ConsenSys DAO Day - How to do Web3 Project Management - April 2023
Introduction
In this section, the speaker introduces herself and the purpose of the talk. She also gives a quick primer on how she has organized the topics to help make sense of the graphic.
- The speaker is Addie, a Superstar in project management in web 3.
- The talk is about project management in web3 and its nuances.
- Agile is important when working with Dows.
- The talk was adapted from the East Denver Camp fiddle programming workshop.
- The speaker believes in systems and weaving threads and connections into all components of a Dao.
Background
In this section, Addie gives a brief background about herself and her career journey.
- Addie works primarily on wgmi doing community operations, design, delivery for other projects protocols organizations, and helps upskill Community managers to be effective.
- She also works at settlers which is an open builder space in Brooklyn that does events as well.
- Prior to all that, she worked as a health coach for Aetna which made her realize that insurance was a financial product not a healthcare product.
- She then came into blockchain and web 3 to help people be financially free and improve their socioeconomic status.
- She has worked in some hyper-growth web 2 startups like Class Pass.
Project Management
In this section, Addie talks about project management being critical to delivering quality work.
- Project management can be boring but it's super critical to helping deliver quality work.
Introduction
The speaker introduces the importance of project management in web3 and asks for input on what makes a good or bad project manager.
- Project management is important in web3 to create space for creativity and fun.
- A quick poll is conducted to gather input on what makes a good or bad project manager.
Top 10 Commandments of Good Project Management
The speaker shares their top 10 principles for good project management.
CEO as Placeholder
- The CEO role is more of a placeholder for the owner who understands the critical path to success, team dynamics, motivators, and end goals.
- Projects should be treated like mini businesses with their own budget, scope, resources, risk plan, and work streams.
Good Systems
- Good systems allow for flexibility when addressing newness or cutting things.
- In web3 where new tools and ways of coordinating are emerging, having good systems is crucial.
Importance of Systems and Communication in Web 3
In this section, the speaker emphasizes the importance of systems and communication in web 3. She explains how having a well-designed system can help identify potential problems and support work being done. The speaker also stresses the need for over-communication, risk planning, efficiency, good documentation, and flexibility with tools.
Importance of Systems
- Having a well-designed system helps identify potential problems and supports work being done.
- Systems allow flexibility when things scale or change or need to be more modular.
Flexibility with Tools
- Being tool agnostic is important in web 3 since we're working with people in different time zones, business backgrounds, and cultures.
- It's important to experiment with what works based on your DAO or community.
Over Communication
- Over communication is important in web 3 since so much is done asynchronously and online.
- The speaker tries to splice information in several different ways so that it resonates with everybody collaborating on these projects.
Risk Planning
- Good communication can get ahead of many risks but it's also important to do risk planning ahead of time by thinking about all the different edge cases and scenarios of what could go wrong.
- When you have your risks mapped out and contingency plans ready to go it makes it a lot easier to react and deal with things in the moment.
Efficiency & Documentation
- Creating efficiencies for others is not short cutting things but helping folks find ways to create updates and milestones for themselves that are not cumbersome while ensuring a good project outcome.
- Good documentation is important for context and reference for the project as well as archiving the work that we're doing.
Top 10 List for Web3 Project Management
The speaker discusses the top 10 list for web3 project management, which includes knowing the strengths and motivators of the team, delegating tasks while helping team members learn, and focusing on community management.
Key Points
- Negotiating involves figuring out how to delegate tasks to team members while helping them learn and grow.
- It's important to encourage participation from all team members during meetings.
- Community management is a crucial aspect of web3 project management.
- Knowing the strengths and motivators of each team member is essential for effective delegation.
Implementing Top 10 List in Web3 Project Management
The speaker discusses how to implement the top 10 list in web3 project management, emphasizing the need for agility and experimentation.
Key Points
- Being agile is crucial in web3 project management due to unexpected events such as regulatory changes or hacks.
- Documentation is important in web3 projects due to frequent turnover and lack of handoffs between team members.
