NPPS Leadership Team

["Van Buren, Gene" <gene AT bnl.gov>]

I just looked at Dmitri Smirnov's list of current activities according to his own highlights page, and here's what I would note....

1. He's working on upgrading the gcc version and C++ standard for STAR builds. This is something he has done in a vacuum with no discussion with the STAR S&C management of the benefits, requirements, and effort involved. I'm not doubting there are benefits, but this approach is characteristic of his behavior pattern and could lead to the (not new) situation where he feels he has done what he needs to do, the rest of the work is on others to do, and then his work may not get used because he hasn't pursued a coordinated team effort from the start.

2. He then uses the phrase... "After lots of team work and collaboration"....when referring to a new code library release. It's unclear to me why he is highlighting this point because multi-person code review has been an imposed consequence of the git arrangement he has setup. I'm not sure what he is thinking of specific to the current release. Perhaps he has heard his teamwork and collaboration behavior has been criticized?

-Gene

On Jul 21, 2022, at 12:26 PM, Torre Wenaus <wenaus AT gmail.com> wrote:

Hong advised me not to circulate the full slide deck, only the summary, which I put on tomorrow's NPPS meeting agenda.

Leadership team meeting, probably short, to follow the group meeting.

  Torre

On Mon, Jul 18, 2022 at 2:51 PM Van Buren, Gene <gene AT bnl.gov> wrote:

I'll share some thoughts...

Given the sample size of 17 and the likely correlation of responses across at least a few of the metrics, it looks to me like two particularly unhappy individuals. It's quite possible that addressing concerns with those two by some means may already be (have been) in action since the time of the survey.

Focusing on what else can be done within the group and not focusing on comparison to the rest of Physics Dept., I think it would be good to think about how to get a few of the people to move from neutral to "agree" on receiving feedback to improve performance (slide 76), "The people I work with cooperate to get the job done" (slide 29), and "The people in my work group adapt easily to new ways of doing things" (slide 65, on which I'll admit I myself have room for improvement).

The prevalent neutrality on cooperation across directorates/departments (slide 31) may be just as much from the message that NPSS group members hear from us as from their own experiences. The Leadership Team likely already agrees that competition for resources between NPPS, CSI, SDCC needs some better coordination from above (e.g. Dept. Chair).

I was particularly impressed with the positivity toward people feeling encouraged to innovate (slide 32) and feeling empowered (slide 69).

-Gene

On Jul 18, 2022, at 3:56 PM, Torre Wenaus via Phys-npps-mgmt-l <Phys-npps-mgmt-l AT lists.bnl.gov> wrote:

Hi all,

This is interesting, deep dive survey results for NPPS. 'A' is Physics Dept, 'B' is NPPS.

We do better than the dept in all areas except, somewhat mystifyingly, collaboration!

Summary is on slides 6-7. 

Interested to have any thoughts, comments. Will circulate to the full group later.

  Torre

--

-- Torre Wenaus, BNL NPPS Group, ATLAS Experiment

-- BNL 510A 1-222 | 631-681-7892

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-- Torre Wenaus, BNL NPPS Group, ATLAS Experiment

-- BNL 510A 1-222 | 631-681-7892