Those pages contain information for project coordinators and project team leads.

Project coordinators are most important at the first stages of a project, from the first contact of the organization with CorrelAid up until a team has been formed and it has started working. During the project work phase, the project coordinator gets updates from the project team to ensure that the project is running smoothly. After the project has been successfully implemented, the project coordinator is responsible for the follow-up with the organization and the project team.

The project lead / team lead ideally gets involved from the team selection process onwards. They are part of the project team but also have some additonal responsibilities related to team coordination, communication with the NPO and other organizational tasks.

In the past, most CorrelAid projects did not require active project acquisition work: word of mouth and personal contacts have worked well in the past. That being said, especially in a CorrelAidX context, active project acquisition can be necessary and useful.

until now, the only thing you need to do during the project is to keep your GitHub issue in the projects repository up to date.

If the team has successfully completed the necessary follow up steps, please consider adding the project to the project database.

Please see the corresponding page for the project team for what they need to do for the follow up. Your job as project coordinator is to encourage and 'force' the team to at least do the mandatory things. :)

Goals

• the project team gets fully enabled to work on the project

• team members get to know each other (who works with me? what are their skills?)

• team members get to know the partner organization and the project task (what is wanted / needed by the NPO?)

• agree on a way of organizing the team

Checklist

Purpose of the kickoff

The kickoff marks the start of the project work. Hence, it plays a special role in the course of the project. On one weekend (or an online meeting if an in-person meeting is not possible), the relevant stakeholders of the project come together to discuss the concrete goals of the project and how they can be reached. Participants are:

• the project coordinator

• the project team lead

• the project team

• representatives from the partner organization

The kickoff also marks the point in the project process where the main responsibility is passed on from the project coordinator to the project team lead and the project team.

The goals of the kickoff are:

• The project team knows the goals and values of CorrelAid, sees itself as part of it and knows the goals and values of the client.

• The project team knows the expectations and goals of the partner organisation and makes them its own.

• The project team identifies with the task and has developed its own vision for the work.

The project coordinator is responsible for preparing the kickoff together with the project lead. The project coordinator and project lead agree early on who has what responsibilities in the preparation and implementation of the workshop. Whenever this chapter talks about activities that the project coordinator or project lead is responsible for, these are merely suggestions.

How to organize

You can find material and templates for the kickoff of the project cycle here: .

If all goes well, the project team is able to organize this important part of the project itself. If you don't see that this is something that they're considering, bring it to their awareness that sustainability is very important to CorrelAid projects. If the team lead is not available anymore you might need to step in and organize the project handover.

Your responsibilities during the project work phase:

• keep an eye on the slack channel to see whether the team is still active

• check in from time to time (~every 4 weeks) in the slack channel to ask how things are going and/or whether they need any support

• keep an eye out for the team trainee. Are they active? do they get the support that they need? You can also individually check in with the person.

• update the issue in the from time to time with a comment

• If there are any problems, support the team lead, e.g. by facilitating a meeting with the NPO. You and the team lead can always get advice from Frie and/or the core team call on how to handle difficult situations.

Goals

• enable the team to communicate with each other

• make data available to the team so that they can get started directly after the kickoff

• set up project tools

Quick links

Set up infrastructure and invite team members

Set up Google docs/drive folder for team

1. Create folder for the team within

2. In the folder, create a team_base from the team_base template (right-click -> Google docs --> from template -> template_team_base and rename / adapt it as necessary

3. Share the folder (right-click on folder name -> share -> under general access set to "anonye with the link". Copy the link and pin it to the Slack channel as a bookmark.

Copy and adapt declaration on data protection and security

If the project has any data privacy requirements, the participants need to sign the .

1. copy the German or English template from into the project folder under 10_project_coordination.

2. The declaration outlines the requirements for the highest security setup (including the requirement to create a separate user account), so please make sure to adapt them to your specific project by removing passages not needed for your project. If you're unsure, ask our data privacy team ().

3. Export as PDF and and reupload the PDF to the folder for the team (see previous step)

Create Git repository

Usually, our project teams use GitHub for collaboration. To request a repository in the CorrelAid GitHub team, please proceed as followed:

1. in your project team channel, collect the GitHub of all team members.

