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Announcing the Project Management and Delivery Excellence Initiative

eduffield

Core Developer
Dash Community Members,

The Dash project has grown significantly over the last few months with an ever expanding team of developers, marketers, attorneys, economists, and other professionals volunteering their time and skills to build on our already remarkable success. Once a one-man project, Dash has become a "Top 5" cryptocurrency with over a dozen significant contributors. While an increased team size can deliver many benefits, it also comes with more difficult decision making, and increased administrative and organizational burdens. Typical issues for such quickly growing projects include fragmented information sources, lost transparency and vision, unclear roles and task ownership - all issue which Dash has already experienced to some extent.

We expect the team and its capabilities to grow even further. Future plans call for more core developers and more volunteers for critical projects. Some of these projects are already underway (mobile wallets for iOS and Android), some require ongoing efforts (wallet UI overhauls and translations), and there are many more to come. Overseeing this volume of projects is exponentially more difficult than coordinating a team of 2-3 members. It is also important to avoid burdening core developers with an increasing number of management tasks, but rather enable them to focus on their core competency: coding.

Members of the Dash community with project management backgrounds got together, and started working closely with the Core Team to address the issues. The Project Management and Delivery Excellence Initiative is the result of that collaboration, modeled off of proven project management and development frameworks that are standard in the industry. Some key expectations for this initiative include:

  • Reducing the number of releases, resulting in a better user experience
  • Improving documentation, providing users with an official comprehensive source for Dash-related technical information and guides
  • Improving communication flow, so that all relevant information can be found easily without the need for ongoing monitoring of forums
  • Enhancing transparency, to enable volunteers and other community members to both stay informed on the latest activities and how they can contribute
  • Maintaining team lists with members, so at any time it will be easy to see who is working on what


The project management team will keep the overall project and sub-teams organized by working on the following areas:

  • Project Organization and Collaboration - The Project Management team will identify and implement a common framework and set of tools to enable teams to self-organize, and to interact effectively within the team and across teams. The team intends to implement professional software delivery standards, based on time-tested industry methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, ITIL or PMI.
  • Effective Communication - Standardize public communication processes, define and limit communication channels, prevent information fragmentation and publish regular project updates to inform the community and newcomers about important information
  • Quality Assurance - Implement industry standard processes and tools to improve testing, reduce bugs, and prioritize and monitor fixes.
  • Release Management and Deployment Management - Improve the process of managing software releases from development to official release, including creation of release schedules, and monitoring of the release tasks


The Project Management and Delivery Excellence Initiative was initially proposed and came to existence by the following community members:

Robert Wiecko (aka kot) - volunteered to the project in March 2015, bringing 14+ years of professional experience in the IT industry. Robert started his professional career as a Software Developer and Support Specialist and shortly after became a Business Analyst. Since 2006 he serves as a Project Manager, Development Teams Manager and Delivery Manager, responsible for full scale projects in global delivery organizations. He is a certified Scrum Master, Project Manager and ITIL professional. He is fascinated by digital currencies, global economics, good music and healthy lifestyle. Robert's LinkedIn profile.

Balázs Király (aka balu) - working as a Scrum Master currently, Balázs focuses on efficient collaboration of people with varying skill sets. Graduating as MSc in Business Administration / Finance, he started his career in the field of ERP systems, climbing the corporate ladder from Support Analyst through Consultant to Team Lead. "ERP teams are very similar to the Dash team, with financial people working alongside developers - both critical to the success of the projects" - he says. He's an avid fan of self-improvement, dancing, investments, and good food.

The Project Management team will co-operate directly with the Core Team and support all the project team members to help make Dash a success. The team is open to other volunteers willing to contribute, so if you feel like you can help in this effort, get in touch with either kot or balu on the Dash Slack channel.
 
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Robert Wiecko (aka kot) - ,He is a certified Scrum Master...
...
Balázs Király (aka balu) - working as a Scrum Master currently,

Scrum?

I'm in!

Best thing since sliced bread.

I already participated in a couple of Scrum projects, and compared to traditional approaches (waterfall model and the likes) it's like night and day.

Or, to be on-topic, it's like Dash compared to Bitcoin :grin:
 
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First and foremost, my sincere congratulations to all !! This is fantastic news!

This is kinda "freaky" :what:

A recent work colleague of mine is studying computer science as his second degree. Se he had heard of BTC and so within a few days I was all over crypto's and Dash. Since he got interested, I showed him the QT etc... and all the crypto yadda yadaa, open-source, forum, github, etc, and then wham! He started explaining Scrum to me in fine detail (he was really hyped about it so good sign to pay attention...), and how this was absolutely the best thing that could ever happen to the development of this project.

I kid you not. True story!
.
 
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First and foremost, my sincere congratulations to all !! This is fantastic news!

This is kinda "freaky" :what:

A recent work colleague of mine is studying computer science as his second degree. Se he had heard of BTC and so within a few days I was all over crypto's and Dash. Since he got interested, I showed him the QT etc... and all the crypto yadda yadaa, open-source, forum, github, etc, and then wham! He started explaining Scrum to me in fine detail (he was really hyped about it so good sign to pay attention...), and how this was absolutely the best thing that could ever happen to the development of this project.

I kid you not. True story!
.
This can be described as synchronicity. :)
 
Great news, I know when you guys are quiet that it usually means something in the pipeline :cool:
Looking forward to more testnet ...
 
Its great to see the leaders are leading. It makes me (as a non-technical Dash enthusiast) a lot more comfortable that this coin has a strong future.
 
  • Project Organization and Collaboration - The Project Management team will identify and implement a common framework and set of tools to enable teams to self-organize, and to interact effectively within the team and across teams. The team intends to implement professional software delivery standards, based on time-tested industry methodologies like Scrum, Kanban, ITIL or PMI.
  • Effective Communication - Standardize public communication processes, define and limit communication channels, prevent information fragmentation and publish regular project updates to inform the community and newcomers about important information
  • Quality Assurance - Implement industry standard processes and tools to improve testing, reduce bugs, and prioritize and monitor fixes.
  • Release Management and Deployment Management - Improve the process of managing software releases from development to official release, including creation of release schedules, and monitoring of the release tasks


Hallelujah!

This is SOOOO what I've been wanting to hear. Having worked in IT for many years on large scale projects with teams spread across widely dispersed geographical areas and specialist domains of knowledge, initiatives like DASH absolutely need advanced collaboration methods like Scrum if they're to achieve results. And improving our Release Management processes is going to help avoid the unintended consequences of deployments introducing flaws and faults that can then consume 1000s of person hours across the development team and user base trying to rectify. With DASH handling things on a more professional basis like this it will improve our reputation for reliability and ordered progression enormously (not to mention maximise the ability to get things done).

Fantastic news!
 
Happy to see how much the project is growing.

He's an avid fan of self-improvement, dancing, investments, and good food.
I am sorry for off-topic, but does anyone know what self-improvement exactly is? Is it something like meditation and self-awareness?
 
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Happy to see how much the project is growing.


I am sorry for off-topic, but does anyone know what self-improvement exactly is? Is it something like meditation and self-awareness?

Who knows, could mean anything, even Ninja training.

I really like this project management initiative. Big projects need serious management to scale well. Kind of thing we came to expect from a serious project like Dash working to build a new globally digital currency.

GO DASH!
 
The synergy of this project is project is bound to soar with a "Delivery Execllence Initiative." Buzzwords much? But seriously, glad to see this refocus.
 
Had some time now to check in from my currently busy life, this initiative is great to see.

I agree completely with the goals listed, great job!
 
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