PTC - Introduction

How to read this document

It’s best to treat chapters as buckets whose content was mostly filled when the chapter was first written, but may have received extra content later. Chapters towards the end have usually been written later and may be more up-to-date with the entire PTC concept whose details are changing as more is understood.

The Project Technical Coordinator aim

The Project Technical Coordinator (PTC) role aims at providing a responsible for coordinating DATA Dept resource usage requests resulting from project implementation procedures.

DATA resources

DATA resource are:

  • DATA FTEs (CTRL, DA, DETOP includes CAL, EEE and ITDM) required to perform work, and
  • DATA Finances required to pay for DATA items used.

Procedures handled

Procedures are workflows which aim at accompanying an idea through design, implementation and commissioning stages until its final handover as a working object. Procedures should expose an efficient way for idea owners to work out which procedure is best suited for their idea and provide an efficient workflow concept of how to get the work organized. The word idea is used above to underline ownership, it’s somebodies idea, and that responsibility remains throughout even though a procedure gets involved with organizing and DATA with implementing. It should also not be surprising that many ideas are running through many procedures concurrently and like all competitions, some will be rejected, others will be cancelled or delayed, and many will succeed. In the remainder of this document project will be used rather than idea, it’s less prosaic.

Procedures which require DATA resources are:

  • XO-procedure (launched 2020): improving the operation and preparation for operation of experiments at the facility.
  • PMO-procedure (launched Autumn 2019) : focuses on beamline and instrument development projects which exceed a (large) resource usage threshold.
  • ERD-procedure (launched Spring 2020): specifies how a single piece of equipment is integrated into DATA services.
  • CRD-procedure (relaunched mid-Nov 2020): specifies how a component of many equipment pieces is integrated into DATA services.

The R&D procedure is not included in the list because R&D projects provide their own resources and do not require DATA resources other than daily support. This sounds good, but a definition of daily support is needed and methods for monitoring its usage are required.

The facility’s move from contruction and commisioning to operation left a number of instrument completion projects either not planned or not implemented. PMO intends to close and relaunch the latter if still required and allow those nearing completion to proceed with daily support.

Additional DATA resource using procedures should not exist, if they did they would be a resource leak and make the PTC mandate unworkable. This also applies to developments started by DATA groups themselves.

The mandate

Most DATA members will have suggestions for improving coordination of DATA resources. Here are the project procedure points highlighted by the Dept Head.

  • Focus on efficient DATA handling of a procedure project.
  • Define methods to be used by DATA to handle procedure projects.
  • Promote DATA methods into procedures.
  • Add or coalesce procedures if needed.
  • Support improvements to existing procedures.
  • Prevent work side-stepping procedures.
  • Act as the gatekeeper for procedure project requests and their handling.
  • Monitor DATA resource usage by procedures.
  • Define roles, delegation paths, and (re-)establish procedure project communication.
  • Report to the Dept. Head.

PTC resources

PTC has no resources, its success depends on supporting contibutions from the Dept as a whole, which means

  • Dept members need a clear understanding of how PTC works, i.e. suitable documentation is needed and a reason for reading this document!
  • The status of procedure projects needs to be visible to all.
  • In addition to procedure project meetings regular review meetings are needed to maintain an even knowledge level.
  • Lessons need to be learned from mistakes, i.e. asking what has been missed should be second nature.
  • Meeting and management tools, similar to sharepoint, are needed to imrove (PTC) meeting efficiency.

Next steps

Let’s assume the PTC solution is obvious and, rather than analyse existing inefficiencies first, go straight for the solution in the next ‘Big Picture’ chapter. Later chapters describe how PTC will work with long and short procedure types defined in the big picture. Long procedures place similar requirements on DATA and as more experience has been gained with the PMO procedure this will be described first with XO inheriting substantial parts. The short procedures ERD followed by CRD are then described. Thereafter the PTC interface is specified followed by a chapter describing PTC and procedure management support software tooling. Issues relating to project visibility and scheduling followed by a glossary are then described.

The glossary is importand as the work set used in project planning is small, e.g. project is (re-)used excessively. To understand the difference between procedure workflow and implementation workflow in this document read the glossary before moving on!