2. On GitHub, click the new button

3. Pick one of the templates that we have created as boilerplates for project repositories. If none fits, create an empty repository with a README and (optionally) gitignore for the language(s) you'll be using. The existing templates are:

• : template based on the popular cookiecutter project. suitable for analysis and machine learning projects.

• : minimal repository with Python gitignore

• : minimal repository with R gitignore

1. Make sure to pick CorrelAid as the owner using the dropdown.

2. Choose repository visibility. Should be private by default unless it's an open source project and/or open data project

3. LICENSE can be left empty. If it's an open source project, choose MIT.

4. In Settings -> General, enable Projects for the repository so that the team can create a kanban style board for their issues if they want to.

Continue here once you have the GitHub profiles from the team members

1. invite team members as outside collaborators via Settings -> Collaborators and Teams. The default permission should be write, the team lead can also get manage.

Set up NextCloud for data transfer

While our project teams usually use GitHub for their project work, we use our for the initial data transfer from the organization to CorrelAid and from CorrelAid to the project team members.

Ask one of the project coordination admins (see below) to create a folder with your project id (e.g. 2021-02-COR) in the structure to enable the data transfer. Project coordination admins with the necessary permissions are (so far):

• Pia (@Pia B / [email protected])

• Frie (@frie / [email protected])

This folder will only be shared with you, the project team and the NPO representatives.

Admin: How to create and share the folder

1. Go to the

2. Click the plus to create a new folder. Name it with the project id.

3. Enter the folder by clicking on it. In it, create a folderraw_data

• other project coordinators with their CorrelAid email

• NPO representatives who share the data

• team members who need to access the data

Initial Slack communication with team members

Invite the team to the Slack channel

You should have for the project as part of the team selection phase. If you have not, you can do it now.

Once you have your Slack channel, invite or request to invite all selected team members to the Slack channel as members by (we have a standard plan).

If applicable, you should also invite the representatives of the NPO to the Slack workspace/channel. They might prefer to be invited as a guest if they also use Slack for their own organization. Check with them regarding their preferences. Having the NPO representative(s) on Slack makes team communication easier and increases NPO engagement.

Welcome message

It's always nice if people join a Slack channel and there is already a message waiting for them to get a conversation going. Hence, you should post a welcome message.

You can find a .

Goals of the message:

• get to know team members

• point out Google drive folder and other bookmarks on the Slack channel

• get necessary information and give actionable items

Coordinate date for kickoff workshop

Post an emoji poll on Slack to coordinate a date for the kickoff workshop.

Inform team members about data privacy & security

Make sure to inform your team members at some point about the data privacy and security considerations for the project. If you are unsure about what applies to your project, ask the project coordinator - they should know this. Express yourself as clearly as possible in DO's and DON'Ts. For examples, please see . You can do this as part of the kickoff or the onboarding process

If encryption is necessary for your project, share with them so that they can familiarize themselves with the options. A more detailed introduction to the tools - particularly VeraCrypt - should be part of the .

Goals

1. find a diverse, capable team

Team selection criteria

Score

We try to rank applicants on the following dimensions using a score that we generate using qualitative coding of open ended and closed ended answers. See for details.

• interest in topic / motivation for the project

  • can the person learn something on the project?

  • is the sole motivation the technical challenge or learning new technologies? Ideally, project members should also be intrinsically motivated to help the NPO

Additional guidelines

The score is not the definite selection criterium though. It is a helper to support team selection committee members to make decisions that follow the following additional guidelines:

• Overall, at least 50% of team seats are filled with applicants with genders currently underrepresented in tech (currently everyone who's not a cisgender man; cisgender = people whose gender identity matches their sex assigned at birth)

• applicants belonging to groups currently underrepresented in tech should be given priority, especially when the project affects is relevant to their community/ies (e.g. in the motivation text it becomes apparent that a Black person is applying for a project working on anti-discrimination)

• All team role seats ("lead", "member", "trainee" ) are filled. Typically, one spot in the team is reserved for a beginner ("trainee" role).

Process

Find a selection committee

After the call for applications is sent out to the network, you can start looking for a team selection committee. Usually a team selection committee consists of 2-3 members:

• the project coordinator(s)

• optional: 1-2 people from the CorrelAid core or crew (e.g. board or ethics committee or other teams)

• if available: the future team lead

The selection committee should be comprised so that gender parity is respected. In addition, it makes sense to include people with differing levels of experience. At least 1-2 of the members should be able to judge applications with regards to technical skills. People who have applied to the project cannot be part of the team selection committee.

