Project intake meetings - the Hows and What's

when your are supporting a  dynamic business needs,ofter there will be lot of initiatives planned and lots of overlaps and also each lines of business will have different priorities.   having a regular intake meeting would be a good way to come up with the roadmap and also way to set or meet the stake holders expectations.

often most projects or initiatives will be assessed against there lines

Costs 

Benefits 

Effort 

Resources

also other and most important thing to consider is 'importance' ,some initiatives though are more costly if they are the ones needed and important to make  company's vision a reality ,then they are given priority.

to conduct effective intake meetings

1. Get right participants, its not a town hall meeting  ,keeping crowd limited is good ,typically have your business leads ,and your delivery leads ,BSA's  ,if needed resource mangers.

2.Understand each 'initiatives' priorities  , and timing , ROI etc

3.Evaluate dependencies ,some projects may depend on others 

4. if needed do a Risk assessment 

5. discuss and come up with sequence plan and  get a buy in.

Matrix Vs traditional organization

TRADITIONAL

MATRIX

High cross-unit coordination (from command-and-control structure) Eyes up to management Low unit autonomy Control through the hierarchy Control comes down from top ("higher center of gravity") Management focus: control Functional measurements first Career success via the functional ladder Poor use of employee expertise and initiative Follow the rules People hold positions Cross-unit cooperation is unnatural and secondary Creates standard solutions

High cross-unit coordination (from effective linkages and relationships) Eyes right to the client High unit autonomy Control through process Control pushed down closer to client ("lower center of gravity") Management focus: create value and build skills Client value first Career success via increasing skills Success based on employee expertise and initiative Create new rules People utilize skills Cross-unit cooperation is normal Creates customized solutions

Networking

In this changing and demand world, building and managing good network in your organization and outside your network are essentials.  Some ideas tips an traps:

ideas :

• Contacting each other just to "stay in touch" and keeping the lines of communications open
• Actively listening to each other to gain a better understanding of multiple points of view
• Resolving differences without having winners and losers
• Using power and influence for mutual benefit
• Keeping commitments made to one another
• Sharing resources and ideas
• Investing time to get to know one another's nonworker interests
• Recognizing contributions made by others

Tips

• Use "we", versus "I".
• Close the loop. Don't forget to share the results of your liaison activity. Bring information back to the group.
• Keep notes, agreements, progress reports, measurements, etc., in a publicly accessible forum. Information should flow both upward and downward.

Traps

• Following your personal agenda. Remember the objective is to meet the larger organizational goals. Check your personal or team agendas against those of the organization to make sure they are consistent.
• Breaking the rules you don't like. You may give permission to your team to ignore the boundaries, but remember, you will be held accountable.
• Spending too much time looking for others to remove barriers. At times, it is better to blaze a new path with your own team resources.

Success mantra for working with offshore teams

1.      Plan in advance

2.      Daily meeting & follow up emails

3.      Team rooms for collaboration  

4.      Know the culture

5.      Be transparent and get them involved in decisions

6.      Know team strengths and weakness

7.      Team building and motivation

8.      Add enough management at offshore layer

9.      Estimations & project management – build enough contingency

10.  Constructive Feedback & Protect your team

Goals

Goals are tricky especially if you are working on multiple projects and with multiple managers across year. some Do and Don't :

1. Your goals should be project independent; it is common mistake to just think about the current project and setup some goals for entire year. By year end you may end up in landing in different project altogether and the goals you agreed in the beginning of the project may not be relevant at all
2. I believe in “promise less and deliver more” (attainable), Don't over-promise to manager (they already now how to extract max out of you J ) . Have reality check before you agree on starched goals
3. If you are changing the project during the course of year, ensure to have written feedback from current PM and get copied your new PM, If you are going work multiple project for same manager ensure get the project assessment for end of every project 
4. Always good to have another pair of eyes to review the goals, if you have a mentor ( in fact you should) take his inputs.
5. Time will fly, ensure you have at least one monthly meeting with your people manager , this is important especially  if you both are working in different locations/projects.
6. Be specific and clear in writing the goals, add as many as details and spend some good amount of time in reviewing before submit/agree. each goal should have some time lines associated , of course keep good buffer while agreeing on target dates
7. Goal sheet should be live document ( relevant)  , it is not easy to predict everything in the beginning of the year  when ever you change some things ensure to get agreement from your manager and update the tool.
8. In summary  Ensure your goals are SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely)  :) 

