It's NOT all about you, it's about the Team!

I'm not a success without the people on my team!  Flat and simple - if they aren't succeeding, then I'm failing.  As a leader inside the organization, it's one of my responsibilities to look out for the needs of my team and find ways to make them successful.  I can't guarantee them success every time, but I need to find ways for them to succeed more than they fail and within their failure, I need to recognize that I own some of that failure.

I've seen people that have been great contributors on the team suddenly put themselves in a position where they look like they are going to hit the wall.  I've had to step in-front of them and prevent the smash up that is about to occur.  Sometimes these discussions can be difficult, because they don't want to admit that they are about to fail.  Sometimes there is a look of pure relief on their face when someone steps in and says - hey, I'm here to help.

One of the first projects I worked on after becoming a manager was a fairly mundane project needed within the organization - there were several pieces of the software being developed and one of the pieces was being held up because there was nobody else to work the issue.  I made the decision that I would jump in and work the issue myself.  At this point, my boss asked me why I was working on the code.  I explained to him my logic and he began to ask questions:

• If  you're working on the code - who's going to keep track of all the pieces that are moving within this effort and make sure overall we're on target?
• If you're working on the code - who are your engineers going to escalate the issue to when there's a problem and how will you manage those issues?
• If you're working on the code - who's going to keep myself and the rest of that management team aware of the status, issues, risks and plans?

There were several other questions - but you get the general sense of the conversation,  I was young and eager and for every question he had, I had an answer, me!  My manager made it clear to me that this was not the right answer and that I was going to end up hitting the wall.  I assured him, that I would be able to handle all of it and went on my merry way.

Soon, I began to trip up on myself - at first it was missing a status report here and there, not escalating an issue that needed to be escalated.  Then the impacts grew - I wasn't paying attention to all of the different moving parts and coordinating the delivery.  I hit the wall.  My boss looked me in the eye and asked me what I was going to do to clean it up.  I had failed!  Luckily, he reached out and helped clean up the mess and get the project back on track.  But what he taught me happened after all the pieces had been put back together and the project was again running forward.  He sat me down, told me that this time he had allowed me to fail and had helped me out so that I could learn what not to do going forward!  The next time this happened, if I let it happen, I would need to clean up the mess by myself.

Where to start?  First I learned as a manager, it's tough to be the one in the details and still be the one coordinating everything else that needs to be done.  Two, I learned that sometimes it's alright to let people fail.  Three, I learned that when somebody does fail, you have to be there to pick them up and help them get back on track - give them the ability to learn.

Now in some instances - the failures begin to outweigh the successes and you come to the moment of truth.  Is there a way that I can make this person successful, or have they proven that they are incapable of performing within the role that they've been hired for - a difficult decision.

As leaders - either formal supervisors/managers or informal project managers - it's not enough just to do the tactical parts of the job.  It's essential that we work work with the people we touch in the organization and help lift them up.  Only if we truly give them the tools and skills they need to perform their role and prepare them for more difficult responsibilities in their future, will we reap the rewards and succeed within our own role.

If you'd like more information on my background: LinkedIn Profile

Using Metrics Across the Development Lifecycle

We’ve discussed metrics before, but I think it’s time to revisit the topic.  Different members of the team are going to want access to see different sets of metrics at different points in the cycle.  I think it’s critical for organizations to understand what metrics are easily available – or what can become available with a small amount of work.  Then you need to understand how to use the metrics to drive the behavior you want within the organization.  Metrics used the wrong way can create bad behavior.

I’ve known organizations in the past that rate their development team members based on the overall number of lines of code that they create.  I’ve attempted to explain to individuals that this encourages developers to focus on the wrong thing – how fast they can key in chunks of code without any care as to the number of bugs they are introducing into the application.  This may also encourage the development team to create chunks of code that are not optimized.

You may not think this is a big deal.  But I’ve seen real instances where a company has a transaction loop that is measured in milliseconds, just to have their transaction time crater because some joker hasn’t optimized their code.  Instead of being able to handle a 1000 transactions a second, they find out they can handle less than 10 transactions a second.  Yeah the guy got the code done ahead of schedule, but at the cost of preventing the system from processing transactions.  Don’t worry.  The change never saw the light of day.

