Meeting Minutes – 9/14/2009 – 2:00pm

Summary
Meeting type: Team of 9
Date: Monday, September 14, 2009 Time: 2:00pm Location: Commerce I
Recorder: Debra Moore
Attendees List
Debra, Susan, Sally, Sue, Salim, George, James, Ryan
Agenda Items and Notes
1. Roles and ResponsibilitiesDiscussed having 9 roles

Role Responsibility
Project Manager Keeps track of the big picture, where we are, where do we need to be, and what’s missing, assigns tasks, pays attention/does the overall schedule, thinks about upcoming issues and solutions, all from the perspective of the client needs, reviews status reports, responsible for the facilitation of  meetings.
Project Coordinator Updates calendar, keeps people up to date on upcoming assignments. Makes the agendas for every meeting and ensures to include a list of goals (every meeting should have goals). Assists the Project Manager.
Scribe Takes any internal meeting minutes, records weekly events (such as attended DAU kick-off meeting), authors status reports, provides meeting minutes to editor for review.
Assistive Technology Manager Takes notes on the computer attached to the projector, navigates the internet for the team as required and responsible for ensuring all required technology is accessible/prepared for all presentations to professors or client.
Webmaster Responsible for implementing the ongoing development and management of the Client/Team website (WordPress) to include all posting of team minutes, status reports, deliverables etc.
Workspace Manager Responsible for organization, cleanliness and posting of PB Works and organization / cleanliness of Google Docs.
Utility Member Prepared to assist any other team member as required.
Quality Assurance Manager Responsible for forwarding completed document for posting on client site (Webmaster) and or wiki (Workspace Manager). Responsible for ensuring consistent look and feel to all produced documents. Responsible for “sign-out”.  Identifies terminology consistency and naming standards.
POC Liaison  

 

 

 Stands up and represents the group in situations when the “group” isn’t availble.  Responsible for contacting client, SMEs, Instructors (Nada and Kevin).  Ensures that no team member is operating unilaterally.

Lots of discussion about the roles and responsibilities including how many roles, what each role should include, and how frequently roles will change. Discussion about a transition time between ‘outgoing’ and ‘incoming’ to ensure smooth rollover, especially for consistent client interface. Decided that we won’t put in strict requirements about rollover, but we have an understanding of passing the gavel. Transition is dependent upon the role and dependent upon the individual. Make yourself available to the incoming person. Decision: All roles will support transition.

2. What will happen to roles when teams split?

Roles should be universal throughout year – for example, PM will still have oversight and coordination for each team. Even while holding these roles, each person might have task assignments (say for front-end analysis) but those task assignment would be in addition to the team roles. Discussion about how the 2009-2010 immersion team is different from past teams in that it’s one project, with sub-tasks and not separate projects.

3. Discussion about individual strengths for roles

First person to have the role needs to be good at it to set a strong standard. Suggestion was made that you could nominate yourself for a role and team could vote.

4. Norms

Decided that several of the norms expressed the same thing, so we voted to remove the duplicates. Spirited discussion about final adoption of norms. Took a vote and 8/9 voted to approve norms. Other person enthusiastically supported team decision. See attachment for final norms.

5. Review Templates

Meeting minutes template – suggestion was made to change heading color to match Mason logo. Suggestion was made to add In/Out section under due date. We decided to put that on our Status Report or Agenda instead of the Meeting Minutes. Meeting minutes format approved with minor color change.

Status report – explained by Sue. Convert into similar look and feel as meeting minutes

Agenda could have old action items for in/out

6. Project Management Timeline

Susan described her initial document and asked for ideas about open source or other tool because free ones online are only free for a trial and are quite expensive otherwise. For client posting, they’ll see major milestones; ours will have more detail.

Milestones are deliverables and perhaps Kevin and Nada’s status updates. We agreed that at this point, we don’t know what other milestones might be appropriate, but Sue did bring up the point that there might be sub-milestones, for example, “SME interviews complete.” We also discussed that coursework deadlines won’t be posted on client site, but each of us might post our assignments in individual portfolios.

7. WordPress update by Sally
Team agreed we love the site. Like the ‘search’ feature. Talked about adding RSS feed to site. What would adding RSS feed add to site for client? Nothing right now, but if we added a blog, it would work with RSS feed. However, at this time, wordpress is a static site, so RSS is not applicable. Sally suggested tomorrow afternoon for wordpress training for all who want to attend. We agreed that we will make the training opportunity a brown bag lunch.

 
Action Items
# Task Person responsible Due date
1 Ask Kevin and Nada about role rotation – what has been most effective and what we need to consider All September 15
2 Ryan will post roles and responsibilities chart on Google Docs and we all review and make our comments. Begin each new comment on a new line for ease of review. Also, think about what things you personally could do initially to set a high standard for a certain role. (What are you good at – no big learning curves) All September 15
3 Think about best model for when team separates – how will we operate All September 15
4 Make template to incorporate status report items Debra September 15
5 Make template for agenda to track action items. Make folder on wiki. Shantell, Salim September 16
6 Get bio to Sally if you haven’t already All September 15
7 Work on making portfolio presentable so it can be linked from wordpress site All September 17
8 Research open source project management tool and make recommendations for good milestones and valid categories for timeline All September 17
9 All decisions, templates, websites, and everything needs to be ready to present to client by Friday, which means Thursday night for us All September 17
Next Meeting: Brown Bag Lunch for those who want to attend wordpress training – Sept 15 12:00 noon

Next regularly scheduled team meeting: Wednesday, Sept. 16th 10:00 a.m.