beginning.

  • Like all human interaction, it can bring conflict.

  • The most important thing is what we do with the problem that appears and how we learn from that experience

ISSUE 1

  • Availability to help managing the group:
    • Problem: Poor participation to maintain the group.
    • Approach: Participation in all FIT meetings is the minimum condition to be able to apply to projects that are shared in the group.

Note: Maintaining and managing a space like FIT takes a lot of time so we think that is necessary to involve as many cooperatives as possible, to distribute the effort required.

ISSUE 2

  • Low development performance:
    • Problem: In a shared project, a team or developer does not work as expected.
    • Approach: Here if we refer to values, we would use transparency.

Note: On one hand, if I see that whoever took the project is not working well, we have to create the confidence to talk about it, analyze causes and look for solutions. On the other hand, if I see that I am not performing as expected, I have to warn it, to also look for causes and possible solution strategies.

ISSUE 3

  • Difficulties or delays in payments:
    • Problem: The project starts having difficulties to be paid / The customer does not pay in the agreed time.
    • Approach: As we are not replicating a scheme of outsourcing, cooperatives work in solidarity.

Note: Therefore it is understood that by working as equals and maintaining a scheme of transparency, we must talk about this type of problem from the beginning. In other words, how to proceed in the event of an inconvenience such as the one mentioned above. In this way, the participating cooperatives know before they start, the possible risks of the project and how they would be managed.

ISSUE 4

  • Estimation errors:
    • Problem: The project is estimated by the co-op that brings the opportunity, but has estimation errors, which causes the project to be delayed and its value to decrease.
    • Approach: It' s essential that the cooperative that joins another to work on a fixed price project reviews the estimate to see if they agree or not with it.

Note: If they agree to participate having reviewed the estimate, then you are on an equal footing to assume the risk of a bad estimation.

Advantages and disadvantages of working with freelancers

  • When discussing this issue I want to be clear that I am not the owner of the truth

  • I am only talking from my experience and what I saw from the experience of other cooperatives.

  • From what I learned, working with freelancers can have two possible goals:

  1. To establish relationships with developers, and then propose to them to join the cooperative

  2. To expand development capacity without having to add members to the cooperative

To establish relationships with developers

A possible problem:

  • Freelancers get used to enjoying the benefits of having constant work, without having to deal with the labor involved in maintaining the cooperative.

To establish relationships with developers

A positive thing:

  • It reduces the barriers to the entry of members: In our case, by not relating previously with the aspiring members, we don't really get to know how them before entering the co-op

To expand development capacity

  • A possible problem that I detect from this is that if we compare it with our model, the freelancers contribute development capacity, but they cannot enjoy the stability that the cooperative offers

Note: We have a fixed amount per month that we charge even if we take vacations, get sick or need a license).

Questions?

Thanks!