ORGANIZATION

• Creative Commons is a nonprofit organization that offers flexible copyright licenses for creative works.
• Creative Commons is comprised of:
  • Culture Commons
  • International Commons
  • Science Commons
• CC is a relatively flat organization and comprised of 2 Departments include: Development and Tech

ROLE

Francesca is Creative Common's Project Management Hub.

She keeps track of:

• What all the projects are
• Who's driving each project
• When they're starting, when they're supposed to end and all the milestones in between
• Status of each project
• Budget proposals for each project (on a need to know basis)
• Supporting documents for each project (ie. Legal documents, Reports, Fliers, Phone call logs)

Francesca is also a Communications hub. The Tech team doesn't usually talk to Legal. Francesca makes sure that communications flow between teams.

Examples of Projects

• Partnership with Second Life
• Magazine partnerships
• International summit in Brazil

• Most projects can be characterized as customizing or putting a new skin on existing modules.
• The software CC delivers already exists, the designers work out custom designs for partners.
• Once in a while, CC wil deliver a new module and start with a design and then code.

TOOLS

• Francesca maintains 10 different documents to do her job
• A GANTT chart provides a high-level summary of all Creative Commons projects broken down by CC's organizational structure, individual people and out against time, or more specifically quarters.
• A PERT chart to track Tasks and Dependencies. This is a more detailed view of the work items involved for each Project, broken down by department and individual task owners. The PERT chart helps Franscesca and the Project lead identify each project's Critical Path / Blockers: What has to get done in order for the Project to succeed

• CC tried sharing calendars via Apple iCal, but people never really took to it.

• IM is used a lot.
• CC keeps an iChat room open during staff meetings and then sends out the log after hte meeting
• Tried IRC, but was too complicated

• Director of iCommons created a wiki page for tracking tasks and resources for the International Summit in Brazil
• Contact list
  • Programming (Speakers)
  • Invitations
• Tasks
• Fundraising progress

PROCESS

Defining Projects

• The CEO sets priorities for CC
• Priorities are reflected across all Projects.
• Sometimes priorities are strategically set. Sometimes opportunities present themselves and become priorities.
• At the beginning of each quarter, CC reviews the projects it's starting to:
  • Figure out projected end dates and a timeline of milestones
  • Pull together budget proposals which are sent to the CFO, who in turn will hand them over to Francesca on a need-to-know basis
• Francesca works on the Project with the Project lead which includes:
  • Defining the problem
  • Identifying deliverables
  • Putting together a budget
• Francesca gets a data dump from the project lead and then figures out what's missing and how to fill in the gaps
• The Project lead drives the Project.

• Legal is often the bottleneck in the process because every legal document needs to be reviewed by CC's lawyer, Mia.
  • Partnership agreements with magazines
  • NDAs for Google
  • Grant sign-offs
• Development can also be a bottleneck
• Fransca helps to make sure that all the relevant documents are fed through legal with enough time for Mia to review them.

Communications and Status

• At the same, Francesca is managing inter-team communications with the Tech team.
  • Passing requirements to the Designers
  • Most of what CC does is customizing generic software for specific clients. Most of the time, customization comes in the form of visual re-design.
  • Sometimes, CC will need to build something from scratch, in which case the process is reversed and Design comes up with comps that then need to be passed onto the Developers to implement.

• Francesca enters every task in the PERT chart
• There are usually 1-2 people assigned to each task, sometimes 3

• Francesca meets with Project leaders when deadlines are approaching to get up to speed on the status of the Projects
• She gives mini-updates on each project at weekly all-hands meetings.

• CC doesn't share meeting notes

Document and Resource Management

• Types of documents and resources
• Text for fliers
• Text for invitations
• Business Development reports (All the companies CC is working with)
• Board report
  • Francesca takes the last board report which is named by date
  • Changes the file name to the current board report date
  • Uses it as a template for the new board report
• Project management sheets (in Excel)
  • Sends spreadsheet around via Email
  • Asks people to respond in Email, Francesca updates the Master
  • Inevitably, some people edit the Master directly, but that makes it hard for Francesca to tell what's been changed

Review Sign-off

• Creative director and 1 designer design and produce all graphics
• CEO sometimes signs off on graphics

• Francesca, CFO and Project lead review budgets across all projects
• If a Project is on the Project sheet, it better have a budget plan

COMMUNICATING STATUS

• Team meetings: 1 person sets up the meeting and sets the agenda

PAIN POINTS

Connecting the dots...

• Francesca wishes she could see the relationship between the projects in her GANTT chart and the individual tasks in her PERT chart.
• PERT chart changes a lot. Dates slip. Some dates are unknown at the beginning and then become clearer over time.
• People maintain their own task lists in addition to Francesca's PERT chart and they get out of sync

Personal Task Management

Todo lists

• Maintains a todo list in a notebook for each day
• Things that don't get done, are moved to the next day
• Doesn't always create one every day. Sometimes will have 1 for Monday and Tuesday and then a 2nd one for Wednesday.
• Differentiates between Have-To-Dos versus If-I-Have-Time tasks

• Meeting notes are cut out and placed into the relevant Project folder
• Phone messages will sometimes be jotted down in an Email draft

Tools

• Doesn't like Stickies in OS X, but has used them heavily anyway
• Uses paper stickes
• Thunderbird kept crashing on her so she switched to Apple Mail, which only has 1 colored flag
• Uses Hotmail for Junk mail

• Uses the Flag feature in Thunderbird. Liked the ability to assign different colors.
• Color codes emails to mean: Personal Work, Urgency
• Flags for Not closed, Need to reply to
• Files Personal emails so that it doesn't clutter up her Work email

• Emails tasks to herself that have to be done at the Computer
• Sometimes transfers tasks from Email to Notebook
• Things like Pick-up perscription will be on stickies on her computer

• Sends tasks to others via Email: Requests
• To coordinate with her partner re: the rent check took 4 emails
• Moving furniture around in the office took 4 emails: Set up a good time. Make sure there was enough manpower. Reminder to wear scruffy clothing.
• All status updates about tasks are sent out via Email

---++++Pain points

• Would love to be able to associate phone messages with Contacts
• Would love Evite to work with iCal
• Francesca is involved in a lot of non-profit volunteer work
• Gets emails for events from NetImpact^?, but forgets about them because they're not on her calendar

• Francesca_PM_sheet.png:
  
• Francesca_PERT.png: