Management Approach
From Sunlabs wiki
The Sunlight Foundation is a non-profit 501c(3) that uses the Internet to make government more transparent and accountable. The foundation's technology wing, Sunlight Labs builds and releases technology projects on a regular basis like CapitolWords.org, Congrelate.com, and the Sunlight Labs API.
We believe Recovery.gov needs a radical approach, and the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board should work with the open source community to create an accountable and transparent solution to the largest expenditures of the federal government since the great depression. Upon receiving a copy of the Recovery.gov Web Site Statement of Objectives (SOO), the Sunlight Foundation posted it online and opened a wiki inviting any volunteer to help build this proposal. We've also invited GSA Alliant Governmentwide Contract holders to join in the process.
There are 1000 great web developers at the gates willing and ready to help you. They want to be engaged. They see sub par government websites and see how much they cost and think "I can do better." And they ask a good question about Recovery.gov: If recovery.gov is a website to be built for the people, why not allow the people a seat at the table in the process of building it?
At the same time, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency board has created a tough problem: in six weeks, redesign and and re-implement a content management system that can handle Recovery.gov's 3000 pageviews per second. Buy and buildout the hardware infrastructure that can maintain enterprise level expectations, and build a reporting solution that allows recipients of funds from ARRA to be posted on Recovery.gov.
Sunlight Labs's management strategy will be to open a door for these developers to contribute directly to Recovery.gov, open sourcing the entire application and reporting process leading to better security, better functionality and a fast turnaround time.
Sunlight Labs will create several project teams to handle this project to rapidly develop a solution: A design team to quickly build the redesigned Recovery.gov, A content management system team to implement the new content management system, a data warehouse team to efficiently store the data and produce a reporting system that can generate real time up to the minute reports, a reporting team to work with recipients to create a streamlined reporting system and a management team that manages these teams and works with the Recovery Accountability and Transparency board to make sure the project is meeting its deadlines and the expectations of Congress.
Tips from the inside
This gets into major components and how you plan to manage them. For instance, there may be a development component then a customer service component. You also may be asked to provide documentation. We usually describe our team make up, the different roles and responsibilities, and how they will all work together. This volume also describes all proposed meetings, deliverables, and expectations from the clients. We usually have a big table that lists the deliverable/meeting, explanation, stakeholders, and frequency. You would also use this to describe work location, hours, etc. Think logistics. We sell our disciplined CMMI approach pretty hard in this area when it comes to software projects. This is where you explain the identify of your company and how you run projects from the management perspective.
