Posts Tagged ‘communication’

The Bumpy Washboard Anti-Pattern

I came across this great blog from Leading Answers, which made me think of a bumpy adventure I had while driving through our wonderful state of Arizona on a return trip from Las Vegas.  I came upon a fatality accident, which we all know will keep the road closed for hours.  I had the choice of driving all the way back to the Interstate (a known route that would add 6 hours to the trip), or taking a detour down an unknown route.  Yes, you guessed it, I took the unknown detour thinking it would save time!  The detour started out fine until it turned into a dirt road and darkness fell.  6 hours later on what turned out to be a very bumpy dirt road, I made it back on the interstate.  If I had gone the original route with the smoother surface, it would have taken the same amount of time, but there would have been less wear and tear on my car, my stress level, and my hindquarters.  If you can remove the bumps in a project so there aren’t gaps in knowledge, then while it may still take the same length of time, there will be less wear and tear on the whole project team as everyone is able to collaborate to achieve the objectives.

Wash-boarding is an instability that occurs when vehicles move on dirt roads. What starts off with a small bump turns into a whole series of small bumps as vehicles travel the road. Washboard roads are more dangerous than smooth dirt roads and have to be driven at lower speeds. All these bumps are a pain in the rear (literally) and make you go slower.

We see the resourcing equivalent of washboard roads in projects too. Traditional projects staff early with business analysts to do the bulk of the requirements gathering and then bring in developers and finally QA people. These peaks and valleys of specialization not only look like a washboard road, but they have the same effect, they are a pain in the rear and make you go slower.

You can read the piece here:  http://leadinganswers.typepad.com/leading_answers/2011/06/the-washboard-anti-pattern.html

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 12th, 2011 at 5:00 pm and is filed under Leadership, Project Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Project Teams in Space: The Times Are Changin’ (Again)

What makes for a productive software development office environment?   How much “close” company is too much, and how much isolation and quiet is simply too much?  When is an interruption welcome and needed, and when is it a mental reboot that sets back focus by 15-30 minutes each and every time it hits?  When is management’s new ‘space plan’ about creating great teamwork, and when is it about seeing how many people can be crammed into the smallest number of square feet of costly grade A office space?

As near as I can tell, there are no absolute answers to these questions, just a a series of tradeoffs that each manager needs to evaluate in putting together a plan for how the work environment for their team best goes together.  But while there may not be final answers, there sure are fads and trends. Let me give you a hint – the trend is not heading towards more square footage per person in most places, although there is still a movement afoot to keep the noise to a dull roar in some of the more technically intense shops.  Cara Garretson of ComputerWord put together a nice piece that talks about where these trends are heading just now.  The piece is worth a look.

 

 

Cubicle wars: Best and worst office setups for tech workers

Open office layouts are all the rage these days. But is that how IT folks work best?

By Cara Garretson

ComputerWord 2011

Computerworld – Consider the modern office layout: Open floor plan, lots of common space flooded with natural light, clusters of “pods” with low partitions (or none), all designed to encourage teamwork, boost productivity and — management hopes — improve the bottom line.

That type of office layout looks great on the company’s Web site, and most likely the creative team loves it, but does IT? After all, many high-tech employees prefer to work in solitude, or at least in an environment quiet enough to foster intense concentration for significant chunks of time. Are these trendy open office layouts torture to the techie brain?

To be sure, Web 2.0 has birthed new types of technology employees who depend on — even thrive by — working in groups. Web designers and developers, project managers, system architects, even some software developers are embracing office layouts that encourage interaction. Practitioners of the Agile Software Development movement have even come up with templates for office furniture arrangements that are physical embodiments of the Agile principles of openness and collaboration (see example, below).

On the other hand, asking programmers or network administrators to do their jobs in an open space where noise, distractions and interruptions abound can be akin, for some of them at least, to departmental decimation.

 

Read all from Garretson’s  article here.

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This entry was posted on Sunday, April 24th, 2011 at 2:08 pm and is filed under Agile Development, Business Drivers, Entrepreneur, IT Professional Services, Project Management, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

An 8 Step Program for Recovering Micromanagers Like Me

Getting peak performance from a great project team is no mean feat. What can make the challenge particularly intense is a senior and seasoned team, combined with a complex project that requires large amounts of interaction and communication to coordinate effectively. For those PM’s highly skilled in the art of ruthless task management and no holds barred follow-up, it is not hard to let diligent and very necessary pursuit of closure outcomes slip into annoying and counterproductive micromanagement.

