<aside> ⚠️ This document is deprecated. Engineers use Linear for project management
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The purpose of this document is to serve as a reference for how we do project management at Levels. The goal is to create a process that increases velocity rather than one that decreases velocity. All too often, process ends up slowing things down in the interest of visibility and communication. This is the origin of most Jira horror stories, and it's why many engineers (and product leads) recoil when they hear the word "Jira".
As we work to define our process, we should keep that goal in mind and do everything we can to reduce overhead on our product and engineering teams.
<aside> 💡 Keep in mind that Project Management is an iterative process! If you have ideas for ways we can improve the process, or if there are things you find frustrating, definitely let @Sam Corcos and @David Flinner know.
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This document will answer the question, "How do we get work done?" This document does not answer the question, "How do we decide what work we want to get done?" For an answer to that question, you should check out ‣, which goes into greater detail about how Projects are defined and how we prioritize those projects.
One thing to keep in mind is that there's a difference between, "What's my next Task?" and "What's my next Project to work on?". These are the two layers of abstraction that most people at the company will interact with (more on these definitions below).
A Project is a group of Tasks (and sometimes other Projects), whereas a Task is a specific, well-defined, single action to be taken. For example, "Information Architecture v2" is a scoped and defined project that may have ~10 Tasks that are needed to complete the Project.
If you're an Engineer, you'll almost always be the owner of a Project. To figure out what Project you should work on next, you should check out Engineering Available Projects. For more on this, check out the video below.
https://www.loom.com/share/ea591c6de32c405fa4b838a6d327cc4b
Here's a video of @Sam Corcos explaining the high level overview and the intent of how we do project management from the perspective of Engineering in a conversation with @Murillo Nicacio June 8, 2021:
https://www.loom.com/share/c8646bd8fc714150933db77cb5763133
Expand the caret for each of the questions to get the answer