View source for DevSummit07:Software Project Management Mind Meld

=== Facilitated by Jeremy Wallace, [http://www.fcny.org Fund for the City of New York] ===

Participants will exchange practical skills and techniques that they can immediately apply to the management of nonprofit development projects. 

Project management processes – from project initiation to project planning, project execution, monitoring and control, to project closure – will named and assessed for their relevance to reality, and development project survivors share their stories and experiences. We will inventory resources and best practices for project management within a nonprofit software context and map out existing project management resources for developing nonprofit technology, ranging from tools to templates to trainings.

Notes from the workshop. 
''editor's note: I'm putting this up and may circle back to improve formatting later. I grouped comments by theme, and would love help drawing out the conclusions ''


'''what we manage when we project manage:'''
* code/data
* people (in house)
* client resources
* vendors

'''what are the tools we know and sometimes love?'''

'''Bug trackers and the like'''
* RT: request tracker
* Jira
* Track has time tracker as well as tracking
* Bugzilla
* Issue-Tracker; http://sourceforge.net/projects/issue-tracker/ ; steve b: we use this largely because our sysadmin Dustin Mitchell is part of the (open source) developer team; has strong features if less than transparent UI 
* Mantis
* Issue View
* Email-> web page
* kayako
* Mantis

'''General project management tools'''
* Net Office
* BaseCamp story telling PM. make list from stuff written there.
* Backpack checklists
* Active Collab
* MS project
* dot project
* OmniPlan
* Excel
* my manager



'''Time tracking'''
* PhpTimeTracker
* Daylight
* markosoft = time tracker
* pen and paper for larger projects
* home grown billing system
* yahoo widget: timer, stop/start
* sundial for the mac start/stop


'''Collaborative disucssion and editing'''
* wiki - confluence
* vanilla forms
* Google documents, spreadsheets, calendar
* Gobby multiple editing.(OB is server version); no undo, 



'''Some general comments:'''
* no one is entirely happy with issue tracking software. May do the job; hard to get "tha client" to use it
* range of experience with formal project management tools like BC.
* have to take into account people who are managing projects who have roles other than project manager


'''Comments about how to have a reasonable PIPELINE for PRORJECT RESOURCES, TASKS'''
* vision for work for next few months while finishing current code
* impossible to estimate projects because clients are crazy
* Important to explain PM role to clients 
	that's your first job.
* expectation management: what you are going to expect and what's liable to happen.
* small np s need quick turnaround because turnover is really deadly.
* time lines? problem is that delays may screw up commitments to other projects.
* illustrate impact of clien delays on timeline
* don't charge them in $, charge in prorities.
* penalty if a month, and a new proejct if 3 months
* "we are waiting on materials for this proejct. If we don't get it, we have to move on to other projects"

'''Comments about dealing with scope changes'''
* some of us use change orders
* if point of contact changes, then its a scope change to the project.
* education process. don't know how process works.
* clients often can't conceptualize until its done.
* high touch projects: hard to give them what they want on np project.
* give range of prices, give a discount if targets met.

'''Requirements specifications'''
* let client people ask for everything they want, distill in down.
* signatures: show something to client, get signoff.inspired reflectiveness on the signer.
* refuse to do something that's undefined. give them a RFP. 8 hrs of work.
* requirements gathering first? 
* send someone into office and just watch people work. you will learn things that otherwise client staff won't remember to say.
* we have process oriented minds but not everyone else does.
* functionality versus workflow.
* doesn't always work, they may not tell you full picture. 
* make people feel comfortable.



'''Differentiating client staff'''
* ED can't be the point of contact...
* but you need ED buy in. to make sure the people who are assigned are committed as far time.
* ED wants to be single point of contact. if so, have someone else.
* let ED see things over extranet.
* kickoff call. includes ED. meet 1/2 way through and before the launch. 

'''Agile'''
* agile:what it means: iterative builds. adjust prices and phases. adjust prices based on how each phase goes.
* use more informal version of this.
* agile works because users recognize don't always know what they want.
* switch from fixed price, and use agile programming.
* define scope and features, then use agile for how we built it



'''Comments about the developer side of managing projects '''
* Our teams may be in different places, different teams,working on multiple simultanous projects.
live by instant messaging...pick up phone as soon as there is any sense of confusion.

* strict about meetings 2x a week at the same time. everyone says what they are working on.
* set 30 minutes for weekly check in.
* each person: what they are working on, what deliverables look like, and what help they need.
* free conference call .com set time limit on the call, so make the proejcts end.
* remote desktop onto wiki to look at same doc at the same time.

*how to create a space for brainstorming.



'''Outcomes from this sharing session:'''
* add annotations, urls to tools lists
* do you want to share contracts? paste into to the wiki.also client intake processes, whatever.
Ed note: this is mediawiki which does not seemed to have uploaded documents. Maybe aspiration can create some additional space.

Note from Jeremy: I'd like to get these documents up on Consultant Commons, or some other more publicly noticable spot. When I get back to the office, I'll look for a good spot there to post our documents to and then update this page.