Project Meeting 2023.05.23

Agenda

• Admin Items
• Roadmap: Discussion of Management Plan

Action Items

• Michelle to send out Doodle poll to ask about moving meeting two hours later.
• Michelle to send email blast with two week look ahead for meeting agendas.
• Michelle to investigate and propose approaches for easier searching/archiving for meeting presentation and recordings.

Meeting Notes

Admin Items

• Revisit scheduling of regular meetings
  • Michelle to send out Doodle poll to ask about moving meeting two hours later.
  • Group suggested that we email blast the regular meeting attendees with a two-week look ahead for meeting agendas in order for members to better plan their attendance. If we do this and people can feel confident in skipping certain topics/meetings, we need to be diligent about sticking to the planned agendas.
• Archiving of meeting presentations and recordings
  • Group requests a more organized way to access presentations and recordings.
  • Ideally, the presentations and recordings would be searchable.
  • CS to investigate some options and report back to the group.

Roadmap: Discussion of Management Plan

Presentation: activitysim-roadmap-wip-management-23-may-2023.pptx

• Reviewed and discussed proposed structure
  • Proposed structure would allow members to have more focused participation, related to specific staff interests.
  • Product Manager would be a heavy lift for a consortium member but would likely be a consultant.
    • There was discussion about a potentially reduced member fee if a member provided a lot of their time fulfilling one of these important roles.
  • Concern about accountability / chain of command if lead positions are mostly consultants
• Steps to transition to proposed structure
  • Step 1: Create Project Management Subcommittee
  • Step 2: Identify Community Manager
    • Likely a consortium member
    • We are currently not doing much of what this person's role would include. Examples of activities would include:
      • Post to LinkedIn
      • Check in occasionally with members
      • Do email blasts to the group
    • Propose to add someone around August 2023, try it out, and see how helpful it is to have this position
  • Step 3: Decide on Contract Approach for 2024
    • Collaborative scoping/budgeting
      • Discussion on logistics/roles.
        • The Engineering Lead would be responsible for the collaborative scoping/budgeting.
        • GitHub issues would be good for identifying needs
        • Product manager would put tasks to roadmap
        • Once it’s on the roadmap, it needs to make it to engineering team to scope out details
        • Engineering lead would put it on spring plan, discuss with engineering team to scope/budget/schedule then bring it to the directors
        • Directors would approve
      • Pros:
        • Having more people scoping tasks out would be a big improvement in developing work plans that are achievable and realistic.
      • Cons:
        • With all T&M, all risk is put on the consortium.
      • This approach requires a lot of trust
      • KEY DECISION: All T&M is not an option, but there may be some hybrid approach.
  • Could the community and product manager be the same – for now maybe? Could be some efficiencies gained?
  • Still need to discuss the OKR committee and directors/chairs.
  • Need to discuss this topic more, add to TBD agenda.