Dear Alex and Arash,
> Currently, there is no management problem because
> there are no workers (programmers).
It should be noted that software project management
has many parts. Resource management and allocation is
just one of these parts. Therefore, your reasoning is
not acceptable for me.
I am not denying that we have limited number of
developers. But I think some other parts of project
management task are unfavorably affecting willingness
of volunteer developers such that we could not use
even these limited programmers.
Let us see the general objective of Robocup Project:
"RoboCup is an internoy ational joint project to
promote AI, robotics, and related field. It is an
attempt to foster AI and intelligent robotics research
by providing a standard problem where wide range of
technologies can be integrated and examined."
Well, now let me ask some basic questions about our
league. To answer them, please refer me to an official
document of our league.
1- What is the general objective of our league?
2- Is this objective consistent with general objective
of Robocup project?
3- What is our general plan to reach this objective?
4- What is our current plan to execute the general
plan?
5- What recourses do we need to fulfill our current
plan?
6- What organizational structure could execute the
current plan and could attract its required resources?
7- What is the responsibility of each person in this
organizational structure?
8- What is our monitoring process to evaluate the
progress of project and performance of each person in
structure?
I think we MUST have the answers of these basic
questions at hand, before doing anything. If we are
doing something without carefully caring these basic
questions, I believe we are trying hard with our eyes
wide shut.
Notice that there are many other questions, which are
arising about this project, but I would not ask them
before knowing the answers of above questions.
> Since that time there were many people, particularly
> from Iran, competing in this competition. However,
> since so many years, Cameron and Arash are still
> doing the main part of the work on their own.
> I thank you for thinking about how to improve Rescue
> Simulation. Therefore, I would appreciate it very
> much if you take the consequence and join the team
> of developers in the future.
I will answer these two parts privately, becasue I
would not like to make the discussion personal.
> But what we were lacking [and I recently indicated
> in one of my last e-mails to TC and OC] was someone
> who could say the last word when we could not reach
a > final conclusion due to different ideas, a
> coordinator of tasks.
I think your statement is an evidence that there is
not a well-defined organizational structure in TC and
OC. This is something, which can be sensed from
outside of TC and OC, too.
> But, I still think that the problem was more serious
> than lack of a project manager. Project manager can
> do well when there is [at least some candidates
> willing to become] a team to accomplish some goal.
Having solutions to attract required recourses of a
project is definitely a part of project management. If
we could not attract these resources, we should reduce
our expectation from this project such that we could
attract its required resources. These considerations
should be taken by project analysts in analysis phase
of management. Of course, this phase is an iterative
process in such projects.
I do not think you could attract current limited
resources without a careful plan. Also,I do not think
just emailing in the group for help a few weeks before
the competition, is the best way you could do.
> May be it is because some of us are only willing
[and > may be able] to do organization [and not
technical]
> work.
> And may be some of us were so busy with
> their own work that they could not dedicate enough
> time and energy to this responsibility.
The role of everyone should be clear and s/he should
know her/his responsibilities. If s/he is not
interested in her/his responsibility or s/he has not
enough time to do her/his responsibility, s/he MUST
not accept the role.
> In this state, one, as the coordinator among TC and
> OC members, was not sure whether a specific task
> would finish on time when he assigned it to someone
> else. Or one, may receive the first answer to his
> e-mail asking others to give their opinions
regarding > some subject about one ro two weeks later.
When you are not defining the role of each person
before joining TC and OC(or at least, the minimum
responsibility which is expected), s/he could do
anything s/he likes, no one can blame her/him.
> And of course, the community is also another reason
> for some of our failures. RoboCup rescue simulation
> community is not so active. There are a few posts
> each month and the subjects of most of these posts
> are not interesting.
I cannot take the back of our community, because the
community is really awful. But, I should mention that
with careful decisions, you could guide the community
where you like.
> why weren't these e-mails sent one, two, three
> weeks/months ago?
The reason may be that most of the current team
members are thinking about their own team and their
own benefits.
The other reason could be that TC, OC and community
are not caring such discussions. These discussions
will be forgotten in a month or less. I can remember I
took part in one of these discussion one year and half
ago and the result was approximately nothing.
Robocup Rescue Simulation is a large project. To mange
it, to reach its goals, we should follow standard ways
of software project management. I believe, all of the
problems you are mentioned could be solved with
following standard project management process.
Regards,
Babak
____________________________________________________________________________________
Got a little couch potato?
Check out fun summer activities for kids.
http://search.yahoo.com/search?fr=oni_on_mail&p=summer+activities+for+kids&cs=bz
_______________________________________________
robocup-rescue-s mailing list
robocup-rescue-s_at_cc.gatech.edu
https://lists.cc.gatech.edu/mailman/listinfo/robocup-rescue-s
Received on Tue 05 Jun 2007 - 17:00:48 GMT
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.2.0 : Tue 05 Jun 2007 - 17:00:50 GMT