The Missing Pieces For A Winning Agile Project (Episode 3)
The experience shared below was based on the real cases of the experts in project management. Going through the stories brings you valuable insights and if this helped, giving a clap or leaving a feedback represents a praise for the contributors 😄.
Matthew McCabe
Matthew is a Technical Program Manager and Entrepreneur with over 18 years of experience in a number of technical fields as well as founding and growing businesses. He is currently CEO of Ultimatum Inc, a platform that allows customers to take action on social and political issues using event based donations to non-profits. (Visit Matthew LinkedIn here).
Whether your team is following agile, waterfall, or some other software development process, all of these methodologies are focused on managing a process, not people.
It is important to remember that your team members are not just software developers, designers, product managers, etc., but are people too. Members of your team have personal needs and responsibilities that extend beyond the walls of the office.
While this may seem obvious and unrelated to managing a project, it is vital to keep these factors in mind as you create and execute a project plan.
For example, project plans often omit vacation or out-of-office plans of individual team members. This can be a showstopper if one or more of your key team members is not available to meet a critical deadline.
Rather than expect the team member to change their plans, a project manager should include the team’s availability in the project plans and set expectations with the business regarding what will be delivered and when.
My Practice
I was managing a project a few years ago for a company that was preparing for Black Friday in the US.
This project had a hard deadline since Black Friday falls on the Friday after Thanksgiving. Most of the engineers who were working on this project were located in India and were planning to celebrate Diwali, a Hindu festival, in the weeks leading up to our project delivery.
In this case, we asked each of the engineers when they were planning to take vacation for Diwali and added their availability to our project plan.
- This gave us a clear picture of when our engineers would be available to work on the Black Friday project.
- This lead to the realization that we would need to start the project earlier than expected in order to meet the hard deadline.
- It is also important to understand that team members have good and bad days which will impact what they are able to accomplish.
For example, if a software engineer is not able to finish a committed task, you could discuss with them one-on-one to understand what happened.
It is possible that something has come up in their personal life that may impact your project schedule.
Rather than chide the engineer about not completing the task, work with them to come up with a plan to complete the task or assign it to another engineer if required.
This approach will help you build trust with your team and increase the level of visibility you have into the potential risks a project may face.
In summary, it is vital that project managers respect and support the members of their team.
Team members are not “resources”; treating each member as a person will build trust within the team and ultimately make the team and project successful.
Mike Poros
Mike has more than 10 years of experiences as a project manager and developer at MobileMark LLC. With years of working with the co-founders of start-ups, Mike not only has a wide but also a deep knowledge about what making a team succeed and which not.
Throughout the years I realized, initialization is the most critical phase of any project especially in IT projects.
This is the phase where project managers complete significant amount of work to initiate the project in the right direction. Such as getting sponsor approval, defining stakeholder management process, getting estimation on project deliverables, assigning resources, prioritizing the tasks and more.
These are some of the critical steps that every Project Manager completes before kick-off meeting.
One thing I always find the most important for team members to understand is simple question “WHY” — Why are we going to do this project?
Making this crystal clear, puts everyone on the right track.
Projects that are aligned with the long-term goals of a corporation are usually
completed sooner and with desired results.
Project selection plays a critical role here too.
Besides the traditional success measures of a project “On time, on budget, and to specifications” project selection process should include such criteria as “Delivery of anticipated benefits, engagement of stakeholders, and organizational long-term goals.”
This is easy to say, of course, but hard to do in practice.
Unfortunately, many organizations lack the kind of structured process that should be followed when deciding to approve and initiate a project.
In my experience, projects are often approved chaotically, or without a clear understanding — and articulation — of the intended goals.
This effects the team’s motivation and effects outcomes.
While there is no way to completely eliminate projects that do not align with corporate goals. Upper management should always be selective when undertaking a project. So that Project Managers can establish the right mindset within the team.
I like to talk about the impact of the project with everyone on the team. This can be small, large, local or national.
What matters most is the outcome will make a difference.
It is always smoother and more fun when the team is enthusiastic and looking forward to working on the project.
David Quintero
As Learning Technology Consultant within the e-Learning Software Development industry, David incorporates years of experience in e-learning technology, managing and leading Project Management and Engineering Teams.(Visit David’s LinkedIn here).
Having spent thousands of hours and countless days working on projects within the e-Learning industry, I can certainly identify a gap and have a deep concern about :different organization and processes that might not include a Project Manager on the requirement gathering and scoping process of a Project prior to getting to a contractual stage thus neglecting one of the most effective ways one can ensure a project to be successful by applying proven project management techniques at a pre-sales and pre-project stage.
Many times, the root cause for such challenges was related to a sales process, where:
- No Project Manager had been part of the whole feasibility analysis, and the participation in the actual evaluation of the project, its risks, wins, constraints and properly defined priorities.
Every one of these situations would end up draining energy from the entire team: Developers, Designers, myself as the Project Manager, and most definitely our Account Manager who might have overpromised to close a contract, not to mention the client, their team and specially the stakeholders.
My practice
As contribution to the best practices for many of the companies I work with and in order to drive the proper processes as recommended by the PMI:
Every time I carry out different organization’s e-Learning implementation projects, whether it is a new platform implementation, content development, custom work, integrations or consulting:
I make sure to be involved as the future Project Manager or the evaluating Solutions Architect;
To participate on the entire pre-sales process that would allow me and my team or the company I am representing;
To actually measure the level of effort, identify and set expectations and provide granularity to the details that focus on priorities and musts for the stakeholders and their business units, all prior to a contractual stage.
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