Interconnected Services

Catalyst product covers the different stages of the Project Catalyst funding process. These different stages represent the services used in the wider Catalyst product. An important factor to discuss is how these services are interconnected and not independent. This factor is important to determine suitable funding and working structures for how those services are implemented and maintained.

Project Catalyst has a number of services within the ecosystem that are interconnected. For example the proposal submission service is closely linked with assessment or voting as these services require the proposal data. In these scenarios the services do not act independently from one another as they need data and users to flow from one service to the other.

Product factors for interconnected services

A number of factors need to be considered when thinking about how interconnected services are funded, developed and maintained.

Breaking changes

Services relying on surrounding services increase the potential risk of breaking changes. This occurs when another service being updated impacts the operation of other services that depend on it. This risk results in a constant need effective communication.

Differing implementation quality

How interconnected services are developed will change the overall product quality. Separate teams need to consider how they can get access to talent and feedback from across the product ecosystem to ensure a high quality implementation can be achieved.

Diverging implementation approaches

The complexity of implementations is a concern for interconnected services. If each services uses different implementation approaches and processes the overall product becomes more complex. This increases the skills required to work in the ecosystem. The more complex implementations becomes due to diverging approaches the more friction it adds in attracting and retaining talent to maintain those services. Better alignment on implementation can make it faster to iterate as a whole and also lead to a more cohesive user experience.

Different user experiences

Considerations are needed for interconnected services to stay aligned on creating a high quality user experience. If services run completely independently there is an increased risk that they provide very different user experiences. These differences could lead to confusion and a product that becomes harder to use.

Collaboration

The need for collaboration between interconnected service teams is high as how they iterate their service can impact the other surrounding services. Knowledge and skills shared across teams help to improve the product development workflow and governance processes used for each team working on a service. Collaboration across teams can include problem sensing, problem prioritisation, defining solution options and solution implementation approaches used by each service.

Governance

Each interconnected service needs a breadth of ideas and knowledge from well informed participants to make better decisions about how to improve each service. If governance is siloed with less people working independently there is a risk of decreasing the amount of shared knowledge in the ecosystem to make well informed governance decisions.

Funding

How interconnected services are funded is important for the effectiveness of how they collaborate and work together. If the funding gain of one service meant the loss for another there is a risk of creating a bad environment for collaboration between services. Interconnected services require sufficient funding to be sustainable and how those services are funded is of high importance.

Summary

• Project Catalyst has a number of interconnected services that represent the wider product experience.

• Interconnected services and not independent and rely on each other for data and integrations.

• Interconnected services will function best in an environment that supports high collaboration, non competitive funding and shared governance oversight. The best possible environment is vital for success due the dependence that each service has on others.

• The more efficient and effortless it is for interconnected services to work together the more that funding from the Cardano treasury can be allocated to new innovations that drive the ecosystem forward.