Project Manager Responsibility: the success of the NEPTUNE
‘backbone’ engineering project and a fulfillment of the NEPTUNE
team’s commitments
The project manager in the current NEPTUNE structure will: 1. Look at the
NEPTUNE project with a 'big hat'. Ideally everyone would look at the project
with a big hat when appropriate and needed. So this should not be a unique
role. However, the Manager should be accountable that if missing and
needed, that the "big hat" perspective be taken into consideration. For
example, in making decisions we cannot rely solely on technical merit. We
have to think about the context of the decision. It is the project manager's
role to identify and point out these 'other factors' if no one else has and
make sure that they are taken into consideration.
2.
Ensure that an existence system is put in place and maintained for the
team, i.e. the organizational necessities, such as keeping track of the top
level schedule, providing a forum for maintaining documents, a web site,
overall financial record etc.
3.
Ensure that: - processes by which the team can work are defined,
documented etc. - the group operates as a real team - the commitment of
the group is explicitly stated, revised as needed, and is kept present. meetings are run effectively and efficiently - leadership is shared. vulnerabilities to personnel changes are minimized. - all obstacles are
resolved,
4. Ensure that the plan for the engineering effort of NEPTUNE is defined,
written and updated according to changing needs
6. Ensure that priorities are allocated.
Notes (From Ivan Rosenberg):
1) Management is being the existence system for the fulfillment of the
commitments of a group. From this perspective the manager's primary job is
to detect, point out, identify, anticipate, etc., any obstacles to the fulfillment
of the group's commitments, and make sure they are resolved (although not
necessarily that the manager does the resolution, only that they are
accountable that the obstacle be resolved).
2) Responsibility: being at cause. Accountability: making an accepted
promise. It is useful to distinguish the manager's responsibility (which others
could share) and the manager's accountability (which is often unique). (#2-6
above are accountabilities).
3) The manager aims for consensus among the stakeholders where possible
and feasible. Where a decision has to be made before consensus is achieved,
the manager is empowered to make the decision and the group/stakeholders
agree to make that decision the right decision.