CP-003 Application for DAO Project Manager

Objective

This proposal is for the Threshold Network DAO to fund the Threshold project manager (PM).

I am submitting this proposal after having been invited to attend several DAO meetings, and a meeting sync between the teams. My observations of the current needs from the DAO come from the audits of these meetings plus the insights I obtained by reading the public discord channels and the Threshold Notion.

Environment

This PM role will be developed in the Threshold DAO environment, where there is a strong need for fluent and smooth collaborations and communications between the following entities:

  • The DAO community.
  • The Threshold Guilds: Integrations Guild, Marketing Guild, Treasury Guild.
  • The Keep team.
  • The NuCypher team.
  • The thUSD team.

Scope

The role of the PM in this environment would be shaped as a facilitator, where the main pillars in which it would be founded are: visibility and communication.

Through visibility, understanding and acknowledgement are achieved. It is necessary to provide an up-to-date single source of truth for the teams and the Guilds, to communicate their lines of work, their resources, their successes and lessons learned. This central knowledge source should be available to consult from any member of the community.

Communication processes are needed to keep the community informed about the different initiatives, their progress and successes. Also, mechanisms should be put in place to receive inputs and requests from the community, where new ideas can be included in the line of work, enriching the community (and avoiding losing these insights in the background of the discord channels).

It is through communication that effective management is achieved. Keeping track of the different teams’ work in progress will help unblock the problems and interdependencies arising, and mitigate their impact on the different initiatives within Threshold. A document scoping the competencies for the Threshold PM is provided here.

It’s important to note that the Threshold PM position does not hold a higher hierarchy over any team, being independent from them and reporting this way only to the DAO. As a facilitator role, its focus is to introduce visibility and communication processes. Teams and guilds will continue to be independent and self-sovereign.

My background

I currently work as a Technical Program Manager at a SW development company in the web2 environment, where I’m doing a founding PM job bringing processes and standards to the company’s DevOps department (currently composed of 3 sub-departments, having 3 squads of engineers each) in order to align their ways of work with the company-wide processes. Here I find the usual clashes of agile although very procedural groups (working in sprints and following structured processes), with non-procedural working efforts guided by a kanban-style methodology. A situation similar to the one occurring within the Threshold community.

Regarding my studies, I have a Bs and a Ms in Computer Science with major focuses on SW Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, and Project Management. I developed my master thesis in Project Management, focused on the study of agile methodologies, analyzing the most popular ones applied to the IT world, procedures and useful guides and tools to manage them. Later on, I got a Google certification as Project Manager.

I also have a PhD in cyber security, focused on the protection of the information in Critical Infrastructures. Here, my thesis was oriented from the perspective of Business Analysis, where I studied the main characteristics and needs of complex interconnected legacy systems, in need of preemptive security mechanisms such as Intrusion Detection/Prevention Systems and the possible security AI-driven actuators. As part of my work in research, I have participated in many national and international projects that involved coordinating efforts from both academic institutions and different industries.

Additionally, I have a deep domain knowledge about the different initiatives being developed in Threshold, and I am especially acquainted with the PRE project and the NuCypher team, since I have a personal relationship with @davidnunez. This allowed me to follow the project since its inception and gain deep knowledge on this particular space. This will reduce the job’s entry barrier and the regular onboarding time period.

Cost

This proposal is for a Project Manager position in the Threshold community. The overall conditions are very similar to the thUSD proposals to the DAO.

  • Rate $500 USD per day paid in T, USDC and/or ETH.
    • The T token and ETH price taken as the global average price as recorded on coingecko for the day that the work was completed.
    • This rate is consistent with the Project Manager allocation in the current budget proposal.
  • Hours reviewed and approved fortnightly.
  • Tokens transferred monthly.

FAQ

Q: Would you consider reducing the budget?

A: A budget reduction would be difficult, however, I would consider starting with a reduced number of hours allocated to the job, and setting a process for progressively increasing the weekly number of hours.

Q: When can you start?

A: When a vote passes and a review team is selected and approved, I can start contributing part-time. After July 15th, I can start to work full-time.

Q: How many days a week can you commit?

A: 5

Q: Will your personal relationship to @davidnunez from the NuCypher team impact your ability to work together?

A: I don’t think this will be an issue, since the PM work will serve as facilitator among the different teams and groups present in the Threshold community. NuCypher team is just one of the actors present and this position holds no higher hierarchy over any team or guild, being independent from them and reporting only to the DAO. The main tasks needing interfacing with the teams would be roadmap check-ins, status check-ins and communications provided to the teams for visibility (executive summaries, updates and synchronizations).

11 Likes

I strongly support this proposal, I think having a PM to help assist with the dependency management across everything will help free up some of the teams time.

8 Likes

I also strongly support!

We’re still merging, every day — and while our communities and networks have both made a lot of progress, our working practices and comms are still pretty disjoint across teams and guilds. A strong, DAO-aligned project manager can do wonders.

@Luna5, your mix of deep cyber security and project management expertise is really uncommon. Excited to see what we can do together :slight_smile:

8 Likes

I also support this proposal!

@Luna5 has already joined quite a few DAO contributor calls and I think will add a ton of value around the DAO.

7 Likes

(This is exclusively my personal position, not from NuCypher. Also, due to our personal relationship, which @Luna5 discloses in the proposal, I will refrain from voting.)

As a core participant of the merger between NuCypher and Keep, I can attest how important (and needed!) a Threshold-level coordination layer can be. It’s been a bit over a year since we started this merger, and, while I’m very satisfied with the results so far, it’s becoming clear there are impending risks if we lose cohesion in our work. The fact that, to date, it’s not clear sometimes where responsibilities lie on is a clear sign that we need extra help to correctly align our efforts. This is true not only for the original Threshold teams, but also for the guilds and the new teams that are being funded by the DAO (currently, the thUSD team, but there may be more in the future!).

With respect to @Luna5, I can vouch for her, and for her value and experience. I know her for roughly 15 years, we studied Computer Science together, and formed part of the same research group where we both obtained our PhDs. Although sadly we never shared research topics (I focused on Cryptography and Proxy Re-Encryption :wink:, she on Cybersecurity), I can safely say I have first-hand experience of her formative years. I also watched her thrive in the different academic and professional environments, and particularly, on everything related to management and coordination activities, and I can attest for @Luna5’s exquisite care in what she does.

Also, hiring in web3 is hard! And for a DAO it’s even more difficult. Finding talent that’s valuable, that shows interest and knowledge about the project and that’s willing to take the risk to leave a safe job to join a DAO is a rare opportunity, which in my humble opinion we should strongly take.

8 Likes

I have voted in support of this proposal to hire Luna5 as I believe a PM has quickly become a critical need for the DAO. In order for everyone to be properly aligned and have excellent communication across the various parts of our DAO, it is essential to have someone responsible for connecting all of the moving pieces. I have personally spoken to @Luna5 on a few occasions as she has been actively observing and authoring this proposal over the previous months. Based on these discussions and her participation in the MG, I believe she is the ideal candidate. She is intimately familiar with Threshold and will require very little foundational knowledge building to get started.

Luna sent me this when she saw my notes:

(not really but it felt like a fitting meme)

2 Likes

This TIP has been moved to SnapShot: https://snapshot.org/#/threshold.eth/proposal/0x436c8e44e5aeb9dce73520d7359da08b1f5b34ffd5dd4a44e0a6988e1eeb5559

2 Likes

Wow Luna, exciting curricula you’re bringing to the DAO !
Thank you for your application !

2 Likes

Thank you all for your kind support! I am really excited to work with all of you in threshold!

2 Likes