Zaheer Ahmad AwanHead of Projects & Service Delivery| Khaleej Digital FZCODubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
If you are responsible for improving delivery of a company that is customer facing, have multiple teams working on different technologies/solutions and each team handles multiple projects simultaneously, then what would the top 3 things that you would start with? Saving Changes...
Zaheer Ahmad AwanHead of Projects & Service Delivery| Khaleej Digital FZCODubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Sep 18, 2018 6:57 PM
Replying to Matteo Bettini
...
1) Establish clear-cut weekly deliverables
2) Make team responsible for tracking progress and deviation, do verify on that by timely meetings
3) Report your customers on a mutual agreed basis as to always inform them before they come back to you asking for progresses
Thank you Matto for your great tips. Saving Changes...
Zaheer Ahmad AwanHead of Projects & Service Delivery| Khaleej Digital FZCODubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Sep 19, 2018 2:48 AM
Replying to Pang DX
...
Hi Zaheer,
1) Documenting Lessons Learned regarding project developments, issues, retrospective findings and improvement areas. Coordinate effectively on the lessons learned with strong lateral communication between teams and vertical communication within each team.
2) Facilitating organizational learning. Develop team members through training and mentoring on multi-tasking skills and send team members to agile training courses. This can be carried out when there is optimal availability of resources and time.
3) Measure results of team members multi-tasking with illustration tools such as burnup chart and burndown chart. Burnup chart shows the work completed over time. Burndown chart shows work remaining over time.
Above all, employee and customer engagements are keys to bring agility and improve delivery of multi-tasking teams.
Hope my opinions are okay/applicable. Cheers, Pang DX
Thank you Pang for your valuable feedback. Saving Changes...
Zaheer Ahmad AwanHead of Projects & Service Delivery| Khaleej Digital FZCODubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Sep 18, 2018 5:16 PM
Replying to Sergio Luis Conte
...
First, what definion of agility are you taken? By definition, agility is "Be able respond to a wide variety of unexpected external surprises and create external surprises.Being agile will assist businesses who face unpredictable circumstances". Is not because I am saying that. Is the definition create in the place where Agile and agility were formaly defined in 1990: the USA DoD NSF/Agility Forum in Leihigh Unversity. If you agree with that then key to achieve that is knowledge.Just in case you do not find the Forum deliverables you can search for Rick Dove´s book "Response Ability". Rick was the leader of the Forum and inside that book he put most of the ideas. On the other side, the definiton of Agile is "way of behave and thinking with focus on client, value and quality". So, you have to define the three terms first of all.
Thank you Sergio for your great and knowledgeable piece of advice, For me, agile is simply being responsive to client/project changing requirements and continue prioritizing items that deliver the most value to the customer.
...
1 reply by Sergio Luis Conte
Sep 19, 2018 2:58 PM
Sergio Luis Conte
...
You can achieve that with Lean. Agile is more than that: Agile is to anticipate and to be ready for unexpected changes. I am in charge of implement Agile and the environment (to create any type of products) is highly distributed along the world virtual teams performing multi-tasking. So, here practical things. First, define your client. For us, client is the next in the process chain. Second, go to your clients to elicit what value mean for them. We do not use value today, we use benefit definition. Third, define quality and implement it into your process with focus on anticipation and diagnosis (quality assurance) not in fix and cure (quality control).
Saving Changes...
Zaheer Ahmad AwanHead of Projects & Service Delivery| Khaleej Digital FZCODubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Sep 19, 2018 3:40 AM
Replying to Peter Ambrosy
...
1. Project Portfolio Management in order to have a the organisation working on the most valuable projects
2. Stop 100% team member allocation on different projects with multitasking, because this is a productivity killer
3. If your projects are complex because of business and technology, than using frameworks and practices based on agile principles and rules, the best thing is to start small to enable learning. Most importantly is to establish a mindset and cultural behavior in the organisation to support this approach and to get it running.
Thank you Peter. Saving Changes...
Zaheer Ahmad AwanHead of Projects & Service Delivery| Khaleej Digital FZCODubai, Dubai, United Arab Emirates
Sep 19, 2018 4:25 AM
Replying to Girija Ramakrishnan
...
Zaheer -
I am good on your question of improving delivery and many teams working on different solutions/technologies but why each team is managing multiple projects simultaneously ?
If your organisation is structured to handle projects and people in that way then you will have to find ways to bring in many changes. Agility is not about improving multi-tasking.
I agree with Wade on prioritising the projects and you need to have a clear roadmap. I agree with Kiron and Sergio to focus on customer value and to forget the idea of 100 or 200% utilisation of people. In your case it looks to be 200% utilisation.
Thank you Girija for your feedback. We can raise 100 questions about why the organization is working in this manner but that will not produce any concrete improvements. Big or very small, I am more interested in some practical steps that can yield some improvement here.
