While working with agile teams - do you constantly fear that your team will soon become a self driven team and will no longer need you?
Is it always your worry that your agile team will stop giving you the importance of a PM?
Fear not.......
Here are 5 simple but highly effective tips that are guaranteed to make you an indispensable PM on your project.
Tip 1: Be the decision maker
As a PM, be the decision maker. Make decisions left, right & centre. Whether it is on ramp-up or roll-offs, release plans or deadlines, you should be the one deciding. Don't even think of consulting your team before making decisions. The more you consult, the more it becomes a collaborative exercise. The more collaborative you become the more redundant you start getting. Remember making decisions on your own, will make the team dependent on you.
Tip 2: Talk to the key stakeholders
Always talk to key stakeholders, but remember to do it alone as much as possible. If you include your team members, they will start owning these discussions and your dependency will start reducing. Don't ever allow that to happen. More & more stakeholder needs to look at you as the crucial person on the team and hence the indispensable one.
Tip 3: Communicate
Communication is essential but not everything needs to be communicated all the time. Remember the more you expose your cards, the more easy it is for the team to take over. Never give all information out at once. Show your importance and keep passing information only at critical times. You can always pretend to be shielding the team from unnecessary noise. The more information you hold, the more you are needed on the team.
Tip 4: Use Tools
Keep stressing the need for using virtual tools than physical walls. Keep pointing out how difficult it is to maintain both physical and virtual walls. Especially if you have distributed teams, more the reason for having a common source of truth & hence a virtual wall. This reduces the visibility that the team normally gets from visual clues. Then it is up to you to highlight all the risks and foreseeing the challenges the team might face. You automatically start becoming more and more important on the team.
Tip 5: Customer is the King
Finally, believe in the age old principle that Customer is the King. Agree to everything that customer says, however unreasonable it is. Never push back the customer. Never check with the team before committing to the customer. Go ahead and commit to deadlines and other plans as asked by the customer. Make the customer Happy.
Once you take all these measures, the team will be under constant pressure. The team will have no time at hand to think beyond day to day tasks. They will not be able to spare time to think about big picture or other corrective measures. Everyone will be dependent only on you. As time passes you will start getting more and more control of the project.
Try these tips on your projects and don't forget to leave comment about your experiences.
PS: Incase the subtlety is not obvious, this is a sarcastic take on being a PM on agile teams. These are anti-patterns to to be aware about. PMs and teams should work towards being self sufficient and one of the success criteria for a PM is to make himself/herself redundant as early as possible.
Wednesday 21 January 2015
Saturday 17 January 2015
Building a Feedback Culture in Teams with Feedback Fridays
I got my first exposure to feedback friday's in one of the first projects I did in ThoughtWorks. I was quite amazed to see how such a simple idea becomes a very effective tool for building a strong feedback culture within the team. From then on, I have used Feedback Friday whenever I am on new teams that are just starting or on teams where feedback is not one of the routines.
Here are few steps that I take to start & monitor feedback friday
Step 1: Day & Time for feedback
Identify a day a time for feedback. As the name suggests, we typically do this on a Friday but there is no hard and fast rule. It is just any convenient day for the team. The time should be such were the entire team is able to spare the time without being bothered for calls, meetings etc. I have found it ideal to devote time immediately after the morning stand-up as everyone is yet to start their work. Trying to carve out time in the middle of the day becomes tough, as people do not like to break flow of work, and by end of the day people are already exhausted.
Step 2: Duration & Place of Feedback
Duration of feedback should not be too long nor should it be too short. Starting with 45 minutes and gradually reducing to 30 minutes works really well as teams start getting into a habit of exchanging feedbacks.
The team needs some place away from desks and laptops to focus only on feedbacks. I have typically booked big meeting rooms for entire team to sit.
Step 3: The Feedback Process
Once the basic logistic are in place, the entire team assembles in the room. Each person picks-up a card and writes feedback for another person on the team. There are NO rules - the person decides for whom the feedback is to be written, for how many people, how detailed or short it needs to be. The only rule is to be present and think & write feedback for your team members.
As a guideline, I call out that feedback can be shared with people whom you have worked recently, people who might have asked for feedback or generally anyone on the team you have observed and would like to share feedback with.
After writing the feedback, the card is handed over to the person for whom the feedback is written. The team members are encouraged to discuss the feedback with each other either immediately or at a later time so there is more communication than just few points on a card.
Step 4: Frequency
Since the main motive of feedback friday is to get people into a habit of sharing feedback. It needs to be done at regular interval till it forms a habit. It can be a collective decision of the team on what frequency they would like to conduct feedback fridays. I have found fortnightly frequency works pretty well. It gives sufficient time for people to observe each other and also the time is not too long that people forget incidences.
It is important to make feedback friday a ritual like stand-up or showcase. Slowly it starts becoming a habit for the team members & feedback culture starts growing.
