Who, What, Why? Starting off on the right foot
Humans have been speaking for millennia but still struggle to communicate. Nothing can ever be described as perfectly as it is imagined. Motives and intentions are slippery. Assumptions run rampant.
This is very evident in software projects. Whenever I’m brought into one, I like to get all stakeholders in a room (or a zoom) and ask them three questions:
- Who is involved in this project?
- What are we trying to do?
- Why is it being done?
How these questions are answered determines whether a project can proceed immediately or not. Weak answers quickly reveal fragilities that could jeopardize the project if left unchecked.
Unclear on Who
Even small projects can have long and complicated chains of responsibility.
I once saw a two-person team coding a feature with half a dozen Product Owners involved and no true owner. That’s an extreme example, but even in less severe cases work can grind to a halt very easily with unclear identities and assignments.
At the very least, it’s useful to remind everyone about who everyone else is and what they’re doing there, especially in larger enterprise projects across business units.
Unclear on What
It’s rare to meet a team that doesn’t know what they’re expected to deliver, but I wish I could say it never happens.
Sometimes an outsourced team’s contract runs out and a new one is brought in by someone who sees “tech people” as interchangeable peons. Poor documentation and rushed handovers force the incoming team to start on the back foot.
C-Levels might read Gartner and decide to expedite hot technology vendors through procurement to get cred for being innovators, tasking subordinates with vague goals of applying it where appropriate. Or they might strike deals over golf for reasons unrelated to practical considerations.
A more common version of this is when stakeholders discover they have different interpretations of the goals.
Going over the goals of a project in front of everyone is a quick and simple way to see whether or not there’s alignment. If there’s not, work should be postponed until there is.
Unclear on Why
It’s common for teams to believe they know why their project exists, only to stall at the first follow-up question. “How will you know you’ve succeeded?” is a good one, and the answer should be a clear metric. Ideally, that metric should have a specific target. Example:
We’re revamping the tech stack of our marketing website so we can launch campaigns faster. If we succeed, we expect to see the time it takes to go from campaign kickoff to campaign launch to be slashed by half.
“Why?” can be asked a few more times, possibly unveiling new reasons and metrics:
We’re doing it because our developers have been swamped by requests from Marketing. Success could mean fewer support tickets too.
Knowing the drivers and the metrics of a project helps fill in any project’s tiny blanks more easily, as well as navigating and solving unexpected issues quicker. There’s no better time to go over them than when all the stakeholders are assembled.
General disagreement
People can and do arrive at kickoff meetings with different ideas and expectations. Communication is very hard to get right, as we know, and it gets harder the more humans are involved. Having everyone acknowledge each other’s positions is an easy way to quickly identify or rule out disagreement or conflict situations.
A word on Agile
Teams that follow Agile methodology might have an opportunity canvas at hand. That can be very helpful, but a canvas’ mere existence doesn’t guarantee its correctness. It’s still worthwhile to spend a few minutes going over the canvas and observing how stakeholders react to its components. Hopefully they all nod. If they don’t, better sort out differences and misunderstandings sooner rather than later.
In closing
Asking “Who, What, Why?” is a simple technique to use at project kick-offs to weed out serious issues. Communication is a big challenge for teams everywhere, and asking these three questions is a great way to facilitate better communication, foster alignment early, and kick things off on the right foot.
