[Cesg-all] Charter Development Template For Comments

Fri Mar 23 23:25:35 EST 2007

I think this is going in the right direction and I welcome very much this
initiative. As you said, the excel spreadsheet will not be the final tool
supporting the apporach, but rather a mean of collecting and eliciting
requirements.

My initial comments are as follows:
- On the project tab, from rows 55-69, you present some project milestones. I
am not sure these have been agreed in this form. Also, they are all
"punctual" milestones, while I would also consider the phases a document goes
through. Oversimplifying, these phases could be something like "drafting",
"under agency review", "under CESG review", "under CMC review", "approved".
This would ease the reporting on the status of a given document.
- Another aspect that should be tracked as well is the changes to the
baseline for a given document. The typical case is a delay in one of the
milestones (and therefore in all the plan for that project) due to some
factor. The system should be able to keep the original baseline and to allow
the definition of a new baseline for a project allowing to enter the reasons,
impact and risks of the change of plan. Clearly, experience shows that there
must be the possibility of defining N baseline for a project and that 2 are
unfrotunately not sufficient. Based on this information, the tool should
provide statistics on the planning performances of the various projects.
- In my opinion, the tool should also provide the mechanism to archive
regular reporting at the different level, CESG, Directors, WGs and project.
It would be nice if the information in these reports could be structured such
that summary reports and statistics could be generated automatically.

Excellent start Craig!

__Mario

             Craig Day                                                       
             <craigd at aiaa.org>                                               
             Sent by:                                                     To 
             cesg-all-bounces at m         CCSDS Engineering Steering Group -   
             ailman.ccsds.org           All <cesg-all at mailman.ccsds.org>,    
                                        CCSDS Management Council             
                                        <cmc at mailman.ccsds.org>              
             22/03/2007 18:53                                             cc 
                                        CCSDS Secretariat                    
                                        <Secretariat at mailman.ccsds.org>      
                                                                     Subject 
                                        [Cesg-all] Charter Development       
                                        Template For Comments                

CESG and CMC Members,

After our meeting in Colorado Springs we've been doing some work to revise
the charter development template we originally presented. Let me first say
that it is my understanding that the overarching goal of this project would
be to simplify and standardize the development of WG charters while at the
same time gaining some insight into the document development process so that
we can better track progress of individual documents. I would very much like
to hear your thoughts on whether this is the appropriate goal to be aiming
for.

Probably the biggest comment to the original templates we showed in Colorado
was that the development of a charter and the proposal for projects should
not be separate actions. We took this into account in developing a new
approach.

Attach please find an Excel workbook that contains a number of tabs. The
first tab is the up-front information about a WG that we traditionally
capture in a charter. Each of the other tabs contains information specific
to the group's various projects. Perhaps the biggest change to our current
process is that we are requesting a document development schedule for each
project. The table is currently populated with a number of milestone tasks
which would allow the CESG and CMC to better gauge progress toward
completion for each project. The date columns would be left blank for the
project leads to complete. We can certainly debate the tasks that are
currently listed if you feel there is something missing.

The attached workbook is currently populated with data from the SOIS
Application Support Services WG charter to attempt to illustrate how this
tool might work. The dates I have entered are completely notional and do not
represent an accurate schedule. I also didn't fill out a project sheet for
each book. You may get a macro warning upon opening the file. I'm not sure
how to get rid of that but there is nothing malicious about the file.

Right now we are requesting your input on the content of these sheets. Do
you think we are capturing the right information? The implementation of the
tool will most likely not take the form of an Excel workbook but rather an
online input tool. We could then link the charters to the different CWE
sites and allow for real-time updates that could then be sent to the CESG
and CMC for approval as necessary. With the project timeline information, we
would be able to create a work program status report that would indicate the
progress toward established metrics for all of our projects.

We look forward to your feedback on this template so that we can move
forward. If you have any questions on the attachment, please do not hesitate
to ask.

Best Regards,
Craig

--
Craig Day
CCSDS Secretariat Office
Tel: +1-703-264-3849 € Fax: +1-703-264-7551
Email: craigd at aiaa.org

[attachment "CCSDS_Charter_v2(SOIS_ASS_WG).xls" deleted by Mario
Merri/esoc/ESA] _______________________________________________
CESG-all mailing list
CESG-all at mailman.ccsds.org
http://mailman.ccsds.org/mailman/listinfo/cesg-all