Introduction

PMs are intended to manage a single (or for experienced PMs a few) project within a subteam. Please note that leads should document the primary project manager for each project their subteam is working on.

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

• 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)

Management criteria for a good project manager:

• 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