Cross-team sessions’ goals

Participants of the last all hands meeting expressed the wish for more information about ongoing projects and for more discussion on collaboration among the projects.

The goals of the two cross-team sessions is to learn something, to do something useful, and to have fun.

Credit: This session has been developed by Thomas Röblitz.

Learn something

  • inform yourself about ongoing and emerging projects and activities
  • inform yourself about the NeIC 2016-2020 strategy and its implementation

Do something useful

  • identify possible collaborations across projects and activities
  • develop ideas for future projects or activities
  • propose actions to mitigate known shortcomings

Have fun

  • enjoy working with your - otherwise remote - colleagues

Background story

At the last NeIC board meeting in 2016, the board was impressed with progress in the implementation of the NeIC 2016-2020 strategy, and particularly with the achievements of each of the NeIC teams in 2016. It was noted, however, that there is little to no collaboration among the various projects and activities, and hence they cannot collaboratively support the implementation of the strategy.

The NeIC board has asked the NeIC director to propose - within three months - concrete measures to address the issue. Subsequently, NeIC management has summoned staff to a mountain resort to develop a plan for fostering cross-project collaboration supporting the NeIC strategy.

Consider the following (recent, but not necessarily complete) observations to guide your proposals in saving the NeIC director:

  • too many meetings
  • too little face-to-face time
  • too much management
  • too short projects
  • too little cross project/team collaboration (too few shared tasks, challenges, deliverables, …)
  • too few women in e-infrastructure
  • too little incentives to stay in academic environment (e.g. drag of people to industry)
  • users and providers seemingly having diametral goals
  • projects having too diverse goals (operational vs development vs building up competency)
  • projects being too cloudy
  • projects being hampered by political background
  • people being bogged down in tasks which are not their main tasks

Task

Propose concrete actions, develop ideas for future projects or define specific outcomes utilizing collaborations among ongoing or emerging projects and activities to support the NeIC 2016-2020 strategy. Target specific combinations of two, three, old and new, or all projects. Define milestones at 6, 12 and 24 months, and estimate budget implications. Answer questions such as

  • Why collaborate?
  • How to collaborate?
  • How to measure success?

Each group will present and defend its findings to the audience. Note, this is not just for fun, the proposals shall be followed up by the various interlinked bodies of NeIC (XT, provider forum, data management forum, project management forum) … not kidding.

Format

Cross-team groups of all NeICers (staff, project managers, XT, … everyone) will work together on the task. Communication between groups is possible, but groups will present their ideas separately.

Tentative Schedule & Rooms

15:00-15:10 Phase 0: Introduction (session format, task, goals, rules, groups, roles)

15:10-15:50 Phase 1: Collect information & sketch potential collaborations

15:50-16:20 Break (coffee, tea, waffles)

16:20-17:00 Phase 2: Develop activities, milestones, you-name-it to increase cross-project collaboration and address the above listed issues within 6, 12 & 24 months

17:00-17:10 Take your seats

17:10-17:50 Phase 3: Pitch your proposal(s) to the audience (each group gets 3’ + 5’)

Phases 0 and 3 are take place in the auditorium, are fixed in time and purpose. Phases 1 and 2 are suggestions to groups, but they are free to re-arrange it to their needs. Groups can work in a corner of the auditorium, or chose to work in a room reserved for themselves.

Cross-team groups

  • Team red: Oxana, Gudmund, Jonas, Antti, Xiaxi, Gurvinder, Pontus, Michaela, Jyry, Christian
  • Team blue: Bjørn, Jens, Radovan, Erik, Anders, Mattias, Rob, Olli, Piotr, Olav
  • Team yellow: Dmytro, Kine, Ulf, Joel, Erland, Johan, Frédéric, Dan, Nikolai, Sabry
  • Team green: Thor, Pål, Tomasz, Niclas, Petter, Maiken, Juha, Abdulrahman, Kasper, John

Resources