Staying on Track
By David Perkins
Keeping a fast paced team focused upon “the necessary” requires the participation of the team as planners not just as doers. The following techniques have helped keep the velocity vector of a team pointed down the tracks at the objective.
Scope creep is managed by evaluating activity and functionality against our original vision. If an idea is necessary to achieve our vision it went in the “DO IT” pile, if it would reinforce the vision it became a “Nice To Have”, if the idea had any merit it went in the “Next Phase” pile. This technique proved effective with customers, senior management, project management, and project technical geeks. By having team members participate in scope management, they gained a better understanding of the vision.
Gold plating is managed by tracking hours expended against specific tasks. Exceeding the described product is not justification for exceeding budget. Explaining the inadequacies of the original estimate is the only acceptable basis for requesting more hours. It is important to acknowledge that the task descriptions and estimated efforts are only estimates but it is equally important to emphasis that the scope of some other activity will have to be adjusted to provide any additional hours. Encourage collaboration with a development partner to help examine resource issues.
Scheduling was originally laid out using MS Project to track dependencies. A more adaptive technique evolved whereby as a group we would decide which tasks needed attention next, and assign pairs to go brainstorm about the task (with 1/8th of the task hours allocated to each person). The pair would report back their approach to completing the task including who would be doing the work and whether they felt sufficient hours remained in the unallocated task hours. Sometimes the pair would subdivide the task and work in parallel. Sometimes the pair would recommend someone outside the pair be assigned to the task.
The project manger exerts a strong influence upon the task assignments by selecting the pairs and the tasks that they consider. The execution team owns the activity because they review both the content and resources of each task and they select the assignments that they are most comfortable with.
These techniques push the decision and responsibility down to the individual while providing support by involving collogues as pair partners. If you find that you as the project manager, are often in disagreement with scope, resource allocation, or tasking decisions proposed by your team then I would recommend that you partner with a senior member of the team to identify who or what is out of sync.
Leadership is enabling others to make wise decisions. Do you lead others to make good decisions or do you command others to follow your decisions?