...
1 reply by Girija Ramakrishnan
Sep 20, 2018 9:56 AM
Girija Ramakrishnan
...
Zaheer -
You have got a lot of good suggestions from everyone in this thread. I agree with Kiron & Sergio Goldratt's theory of constraints. If you want to achieve your goal you will have to look at the limiting factors and try to plan for changes. Improvement is the last thing to happen without a shift in the way of thinking and acting accordingly.
Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Sep 19, 2018 1:32 PM
Replying to Zaheer Ahmad Awan
...
Thank you Sergio for your great and knowledgeable piece of advice, For me, agile is simply being responsive to client/project changing requirements and continue prioritizing items that deliver the most value to the customer.
You can achieve that with Lean. Agile is more than that: Agile is to anticipate and to be ready for unexpected changes. I am in charge of implement Agile and the environment (to create any type of products) is highly distributed along the world virtual teams performing multi-tasking. So, here practical things. First, define your client. For us, client is the next in the process chain. Second, go to your clients to elicit what value mean for them. We do not use value today, we use benefit definition. Third, define quality and implement it into your process with focus on anticipation and diagnosis (quality assurance) not in fix and cure (quality control).
...
1 reply by Zaheer Ahmad Awan
Sep 22, 2018 1:12 PM
Zaheer Ahmad Awan
...
Thank you Sergio, sure these tips can really help take forward the initiative. Just wondering one thing, however, don't you think by adopting lean, you already somehow start your agile journey? As the underlying foundation of lean and agile is based on almost the same principles.
Great suggestion, indeed we need to increase customer value, but the question is how? Any practical suggestions, please?
I'd suggest following Goldratt's theory of constraints. A customer might initially complain that it will take a few weeks to get to them, but most customers will be much happier if the team is focused once their work begins rather than trying to multitask across multiple engagements.
Kiron Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
What @Kiron stated about Goldratt´s theory is a must mainly if you are working into Agile based environments. Just to add a comment, based on my personal experience no more than that, it demads a "shift" on the way of thinking of all people involved, mainly into project manager mind. Saving Changes...
Wade HarshmanScrum Master| GDITIndianapolis, In, United States
Sep 19, 2018 1:22 PM
Replying to Zaheer Ahmad Awan
...
Hi Wade,
That sounds good theoretically but practically you cannot put customers on hold and tell them that we take one project at a time. For any customer-facing organziation, it is very usual to work on multiple projects at a time and context switching is a reality that you cannot escape from. Companies need to secure business and once secured, the client needs to see some traction/progress on his project. So I agree with you in theoretical terms but practically that does not solve my problem. Your take, please?
Zaheer,
You're right about theory vs practice, but I would try to move towards the "theory" as much as possible. You might have 3 customers that want to see progress on their projects, but if you can get your teams to stop multi-tasking and finish one project at a time, the final deliverable dates will not change. In fact, 2 of your projects will finish much sooner, and even your last project will probably finish earlier than promised.
This may come down managing stakeholder expectations. Perhaps it's too late to fix these 3 projects, but perhaps your organization could improve this going forward.
This is assuming your projects can be done sequentially without significant gaps in work. If you have dependencies between the projects, or if there are gaps in the work where your team is waiting, then they might have to switch between projects.
I don't know the specifics of your projects or organization, of course, but generally speaking, teams will perform faster if they can focus on one project at a time, and you will deliver faster to your customers.
...
1 reply by Zaheer Ahmad Awan
Sep 22, 2018 1:23 PM
Zaheer Ahmad Awan
...
Thanks Wade, that is the reason I agreed to you in the first place if it's theocratic, but before you apply these rules, you have to understand the ground realities. I would put a simple example of one team that may be handling a few projects at a time. Now one of the projects may be not high value, so the company would simply try to spend less effort on that, although the work may be equally cumbersome. The second project may be of a very high value and hence more focus is required. Another project may be on halt because it is waiting for confirmations, clarifications or simply put on hold by the client. Now, you can see there are complexities and you have to meet certain financial targets because that is what keeps the company running. This company is working on these lines from years and you are a fresh person to sort out all of these issues without impacting the financials. Please put your feet in the shoes of the person responsible and then suggest what would be the right course of action.
Thank you Girija for your feedback. We can raise 100 questions about why the organization is working in this manner but that will not produce any concrete improvements. Big or very small, I am more interested in some practical steps that can yield some improvement here.
Zaheer -
You have got a lot of good suggestions from everyone in this thread. I agree with Kiron & Sergio Goldratt's theory of constraints. If you want to achieve your goal you will have to look at the limiting factors and try to plan for changes. Improvement is the last thing to happen without a shift in the way of thinking and acting accordingly. Saving Changes...
"Karate is a form of martial arts in which people who have had years and years of training can, using only their hands and feet, make some of the worst movies in the history of the world."