Step 5: Monitoring
I like to keep track if feedback friday is moving towards the goal the direction it is intended. I keep looking for signs that tell me if feedback culture is getting ingrained.
Step 6: Restart Feedback Friday
Any time you realise that the feedback culture is getting reduced, it is time to restart.
Few other situations when you might want to restart feedback friday is if team size has grown quickly, or a lot of new team members have joined recently.
Other things apart from the above steps that can be taken to ensure feedback culture gets spread is identifying champions among the teams who can drive the activity.
Here are few steps that I take to start & monitor feedback friday
Step 1: Day & Time for feedback
Identify a day a time for feedback. As the name suggests, we typically do this on a Friday but there is no hard and fast rule. It is just any convenient day for the team. The time should be such were the entire team is able to spare the time without being bothered for calls, meetings etc. I have found it ideal to devote time immediately after the morning stand-up as everyone is yet to start their work. Trying to carve out time in the middle of the day becomes tough, as people do not like to break flow of work, and by end of the day people are already exhausted.
Step 2: Duration & Place of Feedback
Duration of feedback should not be too long nor should it be too short. Starting with 45 minutes and gradually reducing to 30 minutes works really well as teams start getting into a habit of exchanging feedbacks.
The team needs some place away from desks and laptops to focus only on feedbacks. I have typically booked big meeting rooms for entire team to sit.
Step 3: The Feedback Process
Once the basic logistic are in place, the entire team assembles in the room. Each person picks-up a card and writes feedback for another person on the team. There are NO rules - the person decides for whom the feedback is to be written, for how many people, how detailed or short it needs to be. The only rule is to be present and think & write feedback for your team members.
As a guideline, I call out that feedback can be shared with people whom you have worked recently, people who might have asked for feedback or generally anyone on the team you have observed and would like to share feedback with.
After writing the feedback, the card is handed over to the person for whom the feedback is written. The team members are encouraged to discuss the feedback with each other either immediately or at a later time so there is more communication than just few points on a card.
Step 4: Frequency
Since the main motive of feedback friday is to get people into a habit of sharing feedback. It needs to be done at regular interval till it forms a habit. It can be a collective decision of the team on what frequency they would like to conduct feedback fridays. I have found fortnightly frequency works pretty well. It gives sufficient time for people to observe each other and also the time is not too long that people forget incidences.
It is important to make feedback friday a ritual like stand-up or showcase. Slowly it starts becoming a habit for the team members & feedback culture starts growing.
Step 5: Monitoring
I like to keep track if feedback friday is moving towards the goal the direction it is intended. I keep looking for signs that tell me if feedback culture is getting ingrained.
- Are people exchanging feedback without waiting for feedback fridays?
- Is the time duration of feedback fridays getting reduced, because more and more people meet offline and exchange feedback?
- Are people getting comfortable with each other to exchange feedback more verbally and using index cards as just means of jotting down points?
It is then time to use feedback friday as a check point to remind people about feedback and not as a dedicated time to exchange feedback.
Any time you realise that the feedback culture is getting reduced, it is time to restart.
Few other situations when you might want to restart feedback friday is if team size has grown quickly, or a lot of new team members have joined recently.
Other things apart from the above steps that can be taken to ensure feedback culture gets spread is identifying champions among the teams who can drive the activity.
20 Things To Do with an Umbrella
Have you ever thought of a using your Umbrella for something other than protecting from rain or sun? That was what a group of 20 people did as a part of an ice breaker before start of a workshop.
During an inception we had few months back, we wanted to run an ice-breaker that would help get a large diverse group comfortable with us & be prepared for a highly intense and creative workshop. We wanted the ice-breaker to be quick, light weight, fun filled & something that gets the creative juices out.
The participants were given one card each and a few sketch pens. The time limit was 10 minutes. The goal was to get as innovative as possible and draw out the idea.
The results were quite creative and participants had fun trying to think of different uses of an umbrella. Once the time was up, each participant was asked to present his idea to the group.
Here are all the innovative uses the group thought of
We ended by asking participants to vote for best idea. The winner was an umbrella that can be used as a solar powered outdoor rotisserie
During an inception we had few months back, we wanted to run an ice-breaker that would help get a large diverse group comfortable with us & be prepared for a highly intense and creative workshop. We wanted the ice-breaker to be quick, light weight, fun filled & something that gets the creative juices out.
We decided to use "What is the most Innovative use of umbrella?"
The participants were given one card each and a few sketch pens. The time limit was 10 minutes. The goal was to get as innovative as possible and draw out the idea.
The results were quite creative and participants had fun trying to think of different uses of an umbrella. Once the time was up, each participant was asked to present his idea to the group.
Here are all the innovative uses the group thought of
We ended by asking participants to vote for best idea. The winner was an umbrella that can be used as a solar powered outdoor rotisserie
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)