Introduction

PMs are intended to manage a single (or for experienced PMs a few) project within a subteam.

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

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