Action Plan for Loksatta Portal

After talking to Mr. Krishna Prasad we have agreed to go ahead with the project. So here is my action plan for now.

• Tools needed for the team
• Team members
• Make list of things to do
• Distribute the work

Tools needed for the team
There are many problems with such large distributed projects. Some of them are listed here...

1. People from different time zones participate. Communication is difficult.
2. Difficult to arrive at a decision. Due to lack of trust and information.
   
3. Meeting personally takes weeks, and very costly affair.
   
4. People come and go in unpredictable way.

From my experience in handling software projects, I believe we need to do the following to address these issues.

1. Use latest technology like Email, Skype Audio/Video chat, IM, online discussions instead of traditional way of meeting personally.
2. Use project management tools to track the progress and take quick decisions.
3. Split project into many modules and assign individual tasks to people or groups. It will increase the speed of work and reduce the requirement of trust.
4. Have a central place(online) to discuss, plan and work.

Team members
I consider myself as a facilitator. My responsibility is to create the team and create resources to make the project success. Once the team is formed, most of the decisions will be taken by the module leads. I will just co-ordinate between these modules leads and make sure that overall project is a success.

I don't think any single person can do all the things that I have planned. So we need your support. Any interested person can join us.

I will take making the list of people who can help and in what way. We will rank them based on how much they can do for the project. Based on our experience and possible contribution we can share the modules.

Make list of things to do
We need to make a list of things that we need to do and rank them based on importance. We will split them in to modules and each module will be done by one group of people.

Distribute the work
Once we know what to do and split into modules, it will be easy for us to do the work in parallel and from time to time we will discuss new issues and changes to plan.

So interested people, please express your interest as a reply.