2025-12-23 All Hands

[joecastiglione]

Agenda

• 11C "competitive" approach
• Midyear assessment

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Meeting Notes

Key Discussion Topics

1. Phase 11C Competitive Approach

Background: Follow-up on consortium member discussions about bringing Phase 11C scoping to conclusion. An email was distributed to all consultants outlining a hybrid procurement approach.

Proposed Approach:

• Some tasks assigned to incumbent consultants
• Some tasks have an identified consultant, but consortium open to proposals from other consultants
• Some tasks fully competitive with multiple consultants invited to propose

Timeline Decision:

• Original deadline: January 9th (3 weeks from email)
• REVISED DEADLINE: January 23rd (approved during meeting to accommodate holidays and TRB)
• Goal: Execute all task orders by end of January/mid-February

Rationale for Competitive Process:
The consortium seeks clearer scope definition, technical approaches, and level-of-effort estimates upfront rather than extended collaborative scoping discussions that is proving to be inefficient for Phase 11C.

Data Model / Model Documentation Example: Discussion highlighted inefficient scoping process where task evolved through multiple conversations from "we have to wait until 2.x to define data model" to "we can test developing a data model for trip model only" to "we should develop full 1.X data model", while in parallel the "model documentation / data dictionary" scoping effort seemed to overlap with data model efforts.

2. Mid-Year Assessment

Administrative Transition to Zephyr Foundation

Positives:

• Generally smooth transition from AMPO
• Most agency relationships finalized successfully
• No major issues with contracting or task orders

Areas for Improvement:

• One agency still has outstanding agreements and payment
• One agency outstanding payment only
• Invoice processing experienced delays initially due to distributed review workflow
• Zephyr implementing weekly accounting meetings to improve payment timeliness

Team Structure Evaluation

Current Structure:

• Executive Team (Tuesday, rotating every 3rd week)
• Product & Community Team (Tuesday, rotating every 3rd week)
• All-Hands (Tuesday, rotating every 3rd week)
• Engineering Team (Thursday, weekly)

Feedback on Product & Community Team:

• Agency experience-sharing sessions well-received and informative
• Increased agency engagement compared to previous phases
• Decision: Continue agency presentations every 3 weeks, assign schedule in advance
  • Agencies can present updates, special topics, performance issues, or any topic (not just model updates)

Concerns Raised:

Overlap Between Exec and All-Hands:

• Both meetings covering similar ground
• Suggestion to combine / eliminate one
• Consultants unclear on their role in executive committee

Product / Community Team Clarification Needed:

• Less defined scope compared to engineering team
• Limited activity outside formal meetings (unlike engineering team's ongoing work)
  • Scoping / task order discussions and coordination
  • Invoice reviews
• Question of whether consultants should be formal members

Engineering Team Role Under 11C:

• Consultants questioned engineering team's role when tasks assigned to specific firms
• Joe requested additional information on why competitive process for assigning tasks affects engineering team's technical review process
• Discussion about how to coordinate technical reviews across teams

3. Workflow and Deliverable Review Process

Consultant Questions:

• Who reviews and accepts deliverables?
• What is the approval workflow between teams?
• How many review layers (engineering, product, executive)?

Proposed Workflow (Not Finalized):

1. Work completed by assigned consultant/team
2. Engineering team provides technical review
3. Product & community team evaluates work products and invoices
4. Executive team makes final approval based on recommendations

Outstanding Issues:

• Process not yet tested with larger, more complex tasks
• Need to establish a process for product / community team to oversee individual tasks in Phase 11C
  • Individual P/C member?
  • Subset of P/C members?
  • Staff from a single agency?
• Concern about "finish line" definition and budget risk if multiple review layers request changes
• Well-defined scopes and budgets required to ensure "finish line" / deliverables are well-defined

4. Key Distinctions: Phase 11B vs 11C

Phase 11B Tasks:

• Small, well-defined issues ($4,000-$6,000 range)
• Clear approach to resolution
• Low ambiguity in execution
• Successfully used collaborative "planning poker" budgeting

Phase 11C Tasks:

• Larger scope ($40,000-$60,000 range)
• Multiple potential technical approaches
• Higher complexity and ambiguity
• Examples: data model documentation, telecommute model implementation, application analysis guide

Implication: Collaborative scoping methods that worked for 11B may not scale to 11C's complexity, supporting the competitive proposal approach.

Decisions Made

1. Deadline Extension: Consultant proposals for Phase 11C tasks due January 23rd (extended from January 9th)
2. Agency Presentations: Continue every 3 weeks with pre-assigned schedule allowing flexible content
3. Team Structure Review: Ongoing discussion about combining/eliminating executive and all-hands meetings

Action Items

1. Zephyr Foundation: Send follow-up email confirming January 23rd deadline
2. Zephyr Foundation: Distribute meeting notes promptly to all participants
3. All Participants: Submit feedback on team structure and workflow concerns
4. Consortium Members: Consider recommendations about team membership (agency vs. consultant roles)
5. Product Team: Develop process for assigning oversight of individual Phase 11C tasks

Open Questions

• Should executive and all-hands meetings be combined?
• What is the optimal consultant role on executive and product teams?
• How should deliverable review workflow be structured for larger Phase 11C tasks?
• How to balance collaborative engagement with clear scope definition and budget certainty?