Essential Guide to Project Management

Roles and Responsibilities

Each project has a Project Lead and a Project Manager who work together to ensure the project runs smoothly and reaches its goals. The Project Manager organizes and monitors the project, while the Project Lead acts more like a subject matter expert. The exact distribution of responsibilities will depend on the specific project and the skills required to meet project objectives. 

Recurring PM Tasks

• Create weekly agendas/sprints for all of your projects each week.
  At the beginning of each week, Project Managers should review the previous week’s agendas and create a new one with tasks which are still actionable or pending. These agendas should be reviewed during the weekly/fortnightly meetings or asynchronously. Some projects might use sprints for weekly planning.

• Update OKRs/KPIs each Monday.
  Project Managers should review their OKRs/KPIs and update the latest figures to the project tracking spreadsheet to review during the OKR meeting held weekly on Tuesday.

• Attend the weekly PPP/OKR call and update all project data.
  Project Managers should attend the weekly PPP meeting to provide a status update on their projects, raise any issues or bottlenecks and ask for help where needed to meet critical milestones.

• Update OKRs/KPIs before the SC meeting and at the end of each month.
  KPIs should be updated before every monthly SC meeting and on the last day of the month.

• Attend the fortnightly (bi-weekly) Working Group calls and update all project data.
  Project Managers should attend the Working Group meetings to give a status update on their projects to the WGs and create space for members to contribute their ideas, time and resources. A new GitHub agenda is used for these meetings every time which should be updated by PMs accordingly.

Managing GitHub

The Foundation uses GitHub Issues and GitHub Project to manage all projects and functions. Project Managers are responsible for setting up their own projects in the tool. They should also follow up and update their projects in GitHub on a regular basis.

For more info readProject Management | GitHub

Weekly Project Meetings

Most Project Teams meet weekly or fortnightly (biweekly); however, the frequency might vary. These meetings help plan and discuss the next steps for the week (or the relevant period). Roles are as follows:

Project Lead: Sets goals and issues tasks

Project Manager: Proposes priorities and organizes issues based on project timeline and budget. The Project Manager is also responsible for keeping the project on track to meet critical milestones and goals. 

Project Team: Determines if goals and tasks are achievable given resourcing, scope, and timeline. 

Every meeting is documented in a GitHub issue labeled ‘agenda.’

Members must complete their onboarding/subscription form to participate in project meetings.

When scheduling a meeting, Project Managers must invite the whole email group. Adding an entire Google group ensures that everyone who can participate will automatically receive future meeting invites.

Click here for more information on meetings. 

Managing Email Groups

Every week a digest is sent to every email group with information about what happened last week, this digest is automatically created however there is a place for PM’s to add custom messages and calls to action.

Read more about our https://greensoftwarefoundation.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/~612dd45e45cd76006a84071a/pages/25002173

The goal is to encourage more of the communication to happen over email and provide a touch point for the inactive members who are not attending meetings to get involved.

For further details see also Google Groups / Email Lists

Reporting and Managing OKRs/KPIs

Project Managers are expected to be involved in the creation and tracking of any relevant metrics related to their projects. Typically, we use OKRs and KPIs for each project.

For further details see also https://greensoftwarefoundation.atlassian.net/wiki/pages/createpage.action?spaceKey=~612dd45e45cd76006a84071a&title=OKRs&linkCreation=true&fromPageId=5898247 and KPIs & Milestones

If you encounter any problems with the GitHub setup please submit an issue to helpdesk@greensoftware.foundation.

Marketing Projects

We strive to keep our valued members and the broader green software community in the loop about the exciting milestones we achieve in our projects and important changes that can impact individual contributions and project outcomes.

Part of your responsibility is to maintain an open channel of communication and update GSF's Communication & Marketing Lead, Namrata Narayan (namrata@greensoftware.foundation). Namrata will ensure member organizations stay well-informed. Please also consider her a resource for advice on how best to communicate changes/updates/progress.

Marketing Checklist

• Is there an article dedicated to the milestone

• Do we have the required digital assets:

  • Logo

  • Style guide 

  • Website

  • Social media assets

  • Artwork for articles

  • Deck template

• Do we have a marketing plan

  • Do we have clear marketing and communication goals to evaluate impact?

  • Do we have marketing KPIs? How frequently are we reviewing analytics?

  • Are we aware of the tools and channels we are using to measure success?

    • Is podcast a relevant channel and if so, is there a promo?

    • Can we leverage upcoming events or organize an event to amplify the report?

    • Is Paid media a relevant channel? Is there a budget?

    • Is Earned media an important driver for success?

      • Do we have boiler-plate language about the project that can be shared with media professionals?

      • Is a press release needed?

  • Are we using short links? Have the links for tracking set up?

  • Have we set up milestones to support strategic thinking?

  • Are we engaging member organizations or partners to help promote the release?

  • Is there a Social Media calendar?

  • Is it scheduled in the next newsletter?

• Do we have talking points to help others raise awareness about the project?

• Have we scheduled a post-mortem for the project launch?

• Has the project documentation been updated?