Voices on Project Management

By Soma Bhattacharya

What ways can you inspire a team to stay motivated or perform better to minimize losses? Better focus or more time on details can reduce incoming defects or even breakage.

That’s easier said than done. Getting and keeping the team motivated is no easy feat when the same group has been working together for a while.

So, instead of the regular reports or team meeting agenda, try out different information that might result in the required change. That’s enough to trigger a discussion.

Here’s something to think about in trying to improve team efficiency. We didn’t look at individuals, since we always look at the combined team effort. We looked at the input versus the output differently. The hours worked by the team for a sprint, month or quarter led to the input; and the features or potentially shoppable product led to the output. But we brought in another dimension often forgotten: the impact and usage of what was delivered, the defects that came in, and if any breakages happened. That gave the team something to think about; it just wasn’t the count of user stories or features that went out last quarter, but also how that was used by the clients. What was the adoption rate? How was the flow?

These are just the basics, and I am pretty sure some of you reading this might have tried more inputs, more data points, and have a better understanding of metrics for the team. 

What I found was that by changing up the parameters in what goes into the teams working together, the discussions can always be better. Conduct something like a simple theme-based, goal-based discussion on how to reduce the support tickets by just 1% every month. What would it take?

How you have been able to keep your team motivated?

By Soma Bhattacharya

Conflict is an inevitable companion in the realm of project management. It can arise from differing stakeholder interests, resource constraints or communication breakdowns—and how it's managed can make or break a project's success. Understanding the intricacies of conflict management within project management is crucial for effective leadership and achieving desired outcomes.

According to a study by Thomas and Kilmann (1974), conflict in project management can be categorized into five modes: competing, collaborating, compromising, avoiding and accommodating. Understanding how individuals approach conflict resolution is essential for project managers to navigate through challenging situations effectively. This can be initiated simply and can be scaled up as required depending on the complexity and root cause of the conflicts.

One of the findings from the research reveals that projects characterized by constructive conflict resolution mechanisms tend to exhibit higher levels of team cohesion, creativity and, ultimately, project success.

How do we keep conflict in check in today’s environment?

1. Governance model of the project: The setting up of the model allows stakeholders and their roles to be defined in detail, along with details of how its run. The governance model is vast; however, the basics can outline a regular communication cadence, operations reviews, and parameters to set up escalation calls or meetings. Details mapped to the project’s operation and expectations might be one of the stepping stones to create clarity and foster healthy discussions that can lead to less conflicts.
2. Team culture: I have always believed one of the differences between a highly effective team and one that’s isn’t is the team’s culture. We all know how strong team dynamics can help a team perform better. While it’s a challenge if teams are distributed, we can definitely build strong culture for all teams to encourage trust and team bonding. While this doesn’t guarantee zero conflicts, it does ensure that differences of opinion are better handled and understood. A safe environment where everyone really opens up in a retrospective is more welcome than a team that keeps things bottled up—which is a disaster waiting to happen.
3. Role of the project manager: Effective conflict management can drive better innovation and originality. While challenging, simple things like keeping a strong, detailed, output-oriented agenda for meetings; publishing and looking for resolutions when there are conflicts or uncertainty in decisions to look for common ground; being objective and aligned to the project goals; reminders on why we are together with catchups or lunches; and maintaining a platform to access project details, updates and communication all might be good ways to keep everyone in sync and informed on the everyday details of the project. A skilled PM in any project might be the key to ensuring better conflict management.

The bottom line is always to foster open communication channels, because prevention is better than cure.

As Dr. Stephen R. Covey aptly puts it, "Strength lies in differences, not in similarities." Embracing conflict as a catalyst for innovation and collaboration is the hallmark of exceptional project management.

By Soma Bhattacharya

Everyone associates stand-ups and retrospectives with the agile way of doing things. Yet very few
give credit to the governance model that needs to be set up to ensure things are working. This isn’t
just about keeping the project running, but also to ensure:

1. Alignment with objectives: A well-thought-out governance model aligns with the project’s goals,
expectations and outcomes. A good way to look at the objectives and their success is to compare the
planned versus delivered features on a quarterly basis. Conduct retrospectives at the project level on
the spillovers, misses and root cause analysis for defects coming in—and what can be done to ensure
the objectives are still met. 

2. Decision making: When there’s clarity built into the governance model, it helps enable quick
decisions that are required in the everchanging market (often with shifting priorities) to deliver a
project. This can range from the prioritization required for “big room” planning when a new quarter
starts, or decisions for the sales and marketing of the product (and what the minimum viable product
is).

3. Risk management: When potential issues need addressing or help from stakeholders, the
governance model helps with risk management, too. During most regular meetings that are set up
over the period of the project, risk management issues are brought up and resolved to ensure the
project is still on schedule. These are very high-level, complex risks that would need the interference
of the stakeholders to get things done. This could mean bringing in a new vendor, looking into SLAs
or simply bringing in new teams and budget approvals to get something done.

