Management Education About Free/Libre/Open Methods, Processes and Governance

Start Date

Description

Mainstream management education is only superficially engaging with the evolution of successful free/libre/open source software development methodologies. Widely used educational materials — such as the PMP (Project Management Professional) and PRINCE2 (Projects in Controlled Environments, v.2) certifications — do not effectively address open source issues, including ethics, methods, processes, governance, HR management, corporate strategy, law, and financing.

OSI would like to charter a working group to address this gap, in order to fulfill its mission by helping educate the public, and management of technology organizations, about the benefits of open source.

The primary goal of this working group would be to extend and refine an existing project management syllabus according to the requirements and priorities indicated by OSI and associated third parties identified by OSI. The resulting syllabus would help managers and developers improve their licensing, development, and business practices, and may also be useful for educational institutions.

• Initial project proposal to OSI by Joseph Potvin, Nov. 7, 2013

Initial Group Members

Community Members

• Working Group Chair:
  Joseph Potvin, jpotvin@opman.ca

OSI Representatives

• Working Group Sponsor:
  Mike Milinkovich, mike.milinkovich@eclipse.org
• OSI Outreach and Learning Committee Chair:
  Tony Wasserman, tonyw@acm.org
• OSI General Manager,
  Patrick Masson, masson@opensource.org

Others

Resourcing (mailing list, virtual server, budget etc)

Deliverable(s)

The goal of this working group is to extend and improve an existing free/libre/open project management syllabus. The resulting document(s) will be published through opensource.org under (at least) a CC BY-SA license, and will eventually be further developed through collaborative community processes.

Unless otherwise noted, the contractor is responsible for fulfilling the deliverables within the specified timeline.

Alignment to OSI Mission

Completion Date

Months 1 & 2

• Design and begin train-the-trainer workshops
  • based on existing materials and prior contractor experience

• Complete podcasts based on existing materials
• Refine initial syllabus based on initial review and preferences.
  (LV comment: does this imply we should split this two month section into a set of month 1 deliverables - OSI feedback, commentary - and separate month 2 deliverables - the refinement? Or is that simply months 3&4?)
• OSI: outreach to other relevant organizations and companies, to ensure broad representation in the feedback
  (LV comment: realistically, even if we start outreach immediately, it is unlikely we'll get useful feedback during the first 1-2 months. If that is not possible, when is the next good deadline for receiving that feedback?)
• OSI: goals
  (LV: this was originally “content orientation and parameters” - we may want to discuss?)
• OSI: commentary on existing materials

Months 3 & 4

• Priority syllabus additions identified, researched and integrated.
  • Example additions/issues are listed below under “Example Possible Changes”, but final prioritization will be discussed and agreed upon between OSI, contractor, and other parties.

Months 5 & 6

• Hold workshop based on syllabus with Project Management Professionals/Educators

Months 7 & 8

• Scope, research and integrate any new changes resulting from workshop held in previous milestone
  (LV comment: I believe this statement accurately reflects the intent of the initial proposal, but let's discuss if not.)

Months 9 & 10

• Plan special free/libre/open issue of a PM journal
  (LV comment: we may want to drill down for more detail here, or make it a separate proposal? Just seems a little underspecified at the moment.LV comment: I removed months 11 and 12 from the initial proposal; we're happy to discuss next steps once this is done but it didn't seem appropriate for this charter/statement of work.)

Sustainability

OSI staff responsibilities

OSI infrastructure needs

Ongoing member community

Ongoing budgeting/revenue

Resources

• Initial project proposal to OSI by Joseph Potvin, Nov. 7, 2013
• Brief Questionnaire/Interview to Identify Priorities for Advancing “A Management Education Syllabus on the Methods, Processes, Resourcing and Governance of Free/Libre/Open Works” Working Group
• The Opman Company - Project Portfolio (project site: overview, activities, wiki)

Discussions

This list is possible changes that could be made to the syllabus, for example purposes only. An actual prioritized list of changes will be agreed to by the working group.

• Shorten the course to 2 or 3 days only
• More specific targetting to developers' decisions
• More gradual and structured entry to each topic
• Follow the expert-discussions with group discussion of highlights
• More situational examples for discussion
• When actual legal documents are used, provide more specific pointers for discussion
• Update the content (esp. current major court case references)
• Produce a course delivery guide (“train the trainer”)
• Expand content on financial, benefit/cost & accounting to support ROI analysis
• Produce instructional audio files from interviews for syllabus
• Create a short evocative name for this syllabus