[CSL board] Strategic Planning Sessions Will Happen!

[Josh Harding]

On the point of competent people - I think one of our biggest challenges is
that no matter how bright the people we are able to bring in are, it takes
them 6 months to operate independently in the CSL's infrastructure (Dan:
please check me on this). Given that the average person we get works with us
for a year (a VISTA), that's about half of their total time commitment the
the lab. A very useful but non-trivial task would be developing a systematic
way of introducing new resources to our working environment in a way that
would allow them to work independently sooner.

Assuming a 6-month time to ramp-up to productivity without Dan taking a
significant time in oversight of an individual, if we could reduce that by
even a month, we'd be looking at a significant total productivity gain for
that person.

The alternative to being very picky about bringing in very bright, competent
people is to bring in less competent people who have the dedication for a
run of longer than 1 year with us.

Sometimes we get lucky (eg John) and get a competent, bright, dedicated
person. More frequently it has been a case of pick any two.

When I began volunteering at the CSL I had no formal Linux knowledge, and
had never worked in a server-side environment. I'm still plugging away
(although admittedly not doing actual work) 3 years later. A friend started
at the same time who had a very solid base of knowledge and is brighter than
me. He worked with the CSL for a total of 5-6 months, then, as they say in
my company's emails 'pursued other opportunities, effective immediately'.

To bring this back to reality, in my opinion we have two items to consider:
1.) a quicker way to help people get over the phase of having just enough
knowledge to be dangerous phase, and 2.) the consideration of who we bring
in. For now at least, it's a gamble, but usually seems to be 'pick any two'.
Which two?

In spite of all of the above, Dan knows what's going on much better than I,
so I shall now defer to him.

-Josh


On 9/14/06, Fred G. Martin <fredm at cs.uml.edu> wrote:
>
> My reflections after the meeting:
>
> We have had past discussions on strategic directions of CSL.
> Hopefully we recorded these so we can refresh ourselves of what we
> have said in the past.  From memory:
>
> * Server-side software is good and CSL likes doing that.
>
> * One value-add of CSL presently is hand-holding of non-techie
> customers.  CSL-equivalent services (from a tech standpoint) can be
> purchased cheaply (as low as $5/mo).  The main reason CSL's clients
> don't do this is that they like CSL's personal touch and
> availability.  Plus the CSL is free.
>
> * Consulting-type projects (e.g., Lowell Deeds) are good in that they
> bring in money.  But it would be better if they fed into core
> technology of CSL that would improve its overall offerings (e.g., $$
> to fund MVHub dev't).
>
> To me, it is evident that in order for the CSL to do more, Dan's time
> must be MUCH better leveraged.  It is worrisome to hear Dan quote
> figures of 50 - 90% of CSL software dev't is his programming time.
> Programming is fun, but Dan only has 60-80 such hours in a week (and
> really he should be working more like 40-60 hours).
>
> As a case in point, Dan quoted that he worked approx 4 weeks full
> time to complete the Lowell Deeds project.  That is great that (a)
> the work got done, (b) it brought in some money, and (c) Dan enjoyed
> doing it, but this is not a recipe for long term growth.
>
> Clearly the answer involves building a team of competent people that
> can do programming while Dan (and others) bring in paid work or work
> that can lead to $$.
>
> I respect and agree with Dan's philosophy of investing in people and
> building a team, but I am concerned that the results have not been
> too encouraging.  This is in terms of yielding people who are (a)
> productive and (b) supported by the CSL during their productive phase.
>
> I am not sure how to improve this, but I know that teams of competent
> people tend to attract more competent people to their midst.
>