Heavyweight Product Management

Leading literature in product development (see seminal works at Open Source Product Development) indicate that the most successful management style - in complex projects requiring an interdisciplinary approach - is the Heavyweight Project Manager (HPM) model. For successful integration of multiple areas and stakeholders - a strong guiding hand is needed.

This project manager is not in a directive as much as a facilitative role - but does have leadership and power to influence decisions in a substantial way.

Applied to OSE, this means:

• The project manager does not focus on financial capital to access development effort, but rather a more integrated approach of Open Source capital. This means understanding of Open Source collaboration and how common interest and efficiency can be leveraged in an open and voluntary development process. The advantage of an open source approach is that contributors are not alienated from their work via compensation, but instead rely on their self determination to be part of a team. This provides more authentic and integrated results. See 9 Forms of Capital.
• A high management ratio is required for effective use of an HPM's time. This leverage ratio is the amount of time speent managing a certain team, vs the amount of work that the team puts in on the critical path. This ratio should be an absolute minimum of 40:1 management:work time. Ie, one manager is able to extend themselves 40 times. If we assume a low value production scenario of $1k value generated per month, this still indicates that one manager can produce a limit of $40k/month of value via their team, translating to a $1/2M per year organization. In a better scenario of average competent workers at $4k/month value generation, this indicates a $2M/year net organization.
• In the open source world, quality contributors are always key. Prior to hiring, all candidates should display their capacity to collaborate with HPMs via a track record of team contributions as set by the HPM's roadmap