Motivation
The importance of engineering & product autonomy have been discussed in great detail at the Coop (e.g. here, here, and here).
The Index Coop wants the freedom and power to set it’s own product & engineering priorities. Set wants to enable the Index Coop to be autonomous, while lending its smart contract engineering & keeper infrastructure expertise where it has highest leverage.
Getting this right will increase transparency around Index Coop product/eng decision-making, drive increased awareness around product & engineering costs, and reduce complex dependencies on each organization’s development roadmap.
Set and PWG/EWG Collaboration
Over the past couple months the Index Coop & Set have been investing heavily in building out engineering and product leadership to support Index Coop autonomy. Set product & engineering leadership (@asoong, @willz) have been meeting with EWG & PWG leadership (@edwardk, @Cavalier_Eth with support from @dylan, @puniaviision) several times a week to share context on the full scope of product and engineering responsibilities required to maintain and grow the Index Coop, and what the future of Set & EWG/PWG collaboration could look like.
Goals
During this process we had the following goals:
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Share comprehensive knowledge of the existing processes required to launch and maintain Index Coop products.
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Identify areas where a transfer of process ownership is feasible and high impact for Index Coop or Set.
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Establish formal communication channels between Set and IC product/eng. leadership.
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Establish SLAs (Service Level Agreements) for engineering inputs (such as smart contract code review) required of Set.
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Create a process and venue to mutually share product & engineering roadmaps between Set and IC.
Existing Product & Engineering Ownership at the Index Coop
As part of this exercise we mapped out all product & engineering tasks and their DRIs required for current day maintenance of the Index Coop and it’s products. This has been instrumental in establishing shared truth of the current state of product & engineering affairs. Once everything was laid out and we agreed it was accurate, we could be explicit & strategic about targeting parts of the system for IC support or hand-off that are high leverage.
Eventually, almost everything in the above map will be owned by the Index Coop. Items in red are near term goals for Set to Index Coop hand-off over the next one or two quarters. You’ll notice some of these pieces have already been handed off, which means we’re making progress! Items in purple will be part of longer term hand off goals.
Next Steps
One of the highest leverage activities for hand off that became apparent after the mapping exercise is helping Set out with understanding changing liquidity profiles and optimizing rebalance parameterization to more holistically balance product performance and gas costs. EWG & PWG are now investing tools & time here to become experts in DeFi liquidity.
As PWG/EWG leads, @cavalier_eth and @edwardk will also be pushing for increased clarity around internal Index Coop product & engineering prioritization processes. You can expect a more detailed forum post on this topic from them soon.
Besides that, communication channels are in the process of being solidified between Set and EWG/PWG, SLAs are being confirmed and talks are set to continue on a weekly basis.