You can find members for your committee by posting on Slack in #crew-directory or #project-coordination. Best include some information about the project. For example:

Do you want to be part of the team selection committee for [PROJECT NAME]? The project will be about training a model to do XX. It will be in Python.

Create Slack channel

Create a Slack Channel on the CorrelAid slack for the project. Give it a meaningful name that team members can remember.

The visibility of the channel should be private by default to give team members a sense of team-internal privacy. If the project is an open source project, you can also discuss with the team later whether they want to create a public channel.

Prepare team selection

Set up Google Sheet

We have a that - together with the HTML report (see below) facilitates the team selection process. This google sheet contains only pseudo-anonymized data (numeric ID, gender, role the person applied for, whether the person participated in a project before) of the applicants to keep the selection process as anonymized as possible.

1. Go to your project subfolder in the

2. Click New -> Google Sheets -> From template, then select the template team_selection_template_projectcycle

3. A new file will open. Give it a meaningful title, e.g "Team selection project cycle Q4 2023"

For each project that you want to do team selection for:

1. Duplicate the tab/sheet "Template"

2. important: name each project sheet with the project id, e.g 2022-04-LAU

3. important: in each project sheet, fill in the project id into cell B1 (will be highlighted in yellow), e.g 2022-04-LAU

The main work will happen in the project specific sheets, "Main table" is just for overview and later for exporting the results of the team selection.

Generate HTML report(s)

The HTML report gives the team selection committee a nicely structured, well navigable and readable format to go through the applications that we received for the project.

For each project that you want to do team selection for, follow the instructions to create the HTML report and associated datasets.

You can send the HTML files to the respective team selection committee members via a Slack DM or in a small private channel.

Copy data to sheet

The script that has generated the HTML report(s) should also have generated several csv files (as described ). For each project that you want to do team selection for:

1. Open the google_sheets_main_table.csv in a text editor of your choice (e.g. VSCode). Copy all lines except the header row.

2. Append it to the Main Table sheet of the Google Sheet by pasting it into column A .

Once finished for all projects, go to Data -> Split text to columns. This should spread the text data into the columns A to E. F + G will be filled once we work on the individual tabs.

Reading applications and filling the Google Sheet

Members of the team selection committee should then read the applications asynchronously. How to approach this depends on the number of applications. If there are many, it helps to do a first filter based on the answers provided to the open questions regarding skills and motivation.

In the process, team members should take first notes and score applicants in the project-specific tab of the Google Sheet. This helps to maker decisions quicker in the call.

Columns of the project tab for ranking

Team selection call

Once you have found 2-4 people and have shared the tools (report and google sheet) with them, arrange with them for a video call. Depending on the number of applications

Notes for the process:

• unless in specific circumstances, interviews with applicants are not conducted

• the selection committee tries to come to a consensus decision. If a consensus cannot be reached, the majority decides. If there is no majority, the project coordinator decides.

• Roles can be adapted, i.e. when you feel a person is "overqualified" for their role, you can "upgrade" their role

Confirming team members

Before you send out rejection emails to all those applicants who were not selected for the team you should make sure that everyone is still interested in participating in the project. After all, 1-3 weeks might have passed since they applied and they could've changed their minds. You can use the . You can use BCC to send the emails to all accepted applicants at once.

After everyone has confirmed their interest, you can send out the emails to the applicants who could not be considered. You can use the rejection email template to do this. If you want to send out multiple rejections at once, please make sure to use blind copy (BCC). You can find .

Confirming team lead

Promoting a team member/team trainee

Sometimes, no team lead applied. Then you can ask a qualified applicant to fill this role. You can find an email template here:

Quick links

Goals

1. decide whether we should do a project with the organization

2. if yes, scope the project

Setting up the project

Add project to Kanban Board

currently under evaluation. ask in #team-project-coordination.

Communication and Note Taking

In the scoping phase, you should aim to communicate regularly and repeatedly with the NPO to make sure that we a) really want to do a project with them and b) can define a project which will work for both the NPO and the CorrelAid team. Usually, 2-4 iterations over 1-4 weeks are necessary to define a project so that we can send it out via our newsletter.

