Distributed Planning Game
- This is an on-going experiment in working together. Modify this document to work for you.
Contents
Purpose
- To encourage direct participation by everyone in establishing what we work on and the priorities.
Goals
- To create a process for handling work done in the Development, Content and Community such that everyone involved in those areas knows the current Plan of Record and can contribute ideas and help prioritize the upcoming "Plan of Record"
- To accommodate people who are working in any geographical location and any time zone
- To maintain a natural working rythym
- To allow scaling to larger numbers of people
Plan
Planning Cycle
Each month:
- 1st - 15th
- 16th - last day of month
Project Manager
A project manager is a person or a small group (if pairing) who does the following:
- During the period:
-
Seeks input from all project organizers/people working in that area. This can take place in the form of smaller group meetings, individual calls, IRC, etc.- This should be done by individuals on the wiki. - Notes any new projects - What does this mean? Notes it where?
- Matches new projects to a Strategic Goal
- Submits new goals at the next Strategic Goal Review if the new projects do not fall within existing goals - What is a strategic goal review?
- Breaks down work into manageable chunks with measurable goals
- Puts time estimates and $ estimates on the work
- Prioritizes projects and work chunks - So one person is deciding what everyone works on now? This position isn't called a summerizer, it's called a project manager.
- Encourages those who are close to individual projects to improve the project pages such that each one contains:
- Description - A complete description of the project.
- Why? - The business reason for the work.
- Done When - A complete description of the expected results.
- How can I help? - A list of tasks to be done and meetings.
- Useful Links - Links to the pages affected or referenced (templates).
- Discussion - A place for everyone to discuss the project and it's progress.
- Project Lead - The person responsible for overseeing the project.
- Project Resources - A list of the people working on the project.
- Resource Estimate - An estimate of time and $ to be expended.
- Evaluator - The person responsible for project QA and for declaring the project done.
- Project Evaluation - A summary of how the project went, the resources expended, the start date and the signoff date
- Reviews progress on projects being worked on
-
- At the end of each period:
- Celebrates and retires items that were completed in the prior period
- Points to and plans for the new Plan of Record for the upcoming period
- During the period:
Discussion
- No mention of the planning game 3X5 cards are they gone from the system? John 20:00, 14 August 2007 (PDT)
- Who are the "Summarizers"? John 20:00, 14 August 2007 (PDT)
- Who can create new projects? John 20:12, 14 August 2007 (PDT)
- Why wasn't this created as a consensus poll so everyone could contribute and bring new ideas? John 20:12, 14 August 2007 (PDT)
- The planning cycle is unclear, does it begin on a specific day or is the new Plan of Record distributed on a specific day and how long does the the "Summarizer" have to create the new Plan of Record? John 20:22, 14 August 2007 (PDT)
- It seems this has come from out of the blue and is in direct contradiction to figuring out how to work together. I wonder if it is meant to show the Portland office what the Lahore office feels like when decisions are getting made without input? MarkDilley
- Agree with all the above statements. I also feel like this was done completely behind my back and had all the work I've been trying to do up to this point stomped all over. - Scott Keeler
- How many lists of projects do we need? Now if I want to edit a prioritized list I have to do it in several different places. This doesn't appear to be well thought out. - Scott Keeler
- I'm feeling a lot of systems/process burnout and frustration on these things. We've now tried a number of different process, all of which worked to an extent, but then we come up with a "bigger better thing" and leave the old ones in the dust without really giving them a chance. Every 4-6 weeks we have to get used to a new system when not everyone was on the same page with the old one. TakKendrick
- I feel the biggest problem we're having here is one of communication and all these processes are now muddying the pool instead of clarifying/helping with the communication blocks. Tak
Friendly thoughts
- Considering the above mentioned points and the points which were discussed here at AboutUsLahore : We have got the idea,how we would be arranging things to implement those ideas.
- The 'Tasks'(It can be renamed) section would include the details like What,Why,DoneDone or DoneWhen,NextStep,Cleanup and Category:CleanUp headings,this task would conclude the details of plans of a project.Why would contain the description of the task that how it is supporting the Our Valuesi.e showing the importance of the project.In this way our values would be reflected in such a way that any body could understand the benefits of the projects when we properly define the tasks.
- Why would relate and tie items..
- NextStep would include clean up
- There would be a section of 'undefined projects or deferred projects.This would be included later on in the Next Period for the 'Plan of Record'.
- In my opinion,for each project Who (all people who are contributing), in a specific project ,would arrange virtual meetings and send notes, when they decide finally produce a final note to the summarizer. Those notes may be the plan of record from the community,the content or from the developers side.Every one can decide the duties of the summarizer.The summarizer can arrange the 'period' of work and in a sequence the 'Tasks' would end up with solutions.
- The summarizer along with the organizer can produce an organized amount of data which in a glance describes the 'Task'.e.g its a small example GlanceOfDistributedPlanning although not perfect but only for explaining my ideas that how at the same time we can view details of something at a glance.
- An example might clarify this concept:
- Title of work or Task:RC
- What:Rc is about viewing,kind of welcomming,editing pages,communicating with users....
- Why:We are actually collaborating and implementing transparency by keeping track of edits and awarding them not to form the non constructive edits
- Done:Uptill what time (e.g 12 hrs) to update
- NextStep:Moving to next number of hours.. Right now ,we have formed a structure for the 'task' which is an entity of the Distributed Planning.
- Title of work or Task:RC What:Rc is about viewing,kind of welcomming,editing pages,communicating with users....
- Why:We are actually collaborating and implementing transparency by keeping track of edits and awarding them not to form the non constructive edits
- Done:Uptill what time (e.g 12 hrs) to update
- NextStep:Moving to next number of hours.. Right now ,we have formed a structure for the 'task' which is an entity of the Distributed Planning.
Right now ,we have formed a structure for the 'task' which is an entity of the Distributed Planning.