Trust and Communication at work place

My three problems are solved by Trust and Communication

Why are we talking about trust?

Trust is only factor which binds humans as well as animals together.   To achieve your defined success in an environment, it is important to build trust. In this article I’ll share my encounter with “Trust”.

Why are we talking about communication?
If we have a trust, it has to be communicated with team. Your trust in your team has to be visible from your actions.

Trust and Communication solved my below three issues.

1. Your team member does not deliver what is expected (Time, Quality, and Scope)
My take:
a. Gather thoughts from team member before allocating assignment or commitment on an end date.
b. Get team's inputs (ideally team should come up with Time, Quality, Scope metrics ), trust their inputs and communicate them the adjusted estimates and delivery timelines.
Outcome:Your team will have commitment to a delivery and you do not have to run around and follow-up.

2. You are contradicted in a team meeting by one or two members of your team
My take:
a. Teams should always know what is being presented in a meeting (especially during: Iteration review and Retrospective). Which will mean that a brainstorming is already done before we present ideas or facts in iteration or retrospective meetings.
b. Highlight views as “team views” and not your own. Stop taking credit of your team work.
c. Do not break a news/ideas in a team meeting, no one like surprises. Always have a conversation with key stakeholders before hand.
Outcome:Your meeting will have fewer roadblocks from your own internal stakeholders. Increased confidence in meetings/workshops or fusions.

3. Team member misrepresent a status of task assigned
My take:
a. Gather thoughts from team on definition of “Done”, communicate this to all members and trust when status is reported.
b. Gather inputs on “how as a team we gather status of task”. Formalize the process and communicate. Re look and adjust the process as we progress.
Outcome:Get near agreed status on assigned tasks and deliverable.
     

Feel free to add details and comment!

Daily Team meeting challenges

Daily Team  meeting challenges [Morning meetings, Stand up meeting, SCRUM, Status Meeting, Check points]

In this article meeting refers to every day team connect, you might be calling them differently (Morning meetings, Stand up meeting, SCRUM, Status Meeting, Check points...)

This article have references from
a. Best practices defined by Scrumalliance.
b. Techniques and Strategies implemented by me and few of my colleagues and friends .

Lot of gyan is available online and I am adding to what is useful to me.

World is global now!

World is global now! Be it Software application development, Digital Infrastructure, Manufacturing, Sports, Education or Tourism. Many of our colleagues, partners, and vendors are situated either few miles or thousands of miles away. This global environment adds to the existing challenges of our daily team meetings

Challenges in meetings

Daily meeting play’s an important role in every day activity. Let me jot down practical issues and approach to resolve them. This list is a running list, feel free to add on the details in comments section and we can add them in here.

Your reason for every day issue can be with in this wagon wheel or it can be outside.  

#1. Infection 1: Silent Meetings - one or more team members do not report correct status

a. Team member need a COACHING and a MENTOR.

b. Sense of OWNERSHIP and ACCOUNTABILITY has to be developed.

c. Re access interest level in assignment/project/work and take corrective action

# Infection 2: A leader in my team meeting, One person provides an update for all other team members

Drug Composition 

a. This person has to shut up and let others speak. Enforce RULES and power of AUTHORITY.

# Infection: 3: A team member hesitates to speak up in meetings

Drug Composition 

a. This team member needs a COACHING and a MENTOR. 

# Infection 4: Not able to understand virtual team member(s) BODY LANGUAGE

Drug Composition 

a. TRUST is the key, believe in the answer of  team member(s)

b. Use video tools like Skype, Movi, Lyncs and other video conferencing tools

c.  Cultivate a habit of providing and getting a   Loud and clear updates (ask to repeat an answer or comments if not heard properly) 

# Infection 5: Daily Meetings do not START on time

Drug Composition 

a. Agreement from WHOLE team on the date, time and venue of the meeting.

b. A sense of ownership and responsibility has to be cultivated.

c. Provide flexibility to join the meeting (Mode of attendance – Audio, Physical or Audio- Video).

d. Respect personal time and have an appropriate meeting time (based on geographical location).

#Infection 6:  Daily Meeting do not FINISH on time

Drug Composition 

a. Topics and announcement should be published in advance. Utilize collaborative tools like JIRA, Google excel sheets, Shared Excel, SharePoint, etc...

b. New topics and announcements should be taken care either in next meeting or after daily morning meetings (schedule a separate meeting with only required team members).

c.  Implement scrum meeting guidelines. Answer the below listed 3Q

                 Q1. What did you accomplish since the last meeting?

                 Q2. What are you working on until the next meeting?

                 Q3. What is getting in your way or keeping you from doing your job?

#Infection 7: Multiple speakers suggesting a solution after a team member's status of the day

Drug Composition 

a.  Raise a STOP flag, solutions and participants to meet after daily meetings

b. Implement a RULE - One person speaks at a TIME

#Infection 8: Have to spend long hours to send Meeting Notes

Drug Composition

a.  No meeting notes for daily team meetings

b. Update of task and activities are done during the meeting on an online tools like Kanban board, JIRA, Excel sheet with task

#Infection 9:  Meeting time postponed at 11th hour

Drug Composition

a.  Big No. All should meet same time, same place and using same mode of communication. This cultivates indiscipline. If host is unavailable they should make sure some one else moderate a meeting.

