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How do I get my team to accomplish their action items AND to document it in the AI-list. In particular when the amount of actions seems very high

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Cyril Dietz Product Line Manager Electric Propulsion| ArianeGroup GmbH Lampoldshausen, Germany
I do have a huge backlog on my team´s AI list.
As I see it:
- action are indeed accomplished (most of them)
- the problem is that it is not documented for most of them
- with the amount of action I don´t see the opportunity to check them every week during team meeting - otherwise it would take all the time

Is there a best practice how to handle this?
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Sante Delle-Vergini, PhD Senior Project Manager| Infosys Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Perhaps write it into the Definition of Done. The DoD can include non-functionality such as this. To ensure the process occurs, and assuming it is agreed by the team, the person responsible for ensuring processes are followed (ie. scrum coach, scrum master) should be handling this.
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
What does mean "to document" in your case? If you have a checklist only and the only thing people have to do is to put a tick when the item is completed I guess it would not be problem with that.
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Cyril Dietz Product Line Manager Electric Propulsion| ArianeGroup GmbH Lampoldshausen, Germany
Well that is probably the problem. My customer s expectation is rather than just a tick for "done" they would expect a "what has been done?" "who has a done it?" and preferably a document reference...
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Kiron Bondale Retired | Mentor| Retired Welland, Ontario, Canada
Cyril -

Materiality needs to be factored into the equation. An action which can be completed quicker than it takes to document it and which the team can complete right away doesn't really benefit from the overhead of being documented. If the action is likely to linger or it's "large" (whatever large means in your context), then documentation is a good idea.

If your team is applying a Kanban approach, then if there is a high volume of actions/issues you could create a separate swim lane for those in the team's work board and the extent of documentation would be to create a card for the action and then just move it through the stages - that's about as low effort as it gets.

Kiron
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Cyril Dietz Product Line Manager Electric Propulsion| ArianeGroup GmbH Lampoldshausen, Germany
Indeed it is a constant question whether an action really needs to be formalized. Within the team we agreed that we should give it more attention if it is really necessary to take an action in written in the minutes or if a verbal agreement would be enough.
But still then I am afraid that giving the amount of formal meetings we have (it is space business) the quantity of action caught by minutes remains high.
I intend to switch to a dedicated action tracking tool that would somewhat reflect a virtual card for the action to easy process on.
But still I see the main challenge: the team - mainly engineering - feel "too busy" to spend time on "formalizing an action closure" by what way ever even though it is a formal quality requirement for process capability.
So another idea: Is there a good justification for just ticking a done action instead of properly when/how/who?
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1 reply by Bill Morgan
Jan 25, 2018 2:01 PM
Bill Morgan
...
Express your concerns to the team one on one. Listen to their feedback. Offer them alternative ways to track project progress. Build consensus within the team.
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Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina
@Cyril, believe me, from years I can not sleep because this topic (including my actual work place) by searching ways to deal with it. There is a lot to write for example taking into account the need for questions you stated at the end. What it works for me is something I learned when I work inside organizations like Toyota and others taking it from quality practices. The important thing when you work on execution is ticking if the item is completed because somebody (other person) will make quality control on the artifact. All related to when/how/who is a matter of quality assurance mainly using review techniques. In this case we do that using the 80/20 formula or sometimes what we name "top ten issues". I mean, only those issues that deserve to be part of the revision because we need to maintain with them our knowledge management environment.
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Bill Morgan Project Manager| Epic Management L.P. Redlands, CA Moreno Valley, Ca, United States
Jan 25, 2018 1:06 PM
Replying to Cyril Dietz
...
Indeed it is a constant question whether an action really needs to be formalized. Within the team we agreed that we should give it more attention if it is really necessary to take an action in written in the minutes or if a verbal agreement would be enough.
But still then I am afraid that giving the amount of formal meetings we have (it is space business) the quantity of action caught by minutes remains high.
I intend to switch to a dedicated action tracking tool that would somewhat reflect a virtual card for the action to easy process on.
But still I see the main challenge: the team - mainly engineering - feel "too busy" to spend time on "formalizing an action closure" by what way ever even though it is a formal quality requirement for process capability.
So another idea: Is there a good justification for just ticking a done action instead of properly when/how/who?
Express your concerns to the team one on one. Listen to their feedback. Offer them alternative ways to track project progress. Build consensus within the team.
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Praveen Kumar A Project Manager| Sutherland Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Team Meetings are the best way to start and then Probably Brainstorming and collborating to get this process setup and also include it as a KRA might help
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Ayat Rezaeifar Project Manager| Survalent Technology Mississauga, Ontario, Canada
It also helps a lot if you define what is the deliverable of each action item meaning how we know that an action item is actually done. When you do this you put that check mark in front of the item with more confidence, knowing you will not come back and uncheck it later! Just adding my two cents.
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Cyril Dietz Product Line Manager Electric Propulsion| ArianeGroup GmbH Lampoldshausen, Germany
Well if I take two frame conditions as given:
1. My team is extremely reluctant on doing any task they wouldn t see either a direct added value or an absolute necessity to do it ("technical experts ;-)")
2. As we are all really busy we all would like to keep things as lean and easy as possible
I like Sergio´s approach, also reflecting Ayat´s suggestion: Downselect the amount of actions between "normal, to tick" and "premium, to be documented" when you set them up. It might help to bring trackable actions to a reasonable amount without investing to much in the forefront. And ticking the rest when it s done has to be acceptable.
I think I am going to take this idea into our current tracking system we just prepare.
I really appreciate this discussion!

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