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Started: 9/12/2007 2:56 PM
Picture Placeholder: Sohum Misra
Sohum Misra
9/12 Meeting (Class)
These minutes have already been posted on the forums, right here.
 
Brainstorming Roles
  • Roles
    • Project manager
      • Source of direction decisions
      • Management of direction decisions
    • Testing/integration
      • Becomes the whole team by the end of the project
    • Presentations
      • Needs to understand the whole project, or at least usability
      • Need to be able to talk about it and know who is handling what
      • Last year everyone did a part of the presentation (maybe)
      • Difference between organizing and presenting a presentation
      • (PENDING) PM manages the presentation, people involved in the technicalities do the actual presentations… the emcee of the presentation
    • Customer relations
      • Primary contact with the customer
      • Customer’s “advocate” within the team
    • Code guardian
      • 1-2 people
    • User advocate/interface designer
      • Designs UI, comments on interface from the users’ perspective
    • Scribe
      • Scribe and backup?
Project manager faceoff (Matt vs. Brad)
  • What is the best thing you did from an organizational aspect for the warm-up project
    • Matt: Organized team into groups
    • Brad: Got the team through in the last stage
  • What is the biggest challenge you see with the course project
    • Brad: Fear of a vague project definition
    • Matt: Focusing not on getting bogged down on extra complications, and rather on the bigger ideas
  • How would you handle a team member not doing their job
    • Matt: (1) talk the person face-to-face if possible, phone call otherwise, (2) find out what the problem is, (3) suggest ways to get them back on track, (4) assign job to someone else and let the course staff know the deal
    • Brad: “We should avoid bloodshed”. Need to know when people are doing their job wrong by understanding milestone—so must define milestones properly. Provide resources properly for them to get their job done. Otherwise pretty much agree with Matt.
    • Both: do not want to sit people down and yell at them. Just give the responsibility to someone else.
  • What would you do if you cannot afford to the lose the resources of one person
    • Brad: Have to foresee when people begin to drop the slack and must preplan using that in the case that they do slack off. Must give the team member in question the chance to get back on track, but must communicate the importance of the given task to the team member, to the whole project.
    • Matt: Agree completely with Brad.
  • Dr. Wong—“So both of you are advocating running at a loss.”
    • Brad: Seems like last year they only got something out of Alex when they chewed him up and “threatened to kill him”.
  • Isn’t this opinion encouraging people to drop the slack?
    • Brad: It is continuously trying to get people to do their work and achieve their milestones.
    • Dr Wong: Rather than ignoring them, must work with them to get their work done
    • Matt: Must understand each person’s working style to deal with them properly. In terms of management, have to recognize that. Some people work by themselves and don’t let anyone know anything. Must go over to them and find out and hook them up with someone else.
  • Both of you are essentially saying the same thing so why do you think you will be a better project manager?
    • Matt: Good listener, good with cooperating with other people. The biggest benefit is I’m good at finding out where everyone is and trying to connect people who are having problems with people who can solve them.
    • Brad: Want to learn how to do this since I’m planning to do this as a job. Strengths are understanding the big picture architecture, how to fit things together, getting people to know what will fit into other people’s pieces, encourage good coding style, realizing when people are falling behind.
  • How do you plan to gain this foresight that has eluded many people over centuries?
    • Brad: As PM would look in repository to see actual code, talk to them and understand what they have accomplished on paper. I know how to break a big project into pieces and managing those pieces.
    • Matt: Sit down with people, going to team meetings, sitting down with people while they code, trying to see what everyone’s work process is, directing other resources to problems.
  • Other comments
    • Should we elect two PMs?
    • With every PM we lose a coder, we may consider electing just one PM
Posted: 9/13/2007 8:59 AM
Picture Placeholder: Hubert K. Lee
Hubert K. Lee
I have my own notes below, unformatted:
Positions needed:
Project Manager
Assistant PM?
Team leaders
Customer Relations/User advocate - design how user will interact w/ program
Q & A (Testing)
Presentations
Scribe
Code guardian - protect source code, maintain a working version; part of Q&A?
Positions can change as our needs change

Bare-bones skeleton/Proof of concept, later flesh out/add features
Peer code review
multiple people need to know how big picture
2 or more managers? issues w/ communication, responsibility
Define roles _clearly_ and unambiguously - clarity is key
Role of project manager
Work _with_ someone who is lagging behind, don't exclude them!
Matt vs Brad
Matt
Biggest problem - come up with simple clear idea of task
Talk to people falling behind - in person, on phone to find out what's going on
notify others of problem
Recognize how people code, how they prefer to work
Good listener, good with working w/ others, knowing where to look for help

Brad
Need clean way to divide work
Need to notice when people fall behind, make milestones clear and have resources to complete
find somebody else to do it
Possible hero coder?
Want to learn how to work as program manager
Understand big picture, how things fit together, ensure interoperability, make sure everyone is together and not falling behind
organizing people, provide resources, help individuals share knowledge
Keep an eye on source code, work is productive, has a purpose/goal
Break problems into pieces

Come up with ideas or make decisions (organizer)?
Organize presentations; make sure all pieces are together

Presentations
Refer to people who know more
Everyone take part in presentation:
Distinction between organization of presentation and details of presentation
Customer relations