2019-06-21 Org-Wide Project Manager role conversation

Fri, June 21 @ 5:15-7:30pm Location: Field Trip Cafe, Toronto, ON Who’s here? patcon, garry (poor wifi so dcwalk didn’t listen in)

The purpose of this meeting was to take notes during a largely informal discussion, whose goal was to feel more comfortable in drafting a first-pass document to present to group. hosting a conversation with the group during all-hands. (EDIT: PC, GI)

Summary

• Questions:
  • How do we want to do role definition generally? silent nomninations via DM? person defining, role executing it (CTTO)?
  • How do we rotate out?
  • What are time expectations?
  • What are high level responsibilities?
  • What are day-to-day expectations?

Notes

• garry: A PM purpose is a project
  • needed bc we need to deal with external ppl, and it seems there are different components. role of pm is to give clarity and guide project.
  • person should know the initiatives and guide them start to finish
  • internal initiatives = projects
  • want to be conscious of having too many tools across intiaitives
  • Now: should be concise and make delib calls internally/externally
    • Later: time and place for experiments
• responsibilities
  • patcon: make their role unneccessary?
• garry: person should want the role. Not arbitary delegation or round-robin.
• garry: Why do we need this role? we should address that.
  • what are the specific initiatives that we want to push through? coord. task management.
  • how we rotate out, and time allotment: not sure yet. #discuss
  • should have intentionality in who takes role
  • should be mindful that ppl might be curious about role, so have docs/support to bring ppl into role
  • opportunity to share knowledge/experiences with role
• finding opportunity to document and share notes for onboarding ppl into role
• set expectations of day-to-day
  • a little more than part-time?
  • setting deadlines and poking people
• patcon: thihnking about startup perspective of how some founders are engaged by the creation phase but not the day-to-day phase and maintenance phase. how might that bear on how we think of roles like this? Is one person better suited to design role, and another to carry it out? #discuss
• patcon: responsibilities
  • decide and implement task tracker
  • reflect on process for introducing new tools from general members
    • garry: this kinda just happens through having a PM. they are tuned to the needs of their team, and someone with an idea or suggestion just appeals to them, demos, etc. so there’s a decision to try something new. evalutation, then go back.
  • garry: could be scientific about it. “we have a hypothesis that problem X will be resolved by using such and such process, and we’ll know that by seeing Z”
  • garry: who’s prodding people? who’s poking people to stay on deadline?
• garry: some misalignment on WGs — ex, infra != task tracker. infra & operations being together seems potentially not best fit. - WGs could be more problem-spaces or initiatives, instead of current approach involving interest areas. - ex: initiatives might be “starting co-op” or maybe “process” group
• garry: worry about WG being too much an indicator that we’re siloed. yes, we’re small, so we’re not feeling silo’d, but maybe its an indicators.
• not opposed to WG, but more initiatives-based.
  • patcon: so that it ends? No, more so that it has clear goals.
  • patcon: somewhat uncomfortable with groups that don’t die. org lifecycles should be able to be shorter than comforatble human lifecycle.
  • garry: having a more human scale lifecycle process. likes that part.
• garry: responsibilities: develops cadence of team
  • might be daily standups
  • might be retros
  • might be planning poker
  • garry asynchronous = challenge
  • patcon: develop practices that encourage gratitude and empathy
    • example: call quality. video. noise levels. expectations of synchronous comms. unstructured time for socialness. etc
      • garry: that feels like things that should be responsbility of one another or projects, not for the org PM?
    • patcon: potential role of PM could be to institute process that help us all have these conversations with one another to suss out needs and resolve tensions
• garry:
  • what are the things we want to follow through on in the next few months?
  • the things we experiment with are not commitments forever
  • things we experiment with, we should be able to move away
  • the things we’re experimenting with organizational values and objectives
  • example:
    • we want to try trello
    • exportability. lock-in escape.
    • we should be able to take a risk. we have little to lose on choosing something like trello.
    • reminds of value proposition (from Pivotal): that products can work on mainstream clouds or your own. recognizing many diff types of business and many diff types of challenges.
• patcon: open source tools are NOT always the best ones. our asset is trustworthiness, and sometimes we should introduce closed source tools if these tools support the client best in their short term needs.
• I’d like to have a process making choices on client behalf that are grounded in reality of what’s succeeding in the world, and why? we should keep knitting together the tools we want to win, with the ones that are common (for many good reasons) in this current moment.
• scrappy nonprofits sometimes just need to build political will with a trusted partner. if we’re pushing something that adds to their burden (which they maybe can’t afford to tackle yet), then we’re perhaps abusing that trust
• responsibilties
  • actions in task tracker within one day of all-hands meeting
  • agenda published x days before meetings
  • clean-up within x days
  • who reviews? when do we merge into archive?
  • #todo ask in meeting about others’ very specific core activities missing
  • #todo create loomio thread before all-hands
• patcon re: pol.is workshop
  • garry: trying to be pragmatic. wondering how we start the engagement. what trust building comes first before they invite us in.
    • patcon: backlog of connections/opportunities from civic tech and CSI space.
    • not sure how it fits into our offerings.
    • how does it serve us?
  • patcon: feeling it’s perfect. be entrusted to come into complex blockage. engage in freeform process where all tensions are surfaced among large group. be the hero who helps them have better conversations and work through. - following a successful session: - by design, went into deeply emotional topics of organization - gained trust for helping them navigate situation that felt intractible - gain deep knowledge of challenges from outputs of process - surprise in unexpected technological solution to soft human challenge. open mind to hear more.

Action Items

• Review and clean notes (patcon+garry)
• Double-check with Garry whether we want to arrive with a draft doc (patcon)
  • We don’t. Go in for convo.
• Write draft role proposal
• Prepare summary in agenda. (bolding accomplished this)

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