Special Thanks to

Shravani  Srikonda, Lead Consultant for Commodity markets with a leading services provider

Sarat K Singh, Manager  Engineering with leading Entertainment and Communication industry

Burndown Chart, narrates you a story

Burndown chart

Burndown chart provides remaining effort for a given period of time. This is one of the simplest metrics team normally adopt to measure the progress of sprint or release.

It also represent the velocity at which you are completing your customer stories.

During a typical development life cycle, following two flavors of burn down chart can be used:
1. Sprint Burndown and
2. Release Burndown

Scope of the article is to describe Sprint Burn down and narrate a story to your stakeholders

Expected Burndown chart
Assumptions
a. Lets assume that team will complete a project with all user/customer stories in  Nine iterations.
b. Scrum team burns 10 pts of story size in an iteration. This is a velocity of scrum team

It shows amount of work remaining and work done during each iteration.

Ideal Burn down chart

Legends:
Y-Axis: Work Remaining
X- Axis: Effort (in story points)

Such a simple brundown chart can tell you following story about the progress:
1. Current iteration = 6th
2. Remaining iterations = 3
3. You and your team have completed 40 story points of effort
4. Looking at the burn down chart you can narrate following story:

"Team has maintained a velocity of 10 story points and will complete the user/customer stories right on time. No major defects re introduced in the product and team is able to take care of them efficiently"  

In reality - How a burn down chart look

Team never sees an ideal burn down chart. The velocity of the team changes every iteration and there is no straight line trend.
Each sprint demonstration or QA process results in a change to the development. This change could because of many reasons, for now let me consider the below two probable cause:

a. Defects identified and reported
b. Feedback from end of sprint demo

Thus effecting : a. Scope, b. Time, c. Cost and Quality of deliverable.


Below image shows a typical Burndown of a project?

Above chart is a result of one or more causes listed below (not limited to below list):

1. Scope discovery
2. Team member leaves the project
3. Natural disaster
4. Scope creep (function creep, feature creep, requirement creep,..)
5. Requirement change
6.  Reported bugs/defect in the system

I have a story for my stakeholders by just looking at above burn down chart.


- See more at about Burndown chart @ scrumalliance.org 

Why PMP is very effective for project managers?

Today’s situation demands and expects you to be on top of deliverable's within the required guidelines. Monitoring,controlling, resource management and preparing project status reports are not the only tools used in the world of project management.

I started managing projects without formal project management training and I met the expectations by delivering the projects successfully. As I moved further on the career path, I was expected to manage complex projects. While working on one such project, I realized that the number of working hours had gone up. I took a step back and identified various knowledge gaps ineffective utilization of project management tools and techniques. That is when I realized the need for formal education.

My journey to PMP

My organization has a ‘continuing education program’ for employees. I grabbed the opportunity with both hands and signed up for training to obtain contact hours required for PMP® certification from Project Management Institute (PMI)®. While preparing for the examination, the PMBOK® Guide exposed me to standard processes, tools and techniques. The study helped me become familiar with project management jargon and learn the base vocabulary of project management. For PMP exam preparation tips and know more about PMBOK® Guide, you may refer to this article.

Preparing for PMP equips a project manager in delivering complex projects within manufacturing, service, governmental or non-profit organizations. It helps you to handle projects effectively, irrespective of the domain or industry. The skills acquired during the journey to PMP certification helped me gain confidence with regard to communication, stakeholder and risk management. The PMBOK® Guide made me understand  the importance of these Knowledge Areas and implement them effectively. I was able to identify critical risks and communicate them to stakeholders at an appropriate time. My approach towards a problem statement or change management changed. I am now more  process-oriented during project execution.

The journey to PMP helped me understand the relationship between Process Groups and Knowledge Areas that span across the entire project lifecycle. I do not work on every Knowledge Area or Process Group during a project assignment, but PMP certification equipped me to manage any project at any phase of its lifecycle.

I recently read this article that explains the benefits of PMP quite well.

Spreading the knowledge

Because I went through the certification process, I have been playing a vital role in implementing the standardized set of project management best practices in my projects.

After obtaining a PMP certification, I am in a better position to teach other team members about various project management tools and techniques. It not only helps me to spread knowledge to others, it also earns me professional development units (PDUs) as part of ‘continuing education program’. I intend to keep my credential alive by earning the requisite PDUs.

To me, the benefits of PMP have been many. If you are a practicing project manager with requisite work experience, you too can get the credential. Click here

(Pavas Malviya, PMP, has 11+ years of experience in the IT industry. He currently works with an MNC as Senior Consultant on Energy Trading  and Risk Management Practice. The views expressed in this article are personal, and do not necessarily reflect the views of PMI or PMPlanet.)

Refer my articles on

https://vox.publicis.sapient.com/groups/pm/blog/2014/09/04/why-pmp-is-very-effective-for-project-managers