Project stewardship

Most projects have a 'project steward' whose role is to support staff and collaborators throughout the project life-cycle, fulfilling a role similar to what others organisations would call project management.

This role is importantly distinct from project management, as their role is to facilitate the team to achieve the project, not to manage anyone within the team or necessarily direct the course of the work (though teams can decide autonomously they want them to have this role, see Stewarding Style).

Auto-Stewarding, or where a project does not have a steward

Some projects do not have stewards and the person doing the work will steward them themselves: auto-stewarding.

These projects have the following character:

  • We have such a solid relationship with the collaborator that having a steward is redundant.
  • The time to be spent on the project is so small that having a steward is excessive.
  • The project is a support contract, where the Support and Quality Engineer owns the whole domain, and is de facto auto-steward for all projects of this kind.

When reporting on projects in team meetings, auto-stewards speak to the project in the same way as other stewards.

It is still important to reflect and feel supported in an auto-stewarded project, so you can either use Cycle Planning meetings to solicit advice or turn up to the Project Steward Circle as you need to. Auto-stewards can also request for a formal steward if it becomes necessary in their view.

Project Steward Circle

The co-op delegates project management to a circle. This circle is at minimum three people with at least one member. Any member of staff can decide to join this circle, but it is not expected that staff join it. The capacity of the circle will be augmented by trusted external project managers as required. Staff can leave the circle at any time, but need to complete their active projects before doing so, as one reason for having stewards at all is to ensure reasonable continuity for external collaborators.

This circle has a regular meeting, to provide an opportunity for skill sharing and trouble shooting.

The Circle does not schedule or resource individuals onto work, this remains the responsibility of the whole coop during the Forward Planning or Cycle Planning meetings. This avoids the “despotism of the project management circle”, where project management controls the resourcing of people onto projects and has disproportionate power.

Meetings to attend

We have:

  • The Project Steward Circle, which meets at a pace it decides.
  • A forward planning meeting for future projects every 6 weeks.

Assigning a project steward

A project steward is normally assigned close to when it has been signed off on, and before it has begun. Collaborators will be put in touch with the steward. The steward should remain with the project from beginning to end.

Stewards are normally uninvolved in day-to-day delivery work (e.g. engineering or design) so they can provide an 'outside' perspective on process, but they'll usually be familiar with the nature of the work so they can offer useful insight.

General responsibilities

The project steward is the client's first point of contact for anything to do with the collaboration and will keep them up to date on budget, progress, scheduling and special arrangements.

  • Advocating for the project within the co-op. Reminding us why we are doing this and what is needed to make it a success.
  • Point of communication for the client. Ensures a consistent presence for the life-cycle of the project.
  • Budget monitoring. Helps all parties to deliver the project within budget and raises concerns when a project is badly over budget.

Because working in isolation on a project can be overwhelming or lonely, other responsibilities of a steward may include:

  • information manager and context holder
  • scope definer
  • morale booster
  • process person
  • muse

Stewarding style

Before embarking on a project, stewards will have an explicit conversation with people on the project team about the sort of stewarding they like, for example:

  • Is it light touch, I just manage the relationship with the collaborator and send the emails and keep pace, but you also can talk to them directly a fair bit?
  • Is it more heavy duty, where I as steward basically give you a bunch of issues on Linear and you just make them?

Particular responsibilities

Communications

  • Default replier to emails and other client comms, unless delegated or common sense prevails that someone else should answer the email.

Invoicing

  • Submitting invoicing to the client. Our projects are generally invoiced on a monthly basis, but it's your job to know the details of the contract and the specifics of the financial arrangements and agreements. The Finance steward will chase outstanding invoices.

Linear

Capacity modelling

  • Productive.io scheduling. In collaboration with the team, book in scheduled time for team members so that we can eyeball busy and quiet periods in the work calendar.
  • Maintain the Cashflow Model for your project. Add projected invoices to the Confirmed Inflow and Potential Inflow sections.

Process

  • Organising an internal retrospective after the project concludes

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