In principle, you are free in how you communicate with the NPO: email, phone, video call or in-person are all valid choices. However, aim for at least one personal conversation (i.e. not email). It's a good idea to start sharing notes from the scoping process early with the NPO so that you can have a shared record of what your plans and ideas are.

Write down initial discussions and ideas and then move towards formulating a call for applications. To do so, it makes sense to create two Google docs based on the templates in this folder.

1. Create a subfolder for the project in the

2. Create one Google doc for taking notes during the initial call(s) --> template_scoping.

3. Create another Google doc for the call for applications --> template_call_for_applications (there are German and English versions and a version for the projectcycle which would include multiple calls)

To create the docs from the templates:

1. open the and open the template you want. Select all content and copy to a new Google doc. OR:

2. in the folder where you want to create the google doc (see step 1 above), right-click --> Google Docs --> From Template and then select the template from the gallery.

Scoping

There are several things you need to discuss with the NPO over the course of the scoping phase:

1. content and scope of the project

2. expectation management & organization commitments

3. data security / privacy & data access

4. timeline

Content and scope of the project

This is arguably the most interesting part. Here, you and the NPO should elaborate together what should be part of the project and how CorrelAid volunteers can help the NPO while at the same time having a good learning experience.

What's a good CorrelAid project? When should we do a project? When not?

The ethics questionnaire is a great place to get an overview over criteria and potential ethical no-gos that could prevent a project.

This older guide can also be useful (will potentially be retracted in the future)

It is important to get as good a picture of the situation as possible. While this process is not standardized, here are some resources:

• a catalogue of possibly helpful questions can be found in the .

• to get an overview where the organization "stands" when it comes to data

Expectation management & Organization commitments

Another important part of the ideation phase is expectation management. You should make clear that:

• ... CorrelAid is a volunteer-based organization. That means that the project team members are volunteers who will usually spend 3-5 hours per week on the project. It also means that rarely volunteers might drop out of the project because they're suddenly faced with other, unforeseen challenges in their life. CorrelAid is not a service provider or a business that can guarantee deliverables nor timelines.

• ... CorrelAid projects do not only serve the NPO but also our volunteers by providing learning opportunites (see info box above). This also means that our project teams are diverse such that we do reserve at least one spot for a less experienced data scientist.

Fortunately, almost all NPOs will totally understand those points because they also rely on volunteering in their work. :)

In addition to those "soft" expectation management issues, you should also get the OK from the organization that they are willing and able to:

• support the project team over the course of the project, i.e. they will be available for regular calls / email communication / meetings to answer questions and give feedback

• will be able to participate in the kickoff

Data privacy & data access

Data protection and privacy is very important to CorrelAid. Hence, you should find out early what kind of data is to be collected and/or analysed in the project so that the project lead and project team can take on appropriate measures to correctly store and process the data.

To make yourself familiar with the different types of data - especially the concept of "personal data" -, please check out the "" section of the data security & privacy page:

After you've familiarized yourself with the definitions, you should be able to decide on the right project setup together with the NPO by asking the following questions.

Will any kind of personal data be involved in the project?

If 👍:

Most of the times, CorrelAid teams will get a pseudonymized version of the data (i.e. individuals are still identifiable with the use of additional information). But even if the partner organization claims the data is truly anonymized, CorrelAid teams should not rely on that claim. Hence, in any case CorrelAid teams dealing with any kind of personal data should always adhere to the following setup:

If 👎:

If the project does not involve personal data, it depends on the requirements and wishes of the NPO which data protection & security measures the project team needs to adopt. Here are the questions to ask the NPO.

Does the data have to be encrypted locally?

Make sure the organization understands the attack vector, i.e. if a laptop of a team member was stolen, the data could be extracted from the hard drive.

If data can be stored unencrypted, CorrelAid team members do not need to ensure encryption which can be easier, especially for team trainees.

Can the data be uploaded to a private GitHub repository?

Make sure that the organization understands that GitHub has their servers in the US. CorrelAid does not self-host a version control service.

With a private repository access to the repository would be limited to team members and the project coordinator. In consequence the data would only be accessible to team members and the project coordinator.

If data can be stored on GitHub, they can be put under version control, i.e. changes to raw data can be tracked and reverted easily if necessary. In addition, it makes collaboration in the team easier because the setup is shared through GitHub.

