While this sounds like an obvious enhancement, our decision to proceed with it was the result of a bigger debate. The question that we face on a recurring basis is the extent to which, we, oDesk, should try to enforce best practices in our marketplace-workplace or we should just provide options and let our users decide how they want to work.

The debate is meaningful not only for the email issue, but for every part of our service,

• Should we require providers to communicate using only their oDesk email or not?
• Should providers pick any userid they want or should we standardize the userids?
• Should we allow providers to join oDesk with or without having taken a few minimal tests?
• Should we expect that all buyers and providers speak one language, English?
• Should we allow providers to apply to as many job openings as they want?
• Should we require buyers to prove they have the money to pay before hiring? before posting?
• Should we allow “offline hours” in the weekly timelog? Should we act when there are too many offline hours?
• Should we contract with providers and buyers or just offer templates and let users contract among themselves?

etc etc.

One could argue that enforcing discipline and processes would add friction and would limit our ability to grow. Besides, it is arrogant to believe that we, oDesk, know better than our users.
On the other hand we have seen that efficient networks of individuals have to rely on common structures, processes, protocols to work together.
What is the right balance?

The use of our feedback system is growing rapidly. Furthermore, the providers that are getting top scores are growing as a percent of the feedacks received. You can see the oConomy feedback stats as of today. The graph displays all feedbacks given in oDesk for assignments that were ended this year. Keep in mind that our feedback system has been introduced less than 6 months ago.

…

1. We decided to expose the fact that a person has decided to keep their feedback as private. Before the viewer could not tell the difference between a missing feedback and a feedback that was kept private. We applied this change symmetrically for both the provider assignment history in the provider profile as well as the buyer history in the opening profile. We have seen in many cases that providers do not actively manage the visibility of the comments. For example in the screensnap above the provider has opted to keep private the comment for an assignment with top score (4.65) and left public a less positive comment. We hope that the additional transparency will guide our users to keep comments public while still giving them option to act as a moderator for the content in their profile.
2. We are now including the number of feedbacks given to a particular user. The feedback score is an aggregate metric : it is the weighted (by hrs) average of all provided feedback scores. However, when displayed in isolation, the viewer cannot tell whether the score is the result a single successful assignment or the aggregate of a long history of solid work record. We now include in parenthesis next to the feedback the number of assignments that resulted in a feedback in the follow web pages:
   1. provider profile - quick facts, affiliate facts
   2. affiliate profile - quick facts,
   3. provider search lister
3. We allow the user to sort providers based on the # of feedbacks received so far (Total Feedback)

As many of our users already know every buyer account is auto-provisioned with an oDesk hosted Bugzilla application. Since Tuesday, all users that are using our bugzilla will get a nice surprise as they open the memo dialog of the Team client :

All the bugzilla tasks assigned to them will appear in the dialog box - selecting them auto-populates the memo with the corresponding bug number and description.

…

With the Team-Bugzilla integration we are introducing the first elements of an integrated task/time management system.
The idea here is that an integrated task, time and billing service is able to provide the answer to key questions like:

• what is my team doing now , which tasks are they working on
• how much time my team has spent on each task, what is the ultimate cost of everything produced by my team.

By having real time answers to these questions a team is able to find its weaknesses, plan better and eventually improve its productivity.
How is this feasible?

How we use this feature to manage our own team

It is easier for me to describe the process that we are using to manage our own engineering team. You can use that as a template or adjust it to fit your needs.

1. Every team member can only bill time for assigned tasks.
   1. only memo annotated time is accepted
   2. the memos have to correspond to specific tasks assigned to that person
2. The manager of a team is responsible to create and assign tasks to its members. This is being done by creating tasks in bugzilla, adding related attributes (product, component, release, etc) , putting a detailed description of what needs to be done, ranking them with a priority and assigning them to the corresponding user.
3. Depending on the nature of the work some tasks are “recurring” (e.g., “Scan website logs for possible errors” ), and never finish, or they correspond to a specific outcome (e.g. “Update website home page according to attached spec”).
4. Team members accept tasks possibly updating the estimated completion. Assigned tasks appear in the Team client memo list and the provider can “bill time” for these tasks.
5. When tasks are complete the provider marks them as fixed and the task are automatically removed from the memo list.
6. The manager (or a separate user responsible for testing and verifying) can either verify the task or re-open it in which case it goes back to the queue of the provider. Throughout this work flow, bugzilla provides brief email notifications to the corresponding parties notifying them about changes, completions and availability of work.
7. The manager typically provides “back-burner” lower priority tasks for each member of their team so as they can switch to them instead of waiting for the manager’s reply after a task is being done.
8. The manager can create reports of hrs/$ spend by task or any of the other task attributes : E.g. Hrs/$ by product, Hrs/$ by release, Actual Cost vs Budget by Feature etc. Such reports can be done today manually using bugzilla report functionality and a bit of Excel. We will soon release additional reporting functionality to enhance the current timelogs with project/task costing etc.

The oDesk Team client will never be the same! During the last release we auto-upgraded the oDesk Team client. It is now configured with an important new feature:

Live snapshot upload notification and control

After a snapshot is captured by the Team client, the snapshot thumbnail pops up in the right lower corner and allows the user to optionally review, do a quick zoom and decide whether they want to have the particular snapshot sent to the server or not.

Why did we do that?

The purpose of the feature is two-fold:

1. From the provider side we want to provide better control of private information and better user experience and convenience.
2. As for buyers the result of this feature is straightforward : more accurate timelogs and less opportunities for misunderstandings.

Providers already have full control of their client - they can suspend it, in which case no information is being captured and they can turn it on when they want. They can also visit their workdiary after the fact and review, delete or memo annotate their time as they see fit. However, most of us tend to let the Team client always on while we work; we just try to be careful and review immediately the diary after we do something of private nature, plus we do the occasional daily/weekly review of the diary to cleanup any non - work related activity. That’s not very convenient. For starters if private info gets captured in a group-visible teamroom it might be too late. And it is really a pain having to check the workdiary continuously just in case. Its no wonder that the workdiary is the single most visited page in our entire application.

So we changed the logic of the team client and let the user be a bit ahead of the workdiary “tape”. Just like the TV moderators are a few seconds ahead of the live broadcast, similarly the snapshots are now sent to the server with a configurable up-to 60 seconds delay allowing the user to moderate their “tape” in the same way.

The feature does not compromise in any way the accuracy or randomness of our snapshot logic.

oDesk has automated Provider account creation. You can now send an invite to a friend, coworker or employee to join the oDesk network.

How does it work:

All users now have an Invite a Provider link in their Shortcuts box in My oDesk. This will take them to a field to enter email addresses. oDesk will send an invitation email to the addresses entered with a URL to start the Provider signup process.

What does this mean for Buyers:

Buyers can now invite Providers they have been working with previously, and can add them to their Team Room. This will allow Buyers to take advantage of the oDesk remote management tools for all their work relationships, domestic as well as international.

What does this mean for Freelance Providers:

Freelance Providers can now easily invite their friends to join oDesk. Many times, a Buyer will ask a Freelance Provider to recommend other Providers who will complement the Buyer’s team. This new feature will allow Freelance Providers to easily invite their friends to join the oDesk network and add them to the Buyer’s Team Room.

What does this mean for Affiliate Managers:

Affiliate Managers now have an automated way of adding their Providers to the oDesk network. The invitation email will have an Affiliate specific confirmation URL. Therefore, any Providers invited by an Affiliate Manager will be added to that Affilate’s roster in oDesk.