This page presents how concretely the Sigmah Summer of Code programme is running

Sigmah is an initiative by a group of NGOs to develop open source project management software for the international aid sector.

Sigmah is open source software for the shared management of international aid projects. The software is simple, flexible and intuitive and allows each organization to organize its own work methods, and thereby improve the quality of its programs.

Sigmah is the result of a participatory project facilitated by a group of organizations from the sector. Using Groupe URD’s expertise and that of our technical and voluntary partners, Steering Cooperative members are able to develop the Sigmah software in order to address expressed needs. Sigmah software is a common asset which is made available to everyone.

Sigmah Summer of Code is 4 months of collaboration between developers and their mentor, working on the Sigmah source code.

Sigmah Summer of Code is an opportunity for developers to increase their knowledge of codes, to learn about how open source community works together, and become part of the Sigmah community while helping to improve a commonly owned asset in the public interest: Sigmah, open source software for humanitarian project management.

Sigmah has been selected for the Google Summer of Code (gsoc) for 3 years in a row. This has allowed the software and the Sigmah community to grow. We want to pursue and further develop this kind of activity, independently of whether we are selected by Google. The Sigmah Summer of Code program is open to all developers, whether students or not, no matter where they are in the world, so that they can work together developing the software, with or without the support of the GSoC. Broadly speaking, the Sigmah Summer of Code provides a framework for recruiting, mobilizing, and supervising all the contributors who want to work on the Sigmah project during the summer. This framework is made available to any developer who is motivated, and . Participants are required to make certain commitments, but students can decide to stop when they want. A successful registration for the Google Summer of Code in connection with the Sigmah project will also be considered to be a registration for the Sigmah Summer of Code. And all those who are registered in the Sigmah Summer of Code can also decide to apply for the Google Summer of Code.

The table below presents the main differences and similarities between the Sigmah Summer of Code and the Google Summer of Code:

By the end of the Sigmah Summer of Code, if the 2 evaluations are positive, each developer will have received:

• 1000€ stipend for all successful students at the end of the summer
• X months of experience working alongside an experienced/professional developer;
• A “Sigmah Summer of code 2015” t-shirt;
• A page in the “Sigmah hall of fame”;
• A recommendation letter for their work on the project.

Students who are selected for the Google Summer of Code will also receive the remuneration for this program.

Sigmah Summer of Code has several goals:

1. To increase the Sigmah project’s community of developers;
1. To develop the functionalities  of a commonly owned asset for the public good;
1. To train young developers and raise awareness about open source software;
1. To have fun, meet other developers from around the world and enjoy working together!

The Sigmah Summer of Code program has the following phases:

1. Ideas for the development of the Sigmah software are disseminated ;
1. Interested developers choose their project from this list and submit their proposal online;
1. The proposals are analysed and developers are selected;
1. The developers who are selected are attributed a mentor with whom they will work on the chosen project.
1. The mentors and the developers provide mid-term progress evaluations.
1. The mentors provide a final evaluation of the developers’ progress at the end of the program; the developers submit a final review of their mentor and the program.
1. Developers and mentors are rewarded for their work (cf. [What’s in it for me?](#1.4_What%E2%80%99s_in_it_for_me?1.4))
1. Sigmah Summer of Code is a free will-based programme: anyone is free to quit at any time for any reason. People who quit (or don't achieve their objectives or fail their evaluations) will of course don't received the planned retributions except what they would have already learned and the pleasure we hope they have get before quitting.

Any developer over the age of 18 can take part.

First of all, as you may have guessed, the given project ideas will be mainly the core of the actual contribution you would be able to give to the Sigmah project. The process in which we are now is more the setting of a team to work this summer together on the Sigmah project (each member with his own core responsibility) than a set of individuals working totally individually on their own separate topic. Outside your main contribution (the project idea(s)) you've chosen to work on, you can thus already select some features you would like to develop and list them in your application. The roadmap is full of them. All of those issues are suggested originally by the NGOs using Sigmah and are looking for their contributors!

