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

 

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

    • 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