Can the code and data be published to a public GitHub repository?

If the organization decides to open source the code and data to the public, it is accessible to everyone.

Other organizations and data scientists can make use of our work and we would contribute to open source.

If the NPO decides that they are ok with open sourcing code + data, you should help them choose a license for data and code. is a good resource for deciding this.

Timeline

Finally, you should also agree on a rough timeline. A usual project can look like:

Please always add in a bit of buffer. Holidays etc. are a thing, so you shouldn't plan with all volunteers working 3-5 hours on the project all weeks.

Team

A project needs a team. Before you send out the call for applications, you should define roughly how you would like the team to look like.

Size

Usually, CorrelAid teams consist of 4-6 people, but there can also be smaller teams (e.g. a two-person team) or larger teams if the project is very comprehensive and there are several sub-projects that can be worked on simultaneously.

Roles

With regards to skills, it can be useful to think of different "roles" that you want to fill. In a typical CorrelAid project, there are three types of team roles:

• project lead / team lead: The project lead is a team member that has some additional responsibilities such as coordination of the team, being the primary contact person of the organization, and reporting back to the project coordinator (aka you). Usually, the project lead is also a more experienced data scientist who can help others with technical problems but this doesn't have to be the case. The project lead can also be someone who is very knowledgable and has high domain expertise.

• team member: "regular" team member: upper beginner level, mid-level and experienced data scientists / data analysts.

• team trainee: at least one position in every CorrelAid project is reserved for less experienced data scientists who are just at the start of their data science journey.

A usual CorrelAid project team looks like this:

• 1 project lead

• 2-4 team members

• 1 team trainee

Depending on the project, you can also define two project leads or team trainees, or have more "regular" team members.

Find a team lead early!

Call for Applications

Checklist

Draft the call for applications on CodiMD

Once you have decided together with the NPO that a project makes sense and you have a clear idea of the scope and content of the project, you can start drafting the call for applications (de: Projektausschreibung). The call for applications is the central way how we announce our projects and how we collect applications from our network.

You can draft the call for applications on Google Docs or CodiMD. In order to make this as easy as possible for you, we provide for this that closely mirror the structure of the Mailchimp template that you'll use later to send it out to the network.

Copy the content of the Google Template into a new Google doc (or create a new doc from the template) or CodiMD and rename it to reflect your project's name. Then you can start filling in the necessary information.

Add project to KoboToolbox form

For project applications, we have a that we use for all projects. At the beginning of the survey, applicants are asked to select which project they want to apply to. Hence, you need to add your project to this sign-up form.

1. Log into

2. Open the for the form "Applications for CorrelAid Projects".

3. Click "add another response" under the question "Für welche Projekte möchtest Du dich bewerben?"

• add the response option in the format {project_id}: title of the project, e.g. 2022-04-LAU: A project title. The : is important!

• under XML value, add the project id, e.g 2022-04-LAU. This is important for data cleaning to work when generating the HTML reports.

1. The question "Welche Rolle möchtest Du im jeweiligen Projekt einnehmen?" is a matrix question so the first block of its settings are the general configuration. Skip this and duplicate the block of one of the previous projects. You need to edit the title of the block but then also go to the settings (cog wheel) to edit the "data column name" there as well.

1. Delete old entries from the two questions if they are not needed anymore because the application deadline has expired.

1. Save the current state and exit the form builder with the "X".

2. Update the translations by going to the Form tab and clicking on the Globe emoji next to Languages. Click again on the globe emoji next to English and find the two entries that you added in the form. You can just copy-paste whatever you put into the form builder because we do not translate the call for applications either. Important: the project ID stays the same, regardless of language.

1. Click "Redeploy" in the to publish your changes

2. Now your project is live and you an send out the call for applications to our newsletter linking to the form with this link: (this is the "online-only once per respondent" link)

Send with Mailerlite

Once you're finished drafting your call for applications and have checked back with the organization to get a go-ahead, you can send it out to our network using our newsletter list.

1. log in to mailerlite using the [email protected] account

2. create a mailerlite campaign

3. content of the campaign:

• if only one project: you can insert the whole call for applications into the mail

• if multiple projects: insert the summary and overview blocks for each project and then link to the Google doc (don't forget to set "Viewer" permissions for "everyone")

1. Choose the Volunteer Newsletter group as recipients.

FAQ