Once the whole team is done with their first pass at documenting roles and responsibilities, map the individual roles and responsibilities against the complete universe of roles and responsibilities required for a successful project. If you have not already defined the complete set required for the project, this is a good time to do that. As a team, discuss the following:
Are there any gaps (i.e., required roles that are not covered)?
Is there any overlap of primary roles?
Is there a good distribution of primary and secondary roles among team members?
Is there a good distribution of primary and secondary responsibilities among the team?
Is the team taking ownership for intermediate-level decisions or pushing them to management?
How are escalations handled?
Identification of the right resources and well-defined roles and responsibilities can have a major impact on almost all phases of a project, because without the right expertise working on the right things, the core project plan may be developed leaving critical gaps. For example, each role or responsibility should have one primary owner, but may have several secondary or tertiary contributors. If you don’t coverall the bases the potential for problems—rework, delays, overruns—should be obvious. Better yet, cover “extra” bases by anticipating the unexpected. Being agile requires team members to always be looking ahead, watching out for hazards, and surveying the horizon for their next move.
Agile Strategy Map out the entire universe of roles and responsibilities required for the project and then ensure that there is one, and only one, primary owner for each.
Meetings
One of the first things that comes to mind when discussing cross-functional teams is meetings. Meetings are an effective project management tool, but they get bad press when they are applied improperly in fast-paced business environments. In a slower-paced, fairly predictable world, meetings may be large but infrequent. It may make sense to get the whole team and all stakeholders together to present status reports and discuss accomplishments. People want to be involved and informed, and it’s politically correct to invite everyone even remotely involved with the project. In general, such meetings may be valuable but not efficient. Any given participant may only be actively involved in ten minutes of an hour meeting. Still, it may be an acceptable price to pay to maintain full involvement.
Agile Strategy Improve meeting effectiveness by increasing the number of project meetings, but limiting their scope and narrowing the invite list to only those applicable team members.
Now let’s take a look at how meetings are affected by the fast-paced and uncertain business environment. First, the frequency of meetings is proportional to the level of uncertainty. Since we’ve already determined that there is a higher degree of uncertainty, then it follows that, in general, we need to have more meetings (see Figure 4-4). This usually happens by default as part of the problem-solving process. However, in our zeal to keep everyone involved, we tend to “over invite”. This leads to a situation where some participants are heavily involved (which is good) and some are hardly involved (which becomes frustrating). Meeting organizers need to narrow the invite list to key contributors, and participants need to qualify their need to be present at meetings by pushing back if they feel that they cannot gain or add value.
Figure 4-4: Meetings in an agile versus classic environment.
Second, project managers and team members now commonly participate in numerous projects simultaneously. It is very difficult to assess people’s priorities and schedules related to projects that you are not involved in. This situation leads to meeting overload. People need the information to do their jobs but don’t want more meetings. Their perception of meetings is still stuck in the past. Project managers and meeting organizers need to help shift that perception to the present. We need to be sensitive to the time demands on our resources and do everything we can to respect and support those demands. This leads me to the next point: Meetings must be run more efficiently.
Agile Strategy Respect the time demands of team members by clearly identifying required and optional attendees at meetings. Many team members may like to remain on the distribution list and contribute when they have the time. Let them make this decision by listing them as optional attendees.
No one wants to waste time in a poorly organized and run meeting. If meetings are perceived as time-wasters, then people will stop attending, making the meeting even more inefficient for the remaining people and eventually sending the team into a downward spiral. Meeting efficiency must be emphasized in today’s project teams, and while the leadership lies with the meeting organizer, the participants must also take some responsibility. Numerous books have been written on how to run good meetings, but the most important element is the agenda. You must have a good one. Enough said.
Agile Strategy Increase meeting efficiency by sending out an agenda in advance. Include the overall meeting objectives and be clear about what you expect from attendees, so that they come prepared.
It’s a “chicken or egg” situation when it comes to meetings that support project agility. We need more meetings to navigate the fast and uncertain waters, but no one wants more meetings until they can be proven to be real value-adders. A fundamental change in perceptions and culture around meetings is required for project teams to become truly agile. This is a slow process, but the first step is recognizing how changes in the project environment are reflected in our project meetings, as previously discussed.
Communications Plan
Everything discussed thus far in this chapter can be best captured in a project communications plan. The project communications plan is a document that strives to eliminate confusion by clarifying and communicating project information to both the project team and management. In addition to defining roles and responsibilities, the escalation process, and meeting protocols, the communications plan should detail how individual and team status will be tracked and reported (covered further in Chapter 10 on infrastructure) and how change notification should be handled. You may also want to include information on a team Web site, software tools that will be used for the project, including collaboration tools, and distribution methods for information. A sample template and workflow for a project communications plan is included at the end of this chapter.
Agile Strategy Create a project communications plan to capture all elements related to decision making and communication of project information. Subsequently, exchange and discuss the communications plan with the project stakeholders.
Summary
To organize for agility, you need to assemble a cross