Look at this page for Summer of Code 2015 project ideas.

Go to the page provided for this purpose on the Sigmah website: http://www.urd.org/survey/index.php/392295/lang-en

And complete the form:

1. What do you understand about the Sigmah project?
2. How would you describe yourself? (CV to be attached separately)
3. What is your email address, your phone number and your IRC nickname?
4. What experience do you have in developing either in Java/GWT? (patches with demonstration of your ability to work on the Sigmah codebase attached in Sigmah issue tracker)
5. Do you have any experience of working on open source projects? If so, please give a brief description
6. Which project(s) on the Ideas page appeal(s) to you the most? (please also tell us how interested you would be to work on the other ideas: equally interested / less interested / far less interested / not interested)
7. What exactly would your project involve in relation to your preferred project idea and what would be the implementation workplan for the duration of the Sigmah Summer of Code program? (activities, days available, potential weeks off, etc. – Sigmah Summer of Code time commitment should be an half-time job, so with about 18 hours of work in a week)
8. Last but not least: why would you like to work on the Sigmah project?

On the Sigmah project, we ask all contributors to send one or more patch as part of their application, to evaluate their technical level. We also do this for Google Summer of Code candidates . Patches (diff file) must be submitted as a file attached to the issue they are solving.

If you are selected, we will be working together all summer! A videocall meeting will help to get to know each other. These meetings will be part of the first selection round and will be organized with all the students who have submitted an application.

The application process for Sigmah Summer of Code volonteers will include the following steps:

• 9 February: volunteer application period begins
• 18 February: deadline for first batch application period. Applications should respect the application template and include at least one patch fixing an issue.
• After the first selection round, selected developers will be invited to have a Skype interview.
• 20 February: accepted developer proposals published
• 5th of May: deadline for second and final batch application period. Applications should respect the application template and include at least one patch fixing an issue. If an applicant does not submit his/her proposal before this deadline, they will not be able to take part in the Sigmah Summer of Code 2015 .

Applicants for the Sigmah Summer of Code only need to be available part-time, which means approximately 18 hours per week. This could be a day and a half at the weekend (12 hours) plus two evenings of 3 hours during the week.

Google Summer of Code, on the other hand, is a full-time well-paid job. Applicants therefore need to be available full-time, which means working at least 7 hours a day, 5 days a week (these are the French standards), and no more than 2 weeks of vacation during the 4 months of the program.

The program launch will include:

• a presentation of the application to all developers
• refining each developer’s project, and dividing large and complex projects into smaller tasks
• an online meeting between the users and the developers: first explain to the users once again their need, and the second the solution they will develop : this meeting will take place during a Steering Cooperative meeting so that every member of the project can get to know each other.
• an online launch event with all the selected developers and mentors!

Apart from coding and getting support from mentors, the tasks of the developers during this phase will be:

• Logging on to the #sigmah IRC every day: the #sigmah IRC is like your office – sometimes you can go to the office for a whole day without saying a word, just listening to your colleagues’ bad jokes! But from time to time you will need help, or you might have something to share – if so, an open space office is the best place to be!
• weekly activity report by email on sigmah-dev (one thread per developer)
• monthly team video meeting: every month, we will have a meeting to tell each other how our work has progressed, etc.
• before the monthly meeting, developers revise their availability timetable for the upcoming month
• meetings between two developers (one playing the role of a user) to improve the work of the developers and help build a better UI
• communication channel prioritization:

1. through mantis issues notes
1. with sigmah-dev
1. with the mentor through direct email

At the end of the program:

• there will be an individual developer debriefing meeting with the mentor and one of the org admin
• optionally, if developers are interested, a student-only debriefing meeting could take place to propose improvements that could be made to the program
• a mentors’ debriefing meeting will take place to debrief the general program
• an online closure event to allow each developer to do a demo , to give the conclusions of the debriefing, and to celebrate!