What is Civic Compass

Like every Zen project, Civic Compass provides essential, crucial, yet hard-to-find information. In this case, tool where you could just enter an address in Bengaluru and instantly see the BBMP, BDA, Revenue, BESCOM, BWSSB offices, and Police stations, for that location. All in one place.

How it started: A “lazy question”

It began with a post on Reddit. Someone asked, “What’s the DRO for Koramangala?” At first, it felt like a lazy question; surely this should be easy to Google? But to our horror, it wasn’t.

Bangalore Urban is split into five District Registrar Offices (DROs), but there’s no reliable way to figure out which one applies to you. The Kaveri website has a tool for this, but it doesn’t work. And even official documents like sale deeds don’t mention it.

To our surprise, and bewilderment, we also found there was no single place that helped citizens identify the jurisdiction for their area for essential services such as Electricity & Water. So we decided to build one.

Team Composition

AN
🧑‍💻 Built the first prototype
📚 Taught himself to code from scratch for this purpose

Abhik
🔁 Scaled the tool from prototype to a fully functional product

Priti (London)
🎨 Led the UX design
⏱ Went above and beyond to deliver it on time

Renee (Seattle)
📝 Plain language expert
💬 Made the content accessible and user-friendly

Nishit
💻 Supported front-end development

Getting It Done: Balancing Intent, Action, and Team Flow

Volunteer-led work runs on a different kind of energy and a different set of constraints. Volunteers are here because they care, not because they have to be. But good intent needs to show up as action consistently. 

Things often moved in bursts when people found time outside their jobs and family lives. So, we have to be flexible with timelines. At the same time, tasks like UX and front-end work needed tight coordination, and there is less room to shift timelines. 

It’s a tricky balancing act; Push too hard, and you risk losing volunteers. Wait too long, and things can drag on for weeks. In addition, we were working remotely across three different time zones without the luxury of an icebreaker meeting or a structured kickoff, things critical for building trust and setting the context in a healthy async work culture.

Against all that, we got it done, driven by a mission that was both modest and grand: to make the country a fraction of a fraction better. What makes us proud isn’t just the outcome, but how we got there. There was zero friction between team members, just a shared understanding that these were unusual circumstances, and we were all figuring things out within the constraints. At times, if a volunteer stepped into someone else’s “territory”, we easily assumed good intent; that they were trying to keep things moving, especially given time constraints and timezone gaps.

What we learned

What works casually for solo volunteer projects can falter when applied to teams

When working one-on-one, a casual approach worked well: no formal kickoff or planned cadence, just a broad timeline and a few check-ins to keep things moving. In group settings however, “keeping it chill” can backfire. Planning and clear timelines are essential. For this the volunteer coordinator needs to do their homework on the process instead of winging it. 

Set communication and timeline norms early, including how we’ll handle lapses.

The team needs to self-organize. The coordinator can check in to make sure things are on track or weigh in on key decisions, but if they have to keep chasing updates, something’s not working.

Examples: “Please reply to messages on the group within n hours, even if it’s just to say you’re caught up and need time. If you miss two timelines, we’ll check in over DM and reassign the task to another volunteer.”

“This is a judgment-free zone. We completely understand if your availability changes. Just let us know early. In the same spirit, please understand if we need to reassign when we don’t get a timely response from you.”

Set expectations for Quality

Skipping basic quality checks causes frustration for fellow volunteers. Similarly, cutting corners on best practices or submitting AI-generated code without proper vetting is a no-go, especially since we’re open-sourcing our work.

Still Learning

We haven’t had a formal debrief yet, so there are likely more lessons under the surface. As we take on more team projects, we’re sure to run into new situations too. We’ll keep you posted on how we navigate remote collaboration across time zones, often with little context about each other’s working styles or personalities. It promises to be both fascinating and revealing.