How should Project Mgmt work at Open Austin?
At our Sept Core Team Huddle, Luq & Gus shared their vision of the Tasks that Delivery Leads do, and don't do [link to Doc].
One important task listed in this doc that Delivery Leads don't do is "Project management". This led to a discussion about where that responsibility falls, but also a broader question about what type of project oversight, awareness and process is required beyond the loose nature that exists already.
My summary of this is that the focus for Delivery Leads will be:
- More technical in nature
- Defining process around recognizing "official" projects
- Tech resource mgmt
- Leading Hack Night meetings
We also talked about how much Project Mgmt falls into the domain of the Membership Lead role. It might be natural for Membership Lead to "connect" new attendees via registration/attendance by pointing them to active projects relevant to their interests and skills.
Poll Created Sat 10 Sep 2016 8:20PM
Create a New Role, working title "Project Connector" Closed Sun 2 Oct 2016 8:01PM
There is more to be hashed out here, so this is a very rough proposal and I hope only a starting place for better proposals.
The role would work between the Membership Lead and the Delivery Lead(s).
Key tasks would be:
- Maintain awareness of active projects, their status, their needs, key volunteers.
- Collaborate with Membership Lead to identify opportunities for new members to contribute.
- Collaborate with Delivery Leads to implement project processes
Results
Results | Option | % of points | Voters | |
---|---|---|---|---|
|
Agree | 100.0% | 1 | |
Abstain | 0.0% | 0 | ||
Disagree | 0.0% | 0 | ||
Block | 0.0% | 0 | ||
Undecided | 0% | 4 |
1 of 5 people have participated (20%)
Victoria O'Dell
Sun 11 Sep 2016 11:22PM
I think this makes sense. Can we possibly call the role "Product/project Manager"?
Also, another bullet could be to coordinate with marketing lead to work to find/market to more people to fill specific project roles.
Victoria O'Dell Sun 11 Sep 2016 11:26PM
I could see how "product/project management" could be confusing, though. They wouldn't be managing the individual projects, just overseeing the health and needs of active projects.
Matt Carey · Sat 10 Sep 2016 9:55PM
I think we should try to get people within the project teams to take on the project management responsibilities. But with that said, I think the "Project Connector" responsibility is not the same thing as project management, and it is a good idea for somebody in the core team to do the Project Connector task by keeping track of the projects' people needs and recruiting people to fill the gaps on each project. The Project Connector work could be a part of the Membership Lead role if Amalie wants to take it on (even though it would be a lot of added work). Or I could see making it a separate opening on the core team. The Project Connector's responsibilities could include getting somebody on each team to commit to being the manager for that project. We should also exercise some discretion about when to connect people to teams. Sometimes it's better to let a project die a natural death rather than refer a lot of new people to work on it.