[gnso-wpm-dt] WPM-DT Cover Letter to Council - Draft (KBv1)

["Ken Bour" <ken.bour@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

WPM Team Members:

 

Below is a draft of a cover letter that I am proposing be sent by Olga to
the GNSO Council transmitting the DT's final deliverable.   Perhaps we can
do some work on it via the email list and finalize at our 6 April session.
I attempted to incorporate Jaime's important point about the need for a
management "process" with software tools in a complementary and supportive
role.  

 

Thanks,

 

Ken

===

 

DRAFT (KBv1)

 

To:  GNSO Council

From:  Work Prioritization Model Drafting Team (WPM-DT)

 

Subject:  Transmittal of Proposed Section 6 and ANNEX to GNSO Operating
Procedures

 

Dear Councilors:

 

As commissioned by the GNSO Council at the Seoul ICANN meeting (Nov 2009),
the WPM-DT has been working diligently over the past five months to scope
out and complete a set of activities leading to a proposed methodology for
prioritizing the GNSO's work.   As its primary deliverable, the team has
drafted a document (attached) that it recommends be approved for inclusion
in the GNSO Operating Procedures (as Chapter 6) along with an accompanying
ANNEX that contains detailed instructional material that may be amended as
the Council gains experience with the approach.  

 

The proposed Work Prioritization begins by identifying those projects that
are "Eligible" to be prioritized.  As you will read in Section 6.2 - Scope,
the team does not recommend that all projects be prioritized because some
are in states or stages that would render prioritization inapplicable.
Once all projects have been properly categorized as to their eligibility for
prioritization, Section 6.3 - Methodology outlines a sequence of steps,
fleshed out more fully in the ANNEX, that the Council will undertake to
develop a set of GNSO Project priorities.    

 

The DT's goals in developing the methodology were to ensure that the
process:  

a.       is user-friendly, unambiguous, and straightforward to execute; 

b.      produces realistic outputs that will help the Council to make
effective management decisions; and

c.       is structured as an on-going task that accommodates change
including the introduction of new projects as they are proposed in the
future.

 

Although outside its direct scope, the DT has spent time considering how the
Council can make effective use of the Project Prioritization once it is
completed.  The DT believes that prioritization is an important first step;
however, it will be vitally important that the Council have access to
appropriate project information, data, processes, and tools to assist with
its active management of the workload.   To facilitate these managerial
responsibilities, the DT recommends that a process be developed that would
include documenting and tracking GNSO projects on an on-going basis.  The
team recommends supporting its process with a web-based software toolkit
(e.g. excellent open source applications are available) that will assign
Staff and Community resources to projects/tasks and offer time/milestone
tracking plus advanced collaboration capabilities allowing work to be
managed efficiently, effectively, and transparently.  Information from such
an application suite, properly summarized and analyzed by Staff, will enable
the Council to make better informed decisions by understanding and
evaluating more clearly the resource constraints impacting existing projects
as well as the effects of new work that must be integrated into the total
portfolio.  

 

The DT remains available to assist the Council in the implementation of
these new Work Prioritization procedures and to work with any other team(s)
on scoping out the program/project management disciplines that will become
central in the Council's role as manager of the policy development process. 

 

Olga Cavalli

Chair, WPM-DT