I’ve also seen organizations that award bonuses to team members by how early they can deliver the functionality – a sliding bonus based on how early the product is delivered to production, the earlier you deliver, the bigger the bonus.  This shifts the focus to how fast the system can be assembled vs how well the system matches up to the original requirements or how many bugs found their way through to production.  Just a tad short sighted if you ask me.

Tracking metrics is a fine line.  You want to create a set of metrics that allows you to understand what is happening within your lifecycle, but you need to identify and balance the metrics to get the real behavior you want from the team.  Ultimately, you need to produce a product or an enhancement to an existing product from the project that is as free of bugs as possible and that delights the customer.  If you do your job right, you’ll deliver more than the customer was expecting (under promise and over deliver).  Oh, and you'll also produce a product that drives additional revenue to the organization.

NOTE: The metrics identified below are things that I’ve seen work across the various organizations I’ve been involved with over the years.  These may or may not work for your organization.  It is important to look at the culture of your individual organization and identify what you value, what needs to be measured and how that information will ultimately be used.  Do I use all of these in the role that I currently play – no.  Some of them just don’t make sense for the way that we manage our projects and others won’t work because some of our processes haven’t fully matured.

I've seen organizations use multiple specialized roles to get through the first couple of phases of the life cycle - variously titled: Product Managers, Product Owners, Business Analysts, Process Engineers, Product Engineers ... the list could go on and on.  That said, all of the roles have the responsibility to reflect the needs of the project sponsor.

Through the scoping/discovery phase of a project, the team should be fully focused on eliciting the needs and expectations of the Sponsor.  This allows you to draw the box around what needs to be delivered and to begin to identify what will be called success.  All that said, how do you measure the success of these individuals - what metrics make sense?

The Project Office may consider the project a success if it is delivered on-time and on-budget.  However, the Sponsors perspective is more concerned about the impact that the project has post implementation.  They would not have authorized the project to move forward unless they were expecting efficiency improvements, cost reductions or revenue increases.  Ultimately, the project was approved for some underlying reason.  It was not approved to provide busy work to a bunch of people across the organization.

From the Project Office perspective, the key metrics that they will watch - again remember they are concerned about time, costs and resources - occurs during the overall life cycle of the project.

1. What is the % of Project Change Requests against the identified scope that do not alter the overall boundaries of the project – minor misses?
2. What is the % of Project Change Requests that increase the original scope of the project enlarging the overall boundaries of the project – major functional or non-functional pieces that were missed – major misses?
3. Did they miss the target milestone to complete all activity associated with this phase of the lifecycle?

From the Project Sponsor perspective, the key metrics that they will watch will happen after the project is considered complete and has been moved in to production.

1. Did the company achieve the expected efficiency improvements, costs savings or revenue increases?  Does the project meet the objectives identified and agreed to within the business case?
2. Did the company hit the objectives for the total number of clients adopting the solution?

NOTE: Take a moment to reflect on the different viewpoints – the Project Office may consider the project a success due to the fact that it was delivered on-time and on-budget.  However, six months to a year later, the Project Sponsor may declare that the project was a failure because the expected increase in revenue didn’t appear.  What processes do you have in place to support the different needs of the Project Sponsor vs. the Project Office?  What feedback do you give to your Product Owner? 

As the project moves through the formal requirements definition phase, responsibilities shift and additional resources are brought into the team.  Additional artifacts are generated – the business case, requirements, business impacts, security assessments, risks and mitigation plans.  Quite a bit is going on in this phase and this really begins to put the underlying structure in place that will give shape to the product that is being built or enhanced.

The Project Office will have primary interest in the success of this phase and may want to look at measuring success of the team when the phase is complete based on the following metrics:

1. What is the % of Project Change Requests against identified requirements – minor misses?
2. What is the % of Project Change Requests that introduce new requirements – major misses?
3. Did they miss the target milestone to complete all activity associated with this phase of the lifecycle?

There are multiple team members defining requirements – one individual should be accountable for the overall set of requirements, but accountability should occur across those responsible for contributing to the set of requirements impacting their slice of the organization.  You may want to track down to the contributors so that you can assess weakness across projects and across the organization.  For example, you may see a pattern emerge across several projects that would indicate that requirements associated with the sales team are consistently seeing change requests – you then have something to act on.

As the project moves downstream we begin to do the formal design work – this is where vision hits reality.  The team gets larger and begins to focus on breaking down requirements or combining requirements to understand what is being requested and translating that into technical terms that define what will actually be delivered.  If the Project Sponsor wants a hard dose of reality – this is usually the place and time for that cold water to be thrown in their face.  Sometimes what is wanted can’t be delivered – or at least can’t be delivered without significant pain.

All that said, the design is laid down and the Project Office needs to measure the success of the design using the following metrics when activity within the phase is completed:

1. What is the % of Requirements that can’t be traced through to the Design – major misses?
2. How many defects are identified in production that can be traced back to Architectural Design?
3. How many defects are identified in testing that can be traced back to Architectural Design?
4. How many changes are identified within the architecture artifacts during the following phases of the lifecycle?
5. How many additions to the architecture artifacts are identified that account for functionality missed during the design phase?
6. Did they miss the target milestone to complete all activity associated with this phase of the lifecycle?

Then we are move into the construction phase of the life cycle.  Once again, the team bulks up and this is where we lay down the pieces that come together and satisfy the original vision.  Traceability becomes an important factor across multiple disciplines in this phase.  I like to include regression testing in this phase as my teams are moving to an automated nightly build/test model.  The Project Office may want to look at the following metrics after the phase has finished:

1. What is the % of Requirements that can’t be traced through to the unit tests?
2. How many defects are found during integration testing?  Are they design or build related?  
3. How many defects are found during quality assurance testing?  Are they design or build related?
4. How many defects are found during user acceptance testing?  Are they design or build related?
5. Did they miss the target milestone to complete all activity associated with this phase of the lifecycle?

We're almost there folks!  We now move into the formal testing phase - formal quality assurance, user acceptance tests, load testing, parallel testing.  This is all the stuff we need to do to make sure the product is ready for prime time.  The Project Office will look at this activity and want to track a few more metrics once this phase has been completed:

1. How many defects are found in the production environment?  Are they design or build related - or are they related to the implementation?
2. Did they miss the target milestone to complete all activity associated with this phase of the lifecycle?

If you review the metrics identified at each stage of the lifecycle, you'll see that most of these metrics assess issues that can impact the final product delivered to the customer.  The one consistent measurement across all phases that the Project Office will want to know about - but is not necessarily tied to the user experience is: "Did they miss the target milestone ...".  This is more about keeping accountability within the overall team to ensure that things stay moving.  And the most important metric won't be known until after the project is in production - are the customers accepting the product, is the company experiencing the revenue increase expected or the efficiencies that were planned.

Tags: Project Management; Software Development Lifecycle; Teams; SDLC; Change Management; Portfolio Management; Project Portfolio; Project Metrics; Metrics;

For more information on David L. Collison: LinkedIn Profile

Communicate Early and Often: Real Lessons for the entire Team!

I’m often asked, “What’s the one thing that makes the difference between a successful project and a failed project.”  In my honest opinion, the success of a project comes down to communication.

Yes, there are all sorts of other things that can make the difference between success and failure, but I think the root of most of those problems comes back to communication.  You can diligently move through the lifecycle or through your sprint, you can create all of the project documentation and artifacts that you want, you can create pretty gantt charts to show the team, you can track all of the money spend and forecast future expenditures, you can track all of the defects and their remediation plans, you can check off all your milestones, however, none of that will make a difference unless you are communicating properly up through the project hierarchy and across the project team.  And, yes, there are two very different communication paths – each seeking their information.

The first path is the tactical path – cross communication between the people responsible for the day to day activity within a project.  These are the hands on people, making the product, building the processes, and changing the way things work.

The second path is the governance path – communicating up through the management chain to the sponsor.  The sponsor is the owner of whatever is being delivered, and ultimately owns the decision of whether to keep on working the project, rework the project if the results aren’t up to spec or to abandon the project.

Both communication paths are critical and if team members don’t support the communication strategy – you’ll be doomed to failure.  Don’t get me wrong, you might ultimately get your project into production, but you’ll have spent more money and your timeline will most likely have suffered due to rework, or you’ll have delivered the wrong thing.  And you’ll know it when people avoid using what you’ve built or it quietly gets shoved into a trash can somewhere along the way.

Let’s start at the beginning …

Who’s the Sponsor for your project?  Are they clearly articulating the vision?  Are they controlling themselves and others as it relates to scope?  Are they plugged into the project?  Do they know the major risks and mitigation strategies?  Do they understand the overall budget and do they know if the team is on track to meet or beat the budget?  Do they give guidance when the team is up against an obstacle that they can’t solve on their own?  Do they clear the roadblocks in front of the team? 

Or, do you find yourself learning new wants/needs every time you say hello to the sponsor?  Are they ignoring the risks the team has identified?  Are they unattached – do they really care about what is going on in the project?

What about the Project Manager?  Is your Project Manager setting expectations up front?  Are they letting you know how often you’re going to meet as a team?  Do they do frequent stand-ups to get the quick status checks?  Do they communicate regularly and update you on the status, risks and mitigation plans?  Is the Project Manager holding people accountable to deliver what they said they would, when they said they would?  Is the Project Manager tracking against the budget and keeping the Sponsor in the loop?

Or, does anyone actually know who the Project Manager is?  Did they set clear expectations for the team at the beginning of the project?  Did they communicate who owns what pieces?  Did they explain how often you would meet and what the format of the meetings would be?  When was the last time they talked to you about the pieces you own?  Do you know how the other pieces of the project are coming along – will they be ready when you’re ready?  Is the Project Manager out removing obstacles and ensuring that you can stay focused on your job?  Is the Project Manager providing you the details you need to know whether the overall project is on track?  Are they ensuring that decisions made are being distributed across the entire team?  Is your Project Manager checked out?  Do you see the Project Manager only when something is going wrong and they want to point the finger and redirect the blame?  Is the Project Manager in reactive mode only dealing with issues when they become critical?

And let’s not forget the team members – are they keeping everyone in the loop on the most recent changes to the schedule?   Do they immediately notify team members and the Project Manager when they see a risk that might affect the project down the road?  Do they escalate an issue when a vendor is not delivering functionality within the timeframes identified?  When they identify an issue, do they also provide potential solutions to resolve the issue or catch backup on the timeline?

Or, do they ignore the entire team when they have hit something unexpected?  What about when a requirement changes, any notice from the BA?  Whoops, did that interface change?  I’m sorry – didn’t you know that I won’t have that done?  Oh, that decision on the pricing has changed, didn’t you get the update?

None of this is rocket science and it doesn’t take someone with a masters or a doctorate to figure out what the issue is.  Get up out of your chair walk down the aisle, take a right and let someone know!  Use your scrum meetings to share issues/concerns with the team.  Let them know when something has gone off track.  Instant message the Project Manager – trust me, they want to know.  Pick up the phone and let someone know that something in the market place has shifted and the sales projections need to be updated.

Part of being a team means that you’re making some commitments – these are not optional:

1. Be accountable for the work you are supposed to complete.
2. Listen to other team members in project meetings – that means you won’t be checking your email or browsing the internet.
3. Be an active participant in project meetings – interact with team members and move the ball forward.
4. Share your knowledge with other team members – lift those around you.
5. Provide a regular status – you need to agree on what regular means.
1. As a team member that may mean daily.
2. As a Project Manager that may mean weekly to the Project Office and biweekly to the Project Sponsor.
6. Immediately communicate risks or issues with mitigation plans as soon as they are known to the Project Manager.
7. Immediately notify the Project Manager and other team members when you know you’re not going to be done with your assigned piece on time.
8. Be a problem solver – when others identify issues, be willing to help find solutions.
9. Be flexible – we all know things change, be the one to find the way to address the change.
10. Be respectful in how you communicate and interact with others, be supportive when needed.

I’m not saying this is going to fix everything that is wrong with the projects you work on.  I am saying it will make things go a lot smoother.  We need to trust each other enough to be open and honest with each other.

Tags: Project Management; Software Development Lifecycle; Teams; SDLC; Change Management;

For more information on David L. Collison: LinkedIn Profile