Loomio
Tue 29 Sep 2015 8:28PM

How do we ensure a complete value flow?

LF Lynn Foster Public Seen by 216

The NRP engine works on value flows. These are flows of resources through process and/or exchanges. Could be a long chain, or a short one.

If the value flow is not all recorded, some people will not get paid. For example, a number of people contributed cash to buy the FDM 3D printer. When the 3D printer is used, its use should be logged in the process logging page, just like work. When the value equation is run, it can trace backwards and find all the contributions in the value flow, however long it is. So it finds that when X prototype work was done, the 3D printer was used for N hours, and it figures out that all the people who contributed to the 3D printer should get a little piece of that income.

This problem is happening right now - I don't think anyone has ever logged time on the 3D printer. I'm not worried that people are trying to rip each other off, just thinking people need to understand and also think about how to manage this.

Possible problem: People are incentivized to log work because otherwise they don't get paid. People might not be incentivized to log usage or consumption or citations because that just pays other people more and them less.

Another problem: People just make logging mistakes, too many or too few hours, forgetting inputs, etc.

There are some places to maybe catch problems, like the process logging page or the new Frederic report. But it is not ideal. And compounding the problem is people tend to log sometime after the work was done, so it is easier to forget and harder to catch.

So - This is something that crosses disciplines.... maybe some software issues, maybe some governance issues, maybe some process workflow issues, ????

BH

Bob Haugen Tue 29 Sep 2015 10:53PM

@lynnfoster - actually, if you look here, two events have been logged using that printer for 2.5 hours total. The last one, in July, looks like it even used that little app you spent 3 weeks developing.

I am shocked, however, that the "where from" information does not display the group of people who contributed to buying the printer. Must be a bug. I'll fix it.

[edit] Fixed. http://nrp.sensorica.co/accounting/resource/411/
(scroll down)

BH

Bob Haugen Thu 1 Oct 2015 9:57PM

Round trip: two cartoons that show what Lynn wrote in the discussion context above.