Maybe we should turn this around. I don't think we have a project management problem, I think we have a doer problem. So it makes more sense to wedge someone into the org chart at the bottom, who can be thrown into any project that's currently short handed.
Manpower is a resource and LOPSA is completely made up of volunteers. Everyone from the board to someone who decides to man the LOPSA table at a conference for an hour. That means there's no real impetus to place LOPSA ahead of other obligations. I hear the phrase "life comes first!" and it's true. I would always choose my job before my volunteer obligations; my family before my work obligations; myself before my family obligations. If something gets dropped in the mix, it's going to be LOPSA. Every program already has a chair and a board member to handle the high level vision. If the chair needs to take a step back, the board can still exert control over the project until a new chair is appointed. Some programs even have more than one chair! So that's anywhere between 2 - 3 people handling the Project Management aspect of the organization. And if that goes away, the only down side is that a program stops *growing*. This isn't good, but it's by no means the end of the world. But every LOPSA program also has a minimum set of tasks it needs to perform in order keep functioning. If all the people who would usually be able to perform these tasks vanish because of a surge in work/personal responsibilities, a project can become completely ignored. The board liaison is still committed by nature of their position, but they're busy managing LOPSA as a whole and are more likely than not trying to get more manpower into the faltering program. They wouldn't need to grab a project manager. They need to grab someone to handle the low level requests and just keep things trucking. Especially since most of the low-level tasks aren't terribly engaging. Ideally, I think this should be someone whose priorities are different than most LOPSA members. Someone less likely to choose something else over LOPSA. Perhaps an intern, or an actual paid position now that the organization is debt free. On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 8:47 PM, Craig Constantine <[email protected]> wrote: > (disclosure: I'm not a proj mgr, I am not good at pm, and I do not want to > be a pm for lopsa.) > > The more I try to help actually do things, the more I'm working with other > volunteers who seem to be very over-worked. (Mind you, it seems they bring > this on themselves, rather than it being dumped on.) Several people I've > talked to, seem to be pulled between the "doing" and the "managing". > > So without my spiralling off into examples, does my perception seem right > to anyone else? > > Would it make sense, to try to wedge a general project manager into the > LOPSA org chart somewhere? ...someone tasked with keeping the global view > of everything we are doing as directed by the Board? ...someone to advocate > for resources when they see individual people getting over-burdened or > projects stalling? (I'm just free-thinking, not trying implying that's a > list of ills suffered by LOPSA.) > > -- Craig Constantine, http://constantine.name > > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ > >
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