More to follow…

First day in onsite trip

International Travel became  frequent these times. On business or on training or to work, many people travel.

Things are different from country to country.  This is for people traveling to US on short/long assignments

Here are some tips

• Plan your transit properly and reach office early,   check what are the usual office timings  ,ex in US are 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM
• Dress properly – good to wear jacket  ,this depends on location ,or how your organization sets dress code  or what business domain you are working in , Banking etc tends to be formal ,where as retail/entertainment domains go more of casual
• Plan your day in advance and use your  coffee/lunch meeting effectively to get more informal info
• Meet and Greet people.. Some good common topics to initiate discussion are weather, jetlog , team, travel, kids school  ..etc.  Its good to local football teams etc. so if you don't have knowledge  ,don't worry.
• Some of Indian names are not easy to pronounce for others , good to identify your self with a short name
• Speak clearly and slowly .

Most importantly plan your journey over weekends ,so that you can reach at least by Sunday  and get some rest .

Tips to conduct a effective meetings

Tips to conduct a productive meetings

Sending invite

• Send meeting invite at least couple of days in advance
• Ensure have proper subject line in the meeting invite – most of the executives will not have time to open the invite
• Publish full Agenda in the meeting  invite
• Ensure publish bridge/conference number along with team room details. This is important esp. if you are working in a global team

Before meeting

•       Go to the meeting room 5- 10 minutes earlier to avoid last minute surprises
•       Switch on computer and projector and have presentation with Agenda slide ready and projects before meeting starts
•       If you going to use white board – write agenda topics in advance and , if possible write presenter/speaker name next to each agenda topic

During meeting

•       Give a quick roll call for the benefit of people who joined over the phone
•       Keep a tab on time; ensure important topics of the meeting get priority. If some topics required more discussion you can always schedule a separate call
•    Don't hesitate to suggest to take topic offline if you feel that topics getting diverted.
•       Last  4 or 5 minutes summarize the discussion and action items
•       Ensure every one gets their opportunity to express their ideas ,but time box this
•       Ensure people on phone get connected with the topic

After meeting

• .      Ensure to publish Meeting minutes with action items and ETA
•       Write up a summary email and copy important stakeholders 

Managing global teams - GDC

Tips for managing global ( international)  teams

1. Meetings

•     Don’t expect that every one on the phone understands and gets 100% of the conversations, ensure to send MOM/follow-up email and clearly articulate the actions items in the email

2. Daily scrum meeting with offshore account managers
• Until things stabilize it is strongly recommended to have daily 10-15mins Scrum/touch bases calls (both at the beginning and end of the work day ) with your counter part in Global team
• Ensure to have a tracker/spread sheet to track all action items divide actions items to high/medium and low priority.
3. Working hours
• Create a overlap plan for work hours.
• Most of the  teams (i worked with) works from 11:00 AM to 8:00 PM ,I observed that some times team is  ready to extend their business hours if situation demands. But use this option sparingly
• also make sure that extra time /effort put is properly compensated like giving a comp-off etc
4. R& R and SOD
• Remember your offshore team sits 10000 miles away from you, more time you invest in getting the clarity ownership/R&R sooner you can stabilize the account.
• Create good R&R for all levels in your account
5. Team structure
• Some global teams (like India teams) are more tend to follow the hierarchy , ensure you get better understanding on reporting structure  and thoroughly follow it
• Also build relations ships with one level above your counterparts
• Ensure you have that you have proper management layer at your offshore team – it is not easy to manage and provide guidance each individual from onsite
• If your solution permits add GDC based managers in your onsite team
6. Initial setup
• Get your offshore counter part ASAP
• Give free hand in building his/her own team  – this will help him in a. feeling the ownership b. Get best resources. At the same time be involved in overall resource planning and see all the staffing needs are addressed or not
• Plan for one/ two trips to  offshore to  meet them in person and spend some time with team
7. Team room , this is good tool not only to have project related info but also to have some team events, photos, face book ..etc
8. Governance model
• Ensure to build a good governance model for controlling the overall account management.
• Maintain the transparency in account governance
• Do proper stakeholder mapping and ensure to embed offshore team correctly and accurately with client’s team
• Have your offshore team to handle monthly governance/steering committee  calls with client team , this will help them get first hand information on client’s expectations/pain points
• Some times your offshore counter part required guidance as they don’t involve in all client’s meeting, don’t hesitate to give guidance/direction to them
• If possible involve offshore  in sales/solutions phase itself

