The Real Things Slow Down My Workflow (Shared by the Experts)
The following case studies were share by our 2 experience project managers, Terry Woodward and Carrie Leder Nunemaker. 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 😄.
Terry Woodward
About the Interviewee: Terry Woodward, who has been a Corporate Project Manager, a Director of Data Services and a Development Manager for SOF Inc., with the total 30 years of Tech experiences. (Visit Terry’s LinkedIn here).
When it looks like a project is going to have trouble meeting it’s deadline, one of the common attempts to compensate is to try to expand the team by adding more resources.
While on the surface, this may seem like a good idea, it often has the effect of slowing progress even more.
To know why, let me tell you my practice.
My practice
On an early software project we had for a Fortune 500 customer, I had a team of three core developers working on a new set of image processing technologies.
Each of the developers had a different functional area of the project to work on. The Client had an unmovable deadline due to the re-assignment of existing personnel timed to coincide with the delivery of the software.
At about 70% completion stage it began to look like it would be difficult to meet the deadlines due to some complications with newly released hardware drivers used in project, so we a decision: add another developer to the project.
In the beginning, it looked like this was a good idea because some of the remaining core work could be divided and assigned to the new developer.
What happened in practice is that a whole new layer of communication needed to be added to coordinate the work.
Where previously it was easy for the three developers to meet to coordinate interaction with their specific area of responsibility, the addition of the fourth developer added:
- the need for extra communication to manage the split work
- the historical background to the direction of the project
Meeting time increased, coordination became more difficult, progress slowed even more.
After all, the 2 lessons I have learned from this experience are:
- Carefully factor in increased communication cost when team size expands and;
- Consider subdivision of work in ways that minimize the need for additional communication.
For example, bringing in a Q/A engineer to manage testing instead of adding an additional core development engineer in this project, would have reduced the need for core level communication and would have likely accelerated the progress because of the functional division of responsibilities.
Carrie Leder Nunemaker
About the Interviewee: Carrie Leder Nunemaker is a project manager at Arkansas Supreme Court, who has more than 8 years of experiences as an IT project manager. (Visit Carrie’s LinkedIn here).
Many organizations have begun to re-examine the way project teams are organized. Project Managers have a significantly different experience in functional organizations versus a fully projectized culture.
We have all dealt with a battle over a resource’s time.
Priorities are ever-shifting between operational activities and project work. The employee is torn between their supervisor and a project manager’s request for their limited time.
In my experience, project outcomes are always more successful when a dedicated project team is involved.
When employees are contributing to the project but aren’t given insight into the project goals or provided with ongoing work within the project, they can become disheartened with their role.
The same scenario applies when employees are assigned to multiple projects.
They may become confused between projects when work is similar. The amount of time it takes them to re-focus on the current project can be impactful if interrupted frequently.
Having a team that is dedicated to the project outcome and being an integral part of the project team can provide a morale boost that provides a valuable return on investment.
When teams can form and work through the teaming process until normalizing, we are often able to access the true benefits of the team.
Teams that work together for a longer period are more comfortable having healthy conflict. They are more comfortable being themselves and, thus, may be more likely to contribute in ways they wouldn’t normally be comfortable.
Overall, the team cohesion is higher than when employees are assigned to multiple projects with multiple other team members.
To increase the likelihood of dedicated teams continuing to be used within my organization I provide statistical information that reflects the reduced hours, the budget reductions, or any other key performance indicators that tell the success story of dedicated teams.
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