Destiny Kanno 12:54 am on October 22, 2022  

Managing Projects and Terminology: DRI

tl;dr Recently the term “DRIDRI Directly Responsible Individual - the people who are taking ownership or responsibility for a particular project or feature.” was used in the Project Proposal: Content Localization post. This term does not seem to be widely used in the WordPress Community, although I did find an instance of it in use by the Marketing and Communications team in this release cycle documentation guide).

DRI stands for Directly Responsible Individual, or in other words, the main point of contact for either the whole project/task or parts of the project/task. It is a term often used for project management purposes.

In my proposal, the goal was not necessarily for the Training Team to adopt this terminology, but to help name who folks can refer to or consult with during the duration of the project. 

Types of DRIsDRI Directly Responsible Individual - the people who are taking ownership or responsibility for a particular project or feature.

This is not an exhaustive list, but outlined below are a couple of DRI titles for folks to review:

Project Lead

This person is the main point of contact of the project and works to ensure the project’s overall success by performing tasks, managing timelines and working collaboratively with members on the project. 

Project Member(s)

This person is the main point of contact for their specific task or group of tasks in the project. They can work on their task individually or with others, but they are responsible for making sure their part of the project is completed. 

How are DRIs assigned?

The Project Lead can be the project proposer or an assigned individual selected during proposal discussions; likewise, project members are decided upon during the proposal stage and can be added / altered during the duration of the project.

@hlashbrooke has updated the Make WordPress glossary to help folks understand what DRI means in the future. 

I do hope that with this post there is more clarity on this terminology, and how we may potentially use this project management terminology in the future if we so like. 

Thank you to @azhiyadev for your advice to make this post– words, and clarity around them, matter. 🙂