Big Board Boss [WIP]

Big Board Boss [WIP]

Department
🛠 Production
Comp Notes
L1 Salary
L2 Salary
L3 Salary
L4 Salary
L5 Salary
L1 Hourly Wage
L2 Hourly Wage
L3 Hourly Wage
L4 Hourly Wage
L5 Hourly Wage
Billable Target Min

50

The Big Board Boss is the person in charge of the

. This role can be filled by a PM, Strategist or other team member, or a dedicated person.

Big Board Boss Duties

  • Every day review the “This Week” and “Last Week” lists. Make sure that tasks are in the right places, have appropriate statuses, are actionable and accurate, etc.
  • Whenever something is not going correctly (ex. tasks with no assignee, tasks not being worked on late in the week, staff behind on deadlines, etc.), DM the appropriate staff to push for a resolution.
  • At the end of each week, run the
    📆
    Weekly Planning Meeting
     .
  • At the start of each week…
    • Ensure that any contributors who could reasonably be assigned 5 or more hours next week are invited to next Friday’s Weekly Planning Meeting.
    Remove the "Last Week" tasks from the Big Board.
    Move the "This Week" tasks to "Last Week". Go through each remaining task in that list and check to see if it looks like it is on track to be completed by the first day of the week. If not, ping the relevant PM/assignee.
    Move the "Next Week" tasks that are Ready or Clarified into "This Week".
    Ensure that “Next Week” and “This Week” headers are updated with the correct dates.
    For all the "Next Week" tasks that are not ready or clarified, check to see if any of them seem really urgent. If so, ping the relevant PM to let them know the task will not get done unless it gets clarified shortly.
    Update the Dashboard burnup chart to filter by the new week’s dates
    Post a weekly update in Asana and in Slack somewhere that everyone will see. This message should reiterate any process intentions we are working on. Things like: We have been working on getting tasks clarified earlier, or We are pushing to have more tasks delegated to contributors. It should include:
    • Recap of last week. Use get harvest data and look for trends that would be meaningful to staff. Remember to celebrate successes as much or more than you emphasize areas for growth.
    • Preview of next week. What are we hoping to achieve this week? Who has the heaviest lifts? What clients are we focused on this week? What strategies can staff use to be more effective at implementing our process initiatives?
‣

Big Board Boss Time Tracking

The BBB acts like an assistant PM for all our projects, as well being as an enforcer of our internal process. Therefore, often it is fair for the BBB to track their time in managing the big board to client projects. Other times their work is non-billable and should be tracked as such. The best rule of thumb is whether the BBB is doing work that progresses the project forward, or that is merely reminding people of our processes, reporting high-level status to the team, or conducting our rituals.

As BBB when you do a sweep of the Big Board or conduct the start-of-week turnover process, keep track of the overall time you are spending. Then, create timesheet entries that roughly match the breakdown between the billable and non-billable time, and that add up to the total amount of time you spent. Non-billable time should be tracked in “Production General” while billable time should go into “Setup & Coordination” or “Consultation & Triage”, depending on the source project for the tasks you are working on.

For example, if you spent 1 hour, it might break down like this:

  • 0:30: Production General → Continuous Improvement.
    • “Weekly BBB process”
  • 0:05: Client 1 → Setup & Coordination.
    • “PM Help during BBB Weekly Process”
  • 0:10: Client 2 → Setup & Coordination.
    • “PM Help during BBB Weekly Process”
  • 0:05: Client 3 → Setup & Coordination.
    • “PM Help during BBB Weekly Process”
  • 0:10: Client 4 → Setup & Coordination.
    • “PM Help during BBB Weekly Process”

It’s not important to be super precise or capture every client where you spent time. The priority is having a good rough idea of where the time went, and to charge fairly for work spent actually moving projects forward as BBB.

The Big Board Boss is responsible for ensuring that the Big Board is complete and current, and that the whole team are sticking to our agreed upon processes.