linaro-project-management team mailing list archive

[Mounir Bsaibes <mounir.bsaibes@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Mar 7, 2011 at 1:49 PM, Joey Stanford <joey.stanford@xxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> Hi PMs
>
>
>
> 1) What activities you are currently doing for your team leads today?
> e.g. status reporting, blueprint tracking, documentation updates,
> requirements planning, etc   Please be as specific as you can without
> writing a book. Bullet points would work best for me.
>
>

** Execution phase *Currently we are in the execution phase
  * Monitor and drive the completion of the blue prints
  * Monitor and drive resolution of critical bugs
  * Collect the weekly activity reports
  * Create the weekly meetings agenda ( varies from team to team)
  * Compile the meeting minutes
  * Based on the meeting minutes and activity reports, create the Weekly
Status report (this activities varies from team to team)
  * Follow on action items from the meetings
  * Summarise the meeting minutes and send a weekly note to linaro-dev
  * Represent the teams in the release meetings and relay and follow up on
actions needed to the team
  * Weekly meetings with the team leads to review progress and focus on
troubled areas
* *Planning phase *- Next will be in planing phase for the next release
  * Help collect the requirements
  * Organise the requirements in blueprints
  * Help estimate resources needed to accomplish the requirements.
  * Help  with the Work Break Down of the blueprints into Work Items.
  * Drive the creation and completion of the specifications for each
blueprint
  * Help ready the blueprints to be discussed at the LDS

* *Infrastructure
  ** Create  proposals that will positively enhance the efficiency of the
team
     * Follow up and provide insight to the design of these proposals
  * Represent the teams at the Stakeholder meetings and be advocate to their
need
* *Resources*
 * Help acquire resources to the team whether it is H/W, remote access,
etc..
** Travel, Summits and Rallies*
 * Help in the travel arrangement,
 * Be a focal point to the teams and to the member company
 * help with sessions setup

 ** Member company*
 * In addition to Linaro activities, the PM  act as a liaison between Linaro
and the member company
   * Addressing member company assignees specific needs, in this function
the PM acts as cross Linaro-teams PM to satisfy the member company assignees
needs
   * Report back to the member company manager
   * Assist in travel arrangement
   * expense tracking
   * Metrics


2) What activities could you do to add value that you are not already
> doing? Again, bullet points are probably the best way to document
> this, with clarifying comments as needed.

 * *Closure phase - *I don't think this has been done before
*   ** Conduct lessons learned
  * Implement actions from lessons learned activities to improve on what we
do
 * *Technical *
  * Get more knowlegeable in the new technical requirement that we will be
working on
* *Community*
  * Get more engagement with the community, monitor activities on the
mailing lists
* *Applications and tools *
 * Continue reviewing and checking tools that may enhance the environment in
general and the Development tracking in particular


> 3) Write down any comments as to the value of a PM over an admin
> specifically in/for Linaro Engineering. Why do we need PMs in Linaro
> Engineering?  What does a PM do that an Admin could not? What
> impact(s) would occur if we hired an admin instead of a project
> manager? What if we transitioned everything over the team lead?
>

Joey, here I agree with Jamie
We have to differentiate between a PM and a Technical PM, some of the
activities we do in the engineering teams cannot be done by any PM or admin.
Unless the PM is aware of the technical issues in the team he is
supporting,  some of the work cannot be done.  As simple as compiling the
weekly activities, if you don't know technically what is being reported on
you cannot compile and summarize and for sure you shouldn't  broadcast the
result to the community. This cannot be achieved by anyone.  Therefore, I
suggest to change the title from PM to TPM to mean technical project
manager.
Some  example of additional technical involvement:
 * I have helped in the testing of the IGEP and opened bugs against the
releases.
 * I have created a OneClickImage script to download and create images
automatically.
 * I have looked into using Eclipse/ CDT to compile and debug the kernel.
Going through the same process and work as the engineers go through will
provide an insight to which areas need improvement.

Another point, the more the TL's has to handle PM functions, the less of a
technical lead they become. The question to raise is what are the technical
leads suppose to do, should they   focus on  improving and be an expert in
the area they leads or they are  responsible  for just driving the work?

Joey
>
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