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Management and Oversight

It is our view that the current management structure works well, and strikes a reasonable balance between autonomy for and oversight of the Project Manager. Thus any change to the structure must be motivated by the transition to operations. Lines of command and responsibility must remain clear, both inside the consortium sites and within the Project. Thus the reporting line of Executive Committee - Project Manager - Site Managers - Project staff should be maintained if at all possible. We note that the lack of a formal line of responsibility of Site Managers to Project Manager works satisfactorily in most cases. It will be a challenge to maintain this aspect under the increased pressure of operations.

Although we hesitate to suggest an overly structured management scheme, we do think that some formal recognition of the de facto sub-structuring of the Project is probably overdue. We have group leaders in various areas: System, Core library, Synthesis, Single Dish, Visualization, etc. Currently most activities in these groups are monitored at a detailed level by the Project Manager. In the long-term, this is not feasible and we need to move to a situation where the sub-group leaders take more explicit responsibility for setting, assigning, and monitoring targets. A common philosophy and framework for management within the sub-groups can be imposed by the Project Manager.

In addition, we need to add explicitly an Operations Manager who oversees the day-to-day operations, freeing the Project Manager to concentrate more on longer-term issues. This Operations Manager would report to the Project Manager.

Advisory and oversight roles should be added to this proposed structure. From the discussion in the previous sections, we believe that two advisory groups are required:

AIPS++ User Group

This group of representative users of AIPS++ meets annually (or perhaps bi-annually initially) to advise the AIPS++ Project management. It should be a large group with representatives of all three classes of clients: Observatories, Astronomers and Programmers. Moderate and long term issues are discussed in this group.

AIPS++ Technical Working Group

This is an internal group that meets often, perhaps monthly or quarterly, to advise the Project Management on detailed technical issues. It is here that short-term development issues are discussed. We recommend that this be composed of no more than a dozen people drawn from the inner circles of the Project and thus limited to those with deep knowledge of working inside the system.

These two advisory groups report directly to the Project Manager. Note that these roles are currently fulfilled by the Scientific and Technical Advisory Group that reports directly to the Project Manager. We think the STAG should evolve into these two groups over a few years.

To provide oversight on overall project management issues, we suggest that the Executive Committee may wish to appoint another group that reports directly to it on management of the project. We suggest that this group be small and be composed of more senior people with direct experience in astronomical software and astronomical software management.