2025-12-30 Executive Team

[joecastiglione]

Agenda

• Follow questions on Phase 11C email and scoping process
• Mid-Year Assessment Follow Up
  • Combining Exec and All-Hands meetings, and implications for meeting schedule
    • Drop All-Hands meeting from calendar, or rename as Exec?
  • Product / Community Team Clarification
    • Activity outside formal meetings
    • Consultant membership / participation
  • Workflow and Deliverable Review Process
• Agency Product / Community committee presentation schedule

Notes

Attendees:

• Guy Rousseau (Atlanta Regional Commission)
• Lisa Zorn
• Stefan
• Jeff Newman
• Jilan Chen (SEMCOG)
• Shirin Qiam (Met Council)
• Others

1. Phase 11C Proposals and Process

The team discussed the Phase 11C email and scoping process. A key clarification was provided regarding joint consultant work: multiple consultancies can collaborate on shared tasks without formal subcontracting arrangements. Each consultant receives the task in their individual task order, with one consultancy designated as the lead responsible for deliverables. This approach mirrors previous successful collaborations on data type optimization and EET work.

Deadline: Proposals due January 23, 2026, with consortium review expected within 2-3 weeks.

2. Meeting Structure Reorganization

Following mid-year assessment feedback, the team addressed unclear distinctions between executive team and all-hands meetings.

Decision: The all-hands meeting will be relabeled as an executive team meeting, held only when substantive agenda items exist. This eliminates redundancy while maintaining flexibility. The product / community team will continue to meet every third week, and the engineering team will continue to meet weekly.

3. Product and Community Team Structure Review

Extensive discussion focused on the Product and Community Team's functioning compared to its defined responsibilities, which include roadmap updates, GitHub issue management, feature requirements development, and coordination with the executive team.

Key Observations

• Team has primarily functioned within formal meetings rather than offline work
• Participation differs from engineering team due to consultant vs. agency staff time allocations
• GitHub issue triaging responsibilities need clarification
• Meeting frequency (every three weeks) may be insufficient for certain tasks

Proposed Solutions

• Empower team leaders (currently Bhargav for product, Jeff for engineering) with executive authority for routine decisions
• Implement co-leader decision-making for straightforward issues
• Escalate complex or ambiguous issues to full team discussion
• Recognize that ActivitySim's issue volume (approximately 10 per month) doesn't require intensive administrative infrastructure

Jeff Newman: "Everything is product. Triaging means determining priority and assignment, not necessarily solving issues."

The team acknowledged differences between the conceptual team structure and operational reality after six months of implementation.

4. Process Documentation and Next Steps

Jilan Chen suggested creating explicit decision-making charts showing which decisions each team can make independently versus those requiring executive team input. The group recognized that current operations depend heavily on individual leaders (Jeff Newman and Bhargav) rather than documented processes.

Action Items

• Executive team: Conduct intensive review of team structures and responsibilities
• Schedule small-group meeting (cameras-on, highly engaged) for the Tuesday after Transportation Research Board (TRB) conference
• Solicit feedback from engineering and product teams before executive team meeting
• Leverage informal TRB discussions among attending members
• Update team structure documentation to reflect actual practices and improved processes

5. Agency Presentations

The team discussed the community presentation schedule, which received strong support in the previous meeting. Presentations can cover any ActivitySim-relevant topic, not just specific model development updates, to encourage broader participation.

Action: Agencies encouraged to sign up for presentation slots on the shared schedule.

6. Upcoming Schedule

• No engineering team meeting Thursday (holiday week)
• Small group team meetings Tuesday, January 7, 2026
• TRB annual gathering: Beau Thai restaurant lunch scheduled