4. Resource allocation: To deliver a high-quality product, resource allocation is essential—in
particular, “getting the right ones” from across teams in the organization. While adding more team
members might need to go through approvals with project stakeholders and sponsors, resource
allocation could also entail temporarily moving teams from one product to another to get things
moving and to maintain timelines.

5. Stakeholder engagement: The governance model defines the roles and responsibilities of the
project and allows for better communication and collaboration among stakeholders. This could range
from multiple ways of sharing the governance updates (like formal emails and reports), to the sharing
of a tool dashboard (to give an overview that anyone can look into at any point in time). What this
ensures is the right level of engagement can be requested based on the requirements.

6. Performance monitoring: This can include key performance metrics, ensuring the data is
available to make the decisions, and also to look at continuous improvements. Most teams and
projects these days have tools and dashboards that are automated and generate the required
performance reports. The reports can be made specific based on what information needs to be
dispersed—from delegations to check-ins, everything can be made available to monitor project
wellness.

What does your team or project do when defining the governance model?

By Soma Bhattacharya

The entire purpose of creating a process is to ensure that the roadmap is followed. Everything is supposed to unfold as planned and predicted. 

But following the status quo has always been a problem for me, because we should have the courage to break it when we know it can be done better. In most cases we don’t, because that’s how we are mentally wired. 

Why do we follow the regular path? Why do we never think of breaking the process? I recently read the book The Pathless Path: Imagining a New Story for Work and Life by Paul Millerd, and that led me to believe that there are people who are questioning the status quo (of course, the percentage is very low, but still there). 

Process in most organizations or teams is something that, once determined, is just part of the routine. Numbers and reports come up every month, but no one takes the time to actually look at and question them. When that’s the path we take, the meaning of every ceremony or sync-up or meeting gets lost. Now we just do them because we are supposed to. 

So, does the process really lead you anywhere? Self-discovery? Team bonding? Dynamic teamwork? Better thinking? If the answer is no, it’s time to change the process.

Process for me triggers thinking. So instead of looking into the “tasks to get done” every day, do you want to replace it with something else? Maybe look at team deliverables with detailed data? When you run a team survey, do you want to include sensitive questions like, “Are you experiencing burnout?” And instead of pushing back the evitable, we try to create a system that allows everyone to develop insights into their own (and the team’s) performance. 

Here are some things to think about:

1. Replace the standard three daily standup questions with better questions, so the work you do is acknowledged. Focus on the work done as much as you focus on what needs to get done.

2. Team retrospectives can be done with anonymous surveys to bring out better inputs that actually improve team health. Remember, happier teams = better outputs.

3. During planning, look at how much churn happens every sprint, and why. What can be done to reduce it? Is any rework taking a toll on teams?

4. Encourage everyone to question the planning, and come up with better plans (especially the newcomers—they need to feel engaged and listened to).

5. Don’t be afraid to bring in a new way of thinking or planning if it works for everyone. 

Agile is for everyone, not just for team leads and domain experts. When everyone participates, they feel included and acknowledged—and the process brings out the best.          

By Soma Bhattacharya

When it comes to working on larger projects that combine multiple teams spread across locations with a tight timeline, formalizing a triad is one of the easiest ways to streamline the process. While working with everyone is required in all projects, a triad can help you and your team irrespective of the role you play in the project.

The simplest things create the most impact. A triad involves bringing together the product, UX and development teams. You can change the composition of your triad based on your project and invite various functions to the core team.

Once that’s finalized, the triad is responsible for the project moving forward in a timely manner. It adds accountability at all levels and requires unanimous decision making, thus removing uncertainty and the multiple approvals that often lead to a back-and-forth dialogue.

When done at all levels, decision making in a triad takes care of strategic, tactical and operational issues for the project. To ensure that the triad is efficient at all levels (from planning to implementation), it can be created at multiple levels (from governance bodies to scrum teams). This ensures the right group is involved with making decisions.

Here are few ways to involve the triad throughout the release:

1. Release/Big Room planning: The goal is to ensure that the triad is available at all levels for planning. This ensures that all requirements and risks are covered and ready while we initiate the project and continue with planning. For quarterly planning, triad leadership is involved to ensure requirements for the upcoming quarter are discussed beforehand—and everyone comes ready with the work done for the teams to start pulling in features and stories for the quarter.
2. Discovery calls: These calls can help the triad come together to plan for the upcoming quarter. They can be attended by the leadership triad as well because it involves decision making on prioritizing and reviewing features like design and architecture.
3. Team meetings: Ensuring the triad is available at the team level keeps everyone onboard and prevents unwelcome surprises. This involves the scrum team-level triad and leads to better acceptance and demos because the triad is constantly working and reviewing things together—and not waiting on last-second feedback or blockers that need discussion or escalation. These include anything from design reviews to regular standups.
4. Retrospectives: These provide a good way to understand the pain points from everyone—and start working on them through the sprints, especially when you are constantly learning and innovating as a team (whether it’s the process or technology).

Of course, there are problems that can happen throughout, but the triad allows everyone not to just function as a team, but also feel like a team. And as we all know, happier teams can better resolve complex problems.

Do you think a triad can help your teams?