Organization Culture vs People

Most people complain that once organizations become large ,they are more into institution mode than innovation mode. Process ,restrictions  ,limitations etc rules the day to day operations . Flexibility of a start up  is lost. I agree to some extent on that. But i think the bigger your org gets ,its important to get streamlined process. Innovation should be in org's culture.  Organization Culture is grown by its people, so if people are leaned towards innovation ,then limitations will not become hurdles . organization Culture is the one that attracts and retains people with similar outlook. Every firm has its own and this not location completely dependent . So it all comes to hiring great people. The way your firm operates / takes decisions  has lot to do with culture.

Process

Most of the issues or hurdles we face in organization is due to the fact that there is no streamlined process.
some of you may disagree and say -its because of process' ,no its not because of process but because of a ill fitted process. how to create a proper process?


1.Picture the desired state:  whats the desired state?it good to do brainstorming with important few stakeholders.

2.list different types of stakeholder that have to use this process.this is important. like if as per your process if  updates are posted on internal wiki. if you have stakeholders out side of your network then it may not be a good idea. so listing all involved parties will help in coming up a proper process

3. assign accountability/responsibility at each process step .Assign who will be responsible for that process step.or point of contacts or roles.

4.Tools: whats are the needed tools for making that process successful. do you have the necessary tools. try to make use of automation if possible. Keeping it simple will be good.

5.Refine: try to refine the process.check if there are any unnecessary steps etc. improvise and refine.

6.educate: educating and creating awareness of new process is most important for its success.

innovative last day /goodbye letter

Got this recently...

Andon board for monitoring in Agile environment

What is Andon
Japanese name for a visual production-control device (usually a lighted overhead display) that continuously shows changing status of the production line and sounds alerts if a problem is imminent
Read more

One of my colleague recently came up with cool TV app that uses above concept to display the status of all upstream and down steam systems related.

In a agile environment when you are developing a complex application  and you have your QA,staging ,dev environments ,you have teams testing on that continuously.

QA :  we don't see this working ,we are not getting any response from this

Dev : its working fine in our env.

so now we check if it same version ,check the logs for errors ,and finally after some time you will come to know that some serer /db /service has wrong version or down.


Now if you have this Andon board you will see whats wrong by looking at the Big TV before you.so no need to spend time in checking what went wrong instead you can directly see whats wrong or in-fact you can customize your board to sound an alarm to signal if something critical is down.

Continuous integration   : take advantage of continuous integration environment of your agile team as one feed for your Andon board.

Now  how to design this:

1.List all the upstream or downstream systems , HTTP services JDBC services a,JMS services:
try a simple test of pinging the service or  DB query to check if these services are up in your environments
do not list the ones which you don't need. No need to add the versions deployed etc.
if you have more.. try to group them logically ,so the you know overall status ,and when you click on the group that should list the ones in group.

