This document outlines how to set up project management infrastrucutre for any project within the lab on GitHub. We recognize that this is the first time we're building this, and thus this is a work in progress.
Ramya Natarajan and Nick Shapiro
- Meet with Nick to discuss all goals of the quarter
- Projects often go over one quarter, just break down where in the project you want to be by the end of the current quarter. Building it out farther will make it too inflexible
- **make a plan for each goal. Each Plan should be detailed under the wiki page and should include: Project Description, Goals, actionable tasks that need to be taken, and associated timeline **
- Each of the actionable tasks you outlined above should be detailed under the issues tab. Assign it to a specific Project by clicking "Project" on the right hand column and choosing the appropriate ones -Go to Projects Board. Enter into designated project. Click on "Add Cards" in top right.
Note that Project Management was implemented online during quarantine, and thus techniques may not be applicable exactly in future quarters
Ramya Natarajan
Implement a system where each lab member had actionables with an associated timeline on GitHub. This was done in order to integrate all lab work onto GitHub, but also to provide an estimate of how far we'd be along in projects by the end of the quarter. Additionally, it provided a tangible roadplan for each lab member to keep track of their individual progress or work.
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I initially had multiple meetings with the PI (Nick) to assess what the goals of the lab were for the quarter. The goal for this was to try to get an overarching plan that I could then break into steps to assign to individual lab members. For this quarter, for example, the some of the main goals was to try to complete the manual coding and get the proximity map up.
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Next, I scheduled one-on-one meetings with every member of the lab (at UCLA), and talked about what their goals were for the quarter. In some cases, they already knew what their actionables were and I just had to transcribe the conversation. In other cases, I would work with them to workshop out actionables. Equally important in these conversations was learning about the different aspects of the lab apart from the projects I'd been apart of. From these conversations, I got the sense that others, just like me, were largely unaware of other aspects of the lab that they weren't involved in, and that there was also a bit of disconnect between what individuals were doing and the overarching goals of the lab that I'd previously discussed with Nick.
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Early in the quarter, it was discussed that I might implement some project management for the Davis team as well. I attended one of the Davis Tuesday meetings, but however never followed up with them to do step #2 as I'd done with our lab at UCLA. From that initial meeting, I got the sense that everyone there had high expertise in their projects, and I only had the small spiel they'd given me during the meeting. From this, I somewhat ascertained that it's not feasible for me, someone with absolutely no domain knowledge of the individual projects, to try to apply blanket project management technical knowledge in their space. This is something that definitely needs to be revisited in future quarters.
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After I'd spoken to everyone in the lab, I assigned them actionables in a checklist manner under an Issue card assigned specifically to them. Under each checklist item was the rough due date of the actionable, and a short description of what the actionable was/how it would add towards our goal.
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Afterwards, I'd informally checked the progress of everyone on their actionables through what actionables were checked.
1. Quarter Goal Planning Workshop Originally I met with Nick to plan out goals for the lab during the quarter. This conversation, however, is something I feel the whole lab would've benefitted from to give them a larger scope of our end goal. In future quarters, this is something that might be beneficial to do before the end of the quarter with the whole lab, and simultaneously the lab could then have a workshop to reflect on their progress during their current quarter. This will help form reasonable goals for the following quarter; more importantly, it allows everyone to autonomously pick what work they'd most like to be invovled in but also contributes to the lab's larger goals in some ways. Additionally, although I was happy to to meet with everyone during this trial period, I fully acknolwedge that I lacked the domain knowledge necessary to help guide some of the projects. This is a process, however, that could be quite easily implemented during the workshop. The workshop would look something as follows:
The workshop would take place during Week 9 or 10. The goal is to assess progresss made this quarter by the lab and use that to plan actionables for next quarter. Ideally, we walk out of this with a plan and assigned actionables for next quarter.
Objective #1: Reflect on our progress made this quarter.
This is a chance for each member to individually assess their own progress without attaching an evaluation process or judgement. There are numerous different team activities that could be used for this. For example, each member of the team could share what they were most proud to have accomplished/grown in this quarter and one thing they thing they could improve on. A different activity could include a "expectations vs. reality" exercise whereby members write down how they expected their work to go during the quarter on a post it note and compare it to what actually happened, and then we use group discussion to discuss any disconnect.
Objective #2: Establish goals for next quarter
I suggest Nick take some executive power in deciding these because these ultimately will guide the lab for many quarters and decide our outcomes. For example, this quarter we focused on completing manual coding.
Objective #3: Assign members to a goal/project
We more or less did this Winter quarter where everyone stated what they'd be interested in working on. Maybe we can just tailor it so that lab members can pick between goals/projects set out by Nick or decided on the lab as a whole. Extra projects (such as researching health literature, as was my case) can also be incorporated, but probably as additional projects to be v oluntarily taken up near the end of the following quarter if all other tasks are finished early.
Objective #4: Commit to tasks on GitHub
Once members decide what they want to work on, they should break them into step-wise actionables and assign those tasks to themselves on GitHub. This quarter I did this, but it'd be more efficient for lab assistants to break it up themselves considering they have better knowledge about how much time each tasks takes.
Objective #5: Visibilize progress
This is completely optional, but it'd be great if we had 10 minutes during lab meeting where everyone could talk about their progress, and whether there are any areas they need support in.