2023-05-21 Director Sync

Brief

Ensure director value alignment at the start of the term.

Attendees

• Anni

• Megan

• Daniel

Megan Premeeting Notes

• reiterate Asana for tasks, Confluence for documentation team wide as a necessary organizational step

• Another official ops lead within 14 days

• Director roles - team involvement, mindset towards director….-ing

• comparison in responsibilities between subteam lead and directors

Daniel Premeeting Notes

• Alignment on Asana for Tasks and Confluence for Documentation team wide as a necessary organizational step

• Alignment on another official ops lead within 14 days, dont rlly care who this person is, we need someone who is willing to go hard

• Align on what our role as directors is.

• Ensure comfort as director.

• Ensure we feel in touch with the team.

• Ensure we do not feel like you have a lot of catching up to do.

• Ensure we do not feel like you have to put in a ridiculous amount of effort.

• Ensure we do not feel our work as director is not demotivating.

• Ensure WARG does not feel corporate for directors as defined in: Keep WARG non corporate!

Meeting Notes

• Asana Stuffs

  • 2023-05-25 Leads Meeting Minutes

  • New Asana project for each major project this term

  • New tasks go into those projects and then also added to applicable subteam projects

• Confluence

  • Enforcing a folder structure ? its fine to have subfolders be whatever

• Ops Stuff

  • Announced ops meeting

    • Megan be sure we announce we are looking for another lead

    • Ops meetings in person to get people into the bay

  • Bringing up ops lead nomination at leads meeting

    • We cannot force an ops lead too fast and need to follow the process Promotion Process

      • Daniel talked back from the 14 days thing that was insane

    • Want to push project managers, give titles, give people power

  • We must avoid undermining our leads

• Director Role

  • We discuss here then one of us documents: https://app.asana.com/0/1201848093086346/1204643200671745

  • Some other roles are more defined Technical Director & Lead Onboarding Process

  • Sahil: People, Product, Process

    • Source

  • What has Daniel been doing ?

    • Attempting to attend leads meeting

      • (Running leads meeting should be a director thing)

    • Leads meeting confluence meeting minutes notes

      • (prepping for leads meeting)

    • Cleaning up admin confluence, google calendar, admin asana spaces

      • (so leads have a nice example to look at for how I want their stuff to be organized)

      • (putting out fires)

    • attempting to help operations

      • (putting out fires)

    • directors syncs for value alignment with subteam leads

      • (keeping subteam leads on same page)

  • Daniel: Ensuring our leads are working together toward a common goal ( aka aligned values)

    • Turn our leads into better versions of themselves

    • putting out fires

    • Assist subteam leads in defining objectives

      • Running leads meetings

    • Maintain admin documentation

    • Directing people at competition

    • Everything else is kind of incidental to getting it this done

      • For example: Pushing confluence and asana

      • For Example: Stepping in to help with operations

  • Megan: People management, project management

    • Communication with everybody

    • Thinking of different ways to do things and implementing them

    • Having time to put out fires and think up other ideas

    • People being invested in the team makes them want the team to succeed

      • Building team culture to build investment

  • Anni do you think you have too much work to do ?

    • Scope of Anni’s work so far is defining scope of projects which has been a lot but hopefully will clear up in a bit

    • Last comp we had issues with Anni knowing most technical stuff, this time will try to pawn it around to subteam leads

    • There’s an issue that happens all the time where people don't talk to each other and start doing different things

• Other stuff Daniel put

  • Following defining director role it clears this up

  • there hasn’t been a lot of stuff to do

    • this is kind of a goal as director so that you’re available for people

  • is quite a bit different then subteam lead

  • not spending as much in the bay so feeling disconnected

    • gettin info from friends and not from hanging out in the bay

    • Keep WARG non corporate!

      • the time directors have can be used to spend time in the bay and talk to new bootcampers

      • last term things felt corporate as Mech Leads, was still fun

        • We had a lot of meetings every night

        • Megan had to maange a co-op student

        • Mainly point 1 was the issue, point 2 and 3 not so relevant

  • once projects get started and ensuring project alignment more stuff will happen

    • flight test stuff will keep you busy

  • encouraging people to add stuff to meeting minutes in detail in advance as a tool to decrease overall meeting length

    • The value of a meeting comes from the discussion

    • We push this for leads meetings than subteam leads hopefully think its cool and do it at their meetings

  • Feel like don’t have as much technical knowledge

    • having enough knowledge to put out fires between director team is plenty

    • If we need to make a call (to settle disputes) directors should have that knowledge

      • Daniel: I would rather setup discussions for subteam leads to work out their differences rather than a director just calling it

    • Directors use technical knowledge to catch potential issues early and bring them to discussion

      • Have enough knowledge to step in on potential fires a little sooner

      • Recognizing when conversations need to happen is important for directors

    • Last time each large project was given to a director or two to handle

      • director insight helped 2023-2024 Program Outline

        • Allocated directors for these

        • Possibly having subteam leads run these

        • Role of director for program outline is subteam leads actually run these syncs and actually run the project, directors are assigned to these to call out potential issues

          • Subteam leads for each project can work together to split up sync meetings as required etc.

          • Sync stuff can be chosen by subteam leads (not required, but recommended for larger projects)

  • Some director stuff feels grindy

    • solution to this is be sure the stuff we do has actual impact

    • in person involvement

      • general meeting

    • seeing results of progress

      • Flight tests with the team may help with this

    • things feel more distant than it used to

    • less direct impact on things that happen

      • Will get used to it ?

Time

1h40m