README
The Chingu Project Management Repository of Knowledge is a place for Chingu project managers to share information and lessons learned with one another. While no one project management methodology is used within the Chingu organization the ones used are all rooted in and Agile and Lean way of directing and performing project work.
The information included here is free for you to share inside and outside your teams. However, as a Chingu PM you have the responsibility of helping this site grow and mature by:
- Ensuring that the information here is accurate. You are expected to either open an Issue for any errors or inconsistencies you find or in the spirit of Agile development fix it yourself.
- Collaborating with your fellow PM's to identify areas of our project management practices and processes that need improvement and creating the content needed to fill any gaps.
- Questioning the status quo. We should drive continuous improvement by reflecting on what we do, finding faster and better ways to manage our projects, and being open to new ways of doing things.
An Agile PM is responsible for managing the resouces, time, and scope that make up a project to ensure that a quality product is delivered within the desired schedule and budget. A Chingu PM doesn't just coordinate the project. She also acts as a member of the development team writing code, testing the app, and creating documentation.
An important difference between a PM in a corporate setting and yourselves is that since we are operating in a volunteer environment just like every Open Source project you are also a coach, a motivator, and a role model. We can't order our team mates we must establish and environment that motivates them to be both innovative and productive.
In your role as a Chingu Project Manager’ your most important two tasks are to understand your teams needs and to remove any obstacles blocking their progress. This requires a large amount of communication and a deep understanding of what resources, including people, are available in the Chingu organization.
Issues and questions should be logged in the PMRoK Issue Log. This is important to ensure that issues and questions are addressed in a timely manner and so serve as both an ongoing reference as well as a historical record.
For information about how to open an issue see Issue Reporting & Tracking in our GitHub wiki.
A GitHub wiki as been set up in this repo to act as a file cabinet for the information we wish to retain over time. This is intended to be something Chingu PM's can contribute to to promote continuous improvement as well as to share what we've learned with our fellow PM's.
We will be using GitHub Projects to track both current events and dates (like Voyages) and also for planning and tracking any PM-specific projects we might undertake.
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Planning a project, managing scope, tracking progress, and performing periodic adjustments to compensate for change requires constant communication with your team and effective management of the project backlog. Perfoming these activities is time consuming and can be tedious. Luckily, there are many tools available that can help you focus on the results rather than just the steps.
Scheduling meetings in an organization like the Chingus is complicated by the fact our team mates are spread across many continents and timezones. Coupled with team mate obligations outside of the Chingu universe this makes finding meeting times suitable for all team members as difficult as trying to nail jello to a tree.
A few tools that can help determine optimal meeting times are:
A major part of project management is organizing the information you collect from your team and organizing it in a way that is actionable. Tools such as the following help you create a backlog of tasks that can be tracked as they progress through various states such as Next, Blocked, In Progress, Revew, and Completed.
Regardless of which tool you might choose a prime requirement is that the tool must support sharing assignments and progress with the team.
- Asana
- GitHub Projects
- Trello
- Waffle
- ZenHub
- Google docs (better used as an ideation tool or the intial breaking down of a project to clone)
- Appear.in - some teams swear by this tool for it's flexiblity and ease of use for doing meetings.
- Google hangouts - great for audio/video meetings and has screenshare functionality. Everyone needs to have a gmail account though.
- Jitsi
- Slack - With their acquisition of ScreenHero, Slack has incorporated screensharing and video into the Slack client. Unfortunately, more than two participants require the paid version of Slack. With this acquisition ScreenHero has been removed from the market as a standalone tool.
- Talky.io
Keeping track of the issues to ensure that they are quickly and permanently resolved plays a major role in improving product quality and lowering technical debt. The rigor your team shows in how they deal with issue reporting reflects their maturity as both a team and in their chosen profession as WebDevs.
Some tools that can be used to introduce the necessary rigor to issue tracking include:
In your role as a PM you may find the following useful.
- A Short Introduction to the Scrum Methodology
- 6 Tips of Building Efficent Team in Chingu
- Project Scope — what it is and why it’s important
- If You Ever Get One of these 5 Chingus On Your Team You Just Hit the Remote Dev Jackpot
- @redrocket on his experience as PM and his team's workflow in Voyage-2
- Taking the reins: A Junior Developer’s voyage as a PM
