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PMs are intended to manage a single (or for experienced PMs a few) project within a subteam. Please note that leads should not document the primary project manager for each project their subteam is working on; this falls to PMs.

Responsibilities

  • Conduct project meetings

    • These can be regularly scheduled or selected whenever people are available

    • These can be work sessions or synchronization meetings

    • Sufficient meeting minutes should be taken

  • Plan and orchestrate project timelines

    • Work with subteam leads for planning timelines

    • Work with subteam members in carrying out tasks

Some more stuff:

Project Manager:

The project manager manages a specific project.

  • Ensure project documentation

    • PMs do not need to do documentation themselves, but if they aren’t, they should ensure their team is doing sufficient documentation

    • Documentation should allow for directors, subteam leads, and integration members to be able to easily gauge the state, direction, and timeline of a project.

    • Documentation includes meeting minutes, but having technical specific documentation is also important for each project.

  • Communicate with team and individual contributors

    • PMs are the interface between a project’s individual contributors and the rest of the team’s integration and architecture efforts

    • PMs should attend integration related meetings relevant to their project

Qualifications

Technical criteria for a good project manager:

  • Vision and goal:

    • The project manager has a clear idea of what a finished project should be and do, in relation to the rest of the system(s)

  • Knowledge: The project manager knows:

  • Theoretical background of the project

  • How the components of the project work in general

  • How the components interface (with clear definitions and reasons for the abstraction)

  • How the project behaves with various input

  • Which parts of the project are unit testable, and why

  • What needs to be done to set up an integration test framework around the project

  • Why design decisions and architecture is done in a particular way (e.g. tradeoffs, limitations)

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  • Communication: The project manager is able to convey the technical details of the project and its components in written form

  • This includes task setting and Definition of Done (DOD)

  • Delegation: able to delegate tasks

The project manager is able to:

  • Split the work required for the project so that task interdependency is minimized

  • Minimize requiring intimate knowledge of the entire system for a member to complete tasks

  • Make the task workload manageable

  • Reassign tasks as required

  • Record and track task progress

  • People management: The project manager is able to:

  • Assist, review, and debug technical work of others

  • Request resources (e.g. hardware, flight test) from subteam leads

  • Report project progress to subteam leads and/or directors

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