2.Servers on which your apps hosted : get if server is up or down or needs a restart
3.how many environments like QA ,Dev,Prod : list the versions deployed in each environment
4.list whats critical and when you want to alarm the team
      like in prod if some service is down
5. Use color coding like reds when some thing is down
6. Do not clutter your screen with unnecessary details.

Have a online url for your board if your team is split across geographical locations .

What your PM says

Src : http://agilescout.com/what-project-managers-say-and-what-they-really-mean/

How to Land on your Dream role

You have a dream role or next target role, how do you land in there .Try this...

1.Explore the role : best way to do this ,observe the person in that role , or get the job description .
Make a list of what all is needed for the role like education or new degree ,competencies , certification or soft skills .

2..Bridge those gaps:  Now do a gap analysis and how you are going to attain those. Like taking that course or  attending necessary trainings . Using them in your current job if applies.


3.Let others know : let your network or the right people know. This is very important as when they come across  they will have you in mind. You can  even discuss with your manager in your goal setting if its appropriate. Also keep them updated on the efforts you are making .

4. Explore opportunities : Explore opportunities with in your organization first. keep in mind most of the organizations take you for roles what ever you are currently good at ,but not for a new role unless they are convinced if you are right fit. So try at your organization first !

Managing -2

So what makes a successful manager?

a few important ones for the  list

• people skills 
• Walk the talk attitude
• Vision
• good planning
• Transparency /Fairness

.
a very good article on this
 http://www.inc.com/geoffrey-james/8-core-beliefs-of-extraordinary-bosses.html

Managing

Whats Managing?

according to wiki : Management is the act of getting people together to accomplish desired goals and objectives using available resources efficiently and effectively.

 Management comprises planning, organizing, staffing, leading or directing, and controlling an organization (a group of one or more people or entities) or effort for the purpose of accomplishing a goal. Resourcing encompasses the deployment and manipulation of human resources, financial resources, technological resources and natural resources


Efficiently and effectively :  how do you measure efficiency and effectively ?  is it the utilization of resources or cost effectiveness.  I think level of engagement of resources needs to be considered.

one more thing i observed at almost many of the workspaces  all organization wants their managers to be firm ,and bit tough but not too aggressive or too soft spoken. there is a  difference between  being rude and being firm/tough.

how many very soft-spoken bosses you had vs how many aggressive ones you worked with? 

which side weighs more in your case?

Cross collaboration

Now a days most of the time we do projects we do have lot of influential external factors . Some of them are to work with other teams like an upstream system or downstream application that our app depends on.

Mocking is good if cohesion is low. But how do you make your way when its closely coupled.like say 3 or 4 teams are using same environments. Though we work for same company priorities of each team can be different?how do we handle this kind of situation.Each project has its own deadlines and every team wants to reach its milestones.

have you ever came across the situation where your team says suddenly something stopped working and when you see the route cause ,it must me some team has done some changes which affected yours and they don't have a clue that it will break yours

There are gatekeepers when things go to production. what about shared dev environments?

What are best practices that can be followed?

Social media

Every business wants to have its piece in social.Every business wants to be in social networks.. for now its twitter,facebook,orkut. Who knows whats next?

For retail incorporating a like or share button became so common and sought out feature.There may be other complex features that may be needed. Will this help the Brands to stay in touch with consumer? answer will be 'it depends' . 

1. Uniformity : Have common place,expose this as a plugin/service ,which can be used across all the departments/business units in the organization. Often big organizations tend to have Business units owning concerned technology depts.  Have this developed as a cross capability.

2. Focus on Architecture early :  Decisions like considering using cloud or your own infrastructure . Keep in mind the mobile apps .  Consider what services you can expose thru your social apps,how those apps can access your firewall? security

3.Customer data: what customer data you are going to save etc is very important. check if it does not violates privacy policies your organization has with your customers.  Security ,encryption of sensitive data if stored on cloud

4.Analytics :  Be clear on what needs to be tracked. What kind of data etc  like are you collecting analytics to improve recommendations to customers or to track the purchases.