A document proposing some project management

Shane Blackett. December 2004

It seems to me we need some project planning.

I think we need to identify a couple of groups of people for each project. The users and potential users need to be able to see that their suggestions, requests and bugs are being fed into a transparent and objective process which define project development outcomes. The people who are contributing resources both directly and through overheads should help set priorities and strategies for meeting these outcomes.

The project development process should identify timelines, risks and requirements of particular outcomes.

We need to continue to foster a high level of flexibility and “academic” freedom, most of the strategic new developments have come from the experimentation and ideas of someone just trying out something new. This requires access to resources and flexible management of those resources.

Our meetings tend to be a report on what people may have done each week and many people choose not to attend. I think we need to figure out how to get future planning and full participation in this process.

Traditionally we have relied on people fixing their own problems in the general infrastructure but this was pretty ad hoc and recently fewer people have contributed. i.e. The example testing scripts have inadequacies that several people have pointed out to me, however when I suggest that they could fix it people seem to think I am joking.

How does a project plan relate to students and staff from a whole mixture of grants and supervisors? Should everybody contributing to CMISS be requested/required to submit a small proposal on their development outcomes outlining the time?