Call for Management and Reporting System/Process ideas

Frank Arrigo just announced our new team structure, so far it's been great fun being part of the big family.

One challenge Frank has given me as part of our career discussion recently is:

"I would like to have Anna assist in putting some structure and process in the management reporting needed for the expanded Technical Evangelism team and look forward to her contribution there"

Yikes - help anyone?

I must admit I did once upon a time manage a group of 12 research scientists at the CSIRO, and regarding reporting for the group - I did it by brute force - ie. gathered their monthly reports, and manually produced what's required reporting for my management a level above. Boy was that hard (and not so interesting) work!

Is there a smarter way of doing this? so that everyone in the team is empowered with more autonomy? and individuals can lead various inititatives at different times, and taking on portions of the reporting responsibilities? this system should ideally also enable more visibility across the team, with most up to date reporting data, hence more meaningful collaboration between all members can naturally happen?

Ah! what's this box that I'm using as footrest? a box of USB/Optical Mouse in the most fashinable colour black? Maybe that's a nice goodie to tempt you all to send me your brilliant/wacky/cool ideas and help me do my work? :-)