If everyone had the priorities that you described, no volunteering would ever
happen :-)
There are probably a bunch of people who could help with specific tasks or who
could fill in for someone else, but how do they find out what needs to be done?
How much work is needed to get them access to the systems that they would need
to do the work (if it's technical stuff)?
People volunteer to commit their time, and need to recognize when they are not
going to have time any longer and volunteer to step down from the jobs they had.
In between, they need to be commited to getting the job done.
do we need a separate mailing list for calls for volunteer help to keep from
flooding the discussion lists and annoying people who don't have time?
David Lang
On Wed, 25 Feb 2015, Edward D'Azzo-Caisser wrote:
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2015 18:18:04 -0500
From: Edward D'Azzo-Caisser <edazzocais...@gmail.com>
To: Craig Constantine <cr...@constantine.name>
Cc: Lopsa Discussion <discuss@lists.lopsa.org>
Subject: Re: [lopsa-discuss] Does LOPSA have a project manager?
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 <cr...@constantine.name>
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
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