- Experimentation is key in web3 project management, as it allows teams to try new ways of coordinating.
- Optimization is still important in web3 projects but should be balanced with experimentation.
Project Management in Web3
In this section, the speaker discusses project management in the context of web3. She emphasizes the importance of shipping secure products and services, especially for technical roles. For non-technical roles like community and marketing, there is more room for experimentation and avoiding analysis paralysis. The team makeup and structure of organizations working with anonymous asynchronous and distributed folks may look different than what one is used to.
Importance of Shipping Secure Products
- Shipping secure products is crucial for technical roles.
- Non-technical roles have more room for experimentation.
- Avoid analysis paralysis.
Team Makeup and Structure
- Working with anonymous asynchronous and distributed folks who may not docs themselves.
- Co-worker small talk usually revolves around where you are based and things that you care about.
- Keep in mind that people might not share personal information depending on the project.
Collective Decision Making
- Diverse points of view allow collective decision making to be more transparent.
- Good operations, governance, and systems can support teamwork and collaboration.
Soft Skills vs Hard Skills
Soft Skills
- Active listening is important to cut through noise.
- Understanding motivators and drivers is key as a PM.
Hard Skills
- Organized documentation, delivery system, proactive communication, coordination with your team are important hard skills.
Traditional Organizations vs Early DAO Days vs Current DAOs
In this section, the speaker presents a visual representation of how project management has evolved from traditional organizations to early DAO days to current DAOs.
Evolution of Project Management
- Traditional organizations have a hierarchical structure.
- Early DAO days had a more flat structure with decision-making power distributed among members.
- Current DAOs are more complex and require good governance, operations, and systems to support teamwork and collaboration.
Introduction to Project Management and Operations
The speaker introduces the topic of project management and operations, highlighting the importance of team collaborations, good documentation, and alignment. She also discusses different web3 tools that can be used for project management.
Team Collaborations
- The speaker talks about work stream management and how it is important to have good documentation to avoid miscommunication.
- She emphasizes the importance of alignment in building what is needed and incorporating feedback from the community.
Web3 Tools for Project Management
- The speaker mentions Notion as her favorite web2 tool for project management.
- She discusses Govern, Wonder verse, and Dwork as great web3 project management tools.
- The speaker links a couple of articles that provide an overview of different project management tools.
Get Coin Proposal
- The speaker shares a sample proposal from Get Coin DAO on making project management improvements.
Frameworks for Project Management
The speaker talks about different frameworks that can be used for project management.
Scrum Agile Philosophy
- The speaker mentions Scrum Agile philosophy as one of the most popular frameworks used in project management.
Customizing Frameworks
- She emphasizes the need to customize frameworks based on the organization's needs.
Over Communicating and Over Documenting
In this section, the speaker highlights the importance of over communicating and over documenting in project management.
Importance of Over Communicating
- The speaker explains why over communicating is important in project management.
Importance of Over Documenting
- She emphasizes the importance of good documentation in avoiding miscommunication.
Conclusion
The speaker concludes the presentation by summarizing the key points discussed and encouraging participants to experiment with different project management tools.
Summary
- The speaker summarizes the importance of team collaborations, good documentation, alignment, web3 tools for project management, frameworks, over communicating, and over documenting.
- She encourages participants to experiment with different project management tools and find what works best for their organization.
Introduction to Govern
In this section, the speaker introduces Govern, a tool for tracking on-chain activity and managing group contributions.
Features of Govern
- Users can create reports and attribute them to specific activities.
- Contributions can be listed and minted on-chain.
- Dashboard displays different types of contributions.
- Multiple Dows can be affiliated with Govern.
Benefits of Using Govern
- A great way to manage group contributions.
- On-chain data can be aggregated in meaningful ways.
Introduction to Wonder Verse
In this section, the speaker introduces Wonder Verse, a project management tool for tracking collective group work.
Features of Wonder Verse
- Users can create workspaces for different areas of focus.
- Tasks can be posted as bounties externally.
- Provides a way to track on-chain activity and show engagement with communities.