Why is this especially a concern with more senior teams? Because many senior people are often much better able to rise to the occasion of contributing to solving hard problems when the team environment both allows and encourages them to do so; and they are often the most likely to get bent out of shape and experience falling productivity when their manager starts to give detailed input on how to spend each minute of day.

I saw a recent blog post that was nicely on point to this issue, from the PM Alliance. I excerpt it below, but the slightly longer piece is worth the read as well here.

Credit: iStockPhoto.com

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8 Ways to Banish Your Inner Micromanager

By PM Alliance President, April 2, 2011

1 – Stop hovering. If you find yourself peering over a teammate’s shoulder, step back …

2 – Ask fewer questions. That’s right—instead of assuming that you need to request every bit of data you want, you should be relying on your team to keep you informed proactively [and holding them accountable for doing so]…

3 – Delegate more. Micromanagers are famous for giving tasks away without ever really letting go, and sometimes for not giving tasks away at all…

4 – Stick to working hours. Some projects require overtime, but constantly pulling employees’ brains back to work after they’ve gone home is just a variation of hovering…

5 – Empower your team. Are your employees forced to seek approval for every decision, from the big stuff all the way down to day-to-day minutiae? Set up a process that instills responsibility and grants authority based on each staff member’s seniority and experience.

6 – Watch your temper. Getting overly upset or losing your cool with employees is a classic sign of a micromanager. It frequently leads to hovering and incessant questioning, both of which you want to avoid. When you feel something isn’t going well, stop. Take a minute, gather your composure…

7 – Take mistakes in stride. Glitches are the siren song of the micromanager—they make it easy to doubt your team’s abilities, assume you have to do everything yourself, and generally make life miserable for those around you. Remember that mistakes happen to the best of us…

8 – Don’t let your boss bring you down. If your boss is a micromanager (or perhaps just a difficult personality), you may find yourself offloading stress by funneling your frustration and anger into your team. It’s a tough position to be in, but you somehow need to separate the way you’re being treated from how you treat your team…

 

As I said at the start, this is just an excerpt; the whole article is worth reading at: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/project-management-tips/8-ways-to-banish-your-inner-micromanager-45275 BTW, the PMAlliance, Inc. is a project management consulting, project management training and project office development company that helps Fortune 1000 companies improve the execution of their mission-critical projects.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 15th, 2011 at 3:30 pm and is filed under Agile Development, IT Professional Services, Leadership, Project Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

Projects introduce change….which needs managing

speed

On a recent training course the idea of change was discussed and the best solutions for this element of project management were suggested to be:

1. Communicate throughout the change.

2. Wherever possible involve people in the change.

3. Recognise the new skills and behaviours that people need to adopt.

4. Develop a clear vision about what the company wants to achieve.

5. Clearly identify risks.

6. Test motivation levels

7. Recognise that no matter how hard you try, there will still be some people who will not ‘come on board’

8. Face up to the fact that you may well have to have those difficult conversations.

9. Ensure you have a plan.

10. Clear leadership is needed in any change.

But one critical aspect that experts agree on is Speed. The lack of speed caused them extra problems.

To read more, click here.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 21st, 2010 at 8:38 am and is filed under Project Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

What Do Team Members Want From Their Project Manager?

ProjectManager

Project teams, want a project manager with the basic character traits, trust, integrity, respect and honestly. But a good project manager possess much more than these basic traits, a project team wants a manager that skilled at:

  • Information sharing.
  • If you don’t know—say so.
  • If you can’t say because you are under a promise of confidentiality—don’t lie.
  • Protection or “executive cover”.
  • Stretch your team with assignments.
  • Recognize a task or deliverable that is well done and give feedback.
  • Provide a clear understanding of what each team member is responsible for.
  • Try to solve problems identified by the team.
  • Be there when the going gets tough.
  • Defend the team from unreasoned and unreasonable demands.
  • Treat the team members like people who have lives outside the office.

    • To read more, click here.

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    This entry was posted on Monday, January 25th, 2010 at 5:26 pm and is filed under Project Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.