Managing an OSE Project

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This page is under construction

Outline

The following topics need to be covered here from a management perspective:

  • Starting an OSE Project
  • Roles and Responsibilities
    • Project Roles
    • Project Manager Responsibilities
    • Other Key Roles and what they do
    • Relationship to OSE Core Team - Development Team
  • Dealing with Volunteers
    • Recruiting People
    • Keeping people on task and focused
    • Disruptive or Harmful Behaviors
    • Time management - yours and theirs
  • Communication
  • Managing the Project
  • Money Matters
    • Raising Funds
    • Keeping Track of Money
    • Transparency
    • Record Keeping

Overview and Context

Roles and Responsibilities

Every OSE project is considered a team of people who have come together to design, develop, and build something that furthers the overall goals of OSE whether that is a GVCS machine, a new open source component, or an applications of existing technologies. Especially for GVCS projects, there are certain well-defined roles taken on by project volunteers. These include:

  • Project Manager and Sub-project Team Leaders
  • CAD Designers
  • Prototypers and Fabricators
  • Marketing Specialists and Fundraisers
  • Recruitment
  • Power Electronics Developers
  • Mechanical Engineers
  • Software Engineers
  • Metallurgists
  • Documentation Specialists and Videographers
  • Subject Matter Experts
  • Reviewers

Project Manager Duties

  • Develop a plan and guide it's execute towards developing and delivering an OSE product.
  • Lead volunteers in the tasks needed to develop a product.
  • Recruit volunteers as needed.
  • Communicate project status through the wiki, forums, blog, and other channels.
  • Work with the OSE Director to coordindate this project with other OSE projects.
  • Ensure high quality product documentation that abides by OSE specifications.
  • Take responsibility for any money transactions that may be required.

See also Project Manager Duties

Marketing Specialist Duties

Documentor Duties

Subject Matter Expert Duties

Developer Duties

Working with the OSE Core Team

A high level view of OSE leadership can be viewed in Development Team. Among these is the "OSE Core Team". The core team is led by the OSE Executive Director (OSE-ED), currently Marcin Jakubowski who is also the founder of OSE. Reporting to him are several positions that ensure that the whole OSE project runs smoothly. These include a Media Director, Resource Director and Donor Relations, Business Consultant, Operations Manager, and Web Administrator. These people are there to support the work of the project manager, in addition to other responsibilities. While they can't do project work for you, they are a resource that can be tapped for ideas, etc.

At this time, all OSE project managers report to the OSE Executive Director (Marcin). This is likely to change over time since no one can easily direct the efforts of fifty separate (and interconnected) projects. The following things should be communicated to the Executive Director:

  • Major milestones accomplished
  • Major problems that have come up
  • Conflicts with other projects
  • Money related matters (TBD)

What he doesn't need to hear is all of the fine details going on in your project. It's too much information. The OSE Wiki pages are designed to give the Executive Director detailed insight as needed as well as providing information to developers, fabricators, makers, and consumers. He will be looking at certain pages to get a feel for progress, such as the GVCS Tools Status. Such pages need to be kept up to date and accurate.

Dealing with Volunteers

Communication

Managing the Project

Recently, OSE has started to experiment with a project management application called Pivotal. This tools has been made available to OSE based on it's non-profit, open source status free of charge. The Pivotal Task Tracker allows tasks (stories) to be defined, tracked, and managed using agile development techniques. Our current goal is to import the development steps of the GVCS Development Template into Pivotal - as tasks that can be taken on by people. The Systems Engineering Breakdown Diagrams should break technologies down into components, so these can be turned into tasks. The key is to break down complex development paths into small chunks - as suggested in this important writing.

All of the OSE projects are public to view, but you must be a team member to enter new stories or work on a task. To see the public OSE projects link to [1] and search for "OSE".

The GVCS Tools Status is also something of a management tool since it rolls up much of the status and high level progress of the various projects. You can more or less see what projects are active and what is being worked on (provided this page is maintained).

Documentation Standards

Documentation standards to describe and track OSE projects are still under development. Only one product has gone through the full project life cycle - the CEB Press, and others have several prototypes - LifeTrac, Microtractor, Power Cube,Torch table - and are under development. Have a look at how these pages are organized to get a feel for how to set up OSE project pages. All GVCS projects should use the Product Template, which is illustrated on Torch Table Intro. At a minimum, each GVCS project should have the following pages:

  • Intro
  • Development process
  • Bill of Materials
  • Build Instructions
  • Buy It!
  • User's Manual

Note: Marcin would eliminate the Buy It until AFTER clarity is attained on: the OSE Label, OSE Specifications, Fabricator Training, Product Standards and Testing, License - and other fundamentals of Distributive Enterprise creation. We are setting new standards for distributive enterprise, and this should not be taken lightly.

This organization is being discussed at the current time (June 2011) and may be revised in the future.

The Wiki_Templates describes the only real standard we have for project documentation at this time by the core team back in January, 2011 (Marcin, Isaiah, Floyd in a face-to-face meeting). Other templates have been proposed independently of the core team since then, and much confusion has arisen as many people joined development efforts. Mark Norton has proposed expanding the tool template to include pages for an Overview, Research, Design, Development, Specifications, Bill of Materials, Build Instructions, How to Buy, and a User Manual. See Mark J Norton/GVCS Template for details but be aware that this is NOT an adopted OSE standard.

Other pages related to project documentation include:

Money Matters

Other Pages

GVCS Organizational Development Template

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