Benefits of Using Wonder Verse
- A great tool for discovering different Dows and projects.
Introduction to D Work
In this section, the speaker introduces D Work, a project management tool similar to Trello but designed for web3 projects.
Features of D Work
- Open tasks are displayed in board view.
- Roles and permissions are based on Discord integration.
Benefits of Using D Work
- Can integrate with other tools like Coordinate.
Web3 Tools and Ecosystems
In this section, the speaker discusses how web3 tools can plug into other ecosystems like Palmdale. She also talks about the possibility of consolidation and mergers among web3 tools.
Web2 vs. Web3 Tools
- The speaker believes that all tools can potentially work together, but it's not clear if we need web3 specific tools.
- She thinks that consolidation, mergers, and acquisitions may happen in the future among web3 tools.
- The speaker shares her favorite web3 tool - Skiff - which is a fully decentralized Google Docs email.
Risk Management and Crisis Management
In this section, the speaker talks about risk management and crisis management in project management.
Over Prepare, Over Document, Over Communicate
- The speaker emphasizes over preparing, over documenting, and over communicating to manage risks effectively.
- Common types of project risks include not enough budget, bad scope, misaligned stakeholders with different agendas.
- Soft skills such as listening actively and negotiating are essential to keep people moving forward without letting feelings get in the way.
Unpredictable Risks
- The speaker gives examples of unpredictable risks from her experience supporting decentraland during two major activations: Super Bowl and Call of Duty tournament for e-gaming sports.
Lessons Learned from Event Management
The speaker shares two examples of events they managed and the lessons learned from them. They also provide a list of project documents that are useful for project management.
Examples of Events Managed
- Example 1: During an event, the website went down, and people were unable to access the form to sign up. The team quickly created a new form and deleted emails from the server to prevent spamming or hacking.
- Example 2: During another event, participants experienced issues with their home computers while running a program called Decentraland. The team had to proactively figure out how to optimize the experience on their machines.
Project Documents for Project Management
- Scribe is a term used in DOWs instead of Note Taker. Traditional project management documents include proposals, which can be used as references for different project documents.
- These documents have been proven successful in project management but can be adapted to personal tools, workloads, and needs.
- A list of traditional project management documents includes roles and responsibilities (RACI), which is replaced by PACE in social media campaigns.
Q&A Session
The speaker answers questions about setting up a DOW and provides contact information for further discussion.
Setting Up a DOW
- No specific time is given for when a PM should come into the process of setting up a DOW.
- It's important to consider what type of DOW you want to set up before starting the process.
Contact Information
- The speaker encourages anyone interested in discussing operations to reach out for a 15-30 minute call.
Importance of Project Managers
In this section, the speaker discusses the importance of having a project manager in a group and when it is appropriate to bring one on board.
When to Bring on a Project Manager
- If no one in the initial group is an operator or someone who can be visionary but also in the weeds, then it's appropriate to bring on a resource like a project manager.
- If you already have someone that has proven that they do things whether it's for themselves like art projects or events that they've done or volunteer organizations that they've been part of where they have kind of that experience, then you would want to bring on a PM if you don't have anyone to do that because otherwise, it's going to be difficult to get things done.
- A project manager can help create systems and thread together different aspects of the project.
Getting Involved with DAOs
In this section, the speaker talks about how to get involved with DAOs and recommends some DAOs for people interested in governance and operations.
Recommended DAOs for Getting Involved
- Educational onboarding DAOs like Consensus Academy/Education DAO could be a good fit for starting because it gives you kind of history and context of why we're even all videoing this.
- Bankless is great for learning and contributing and getting used to proposing and making collective decision-making.
- Get coin has a very thriving active community that does do a lot of great decision making together and voting and governance.
- The metacartel ecosystem is a great place to start because of all the work that they've done to inspire future DAOs.
Conclusion
In this section, the speaker concludes the talk and thanks everyone for joining.
- The recording will be posted on their YouTube channel shortly.
- The last session will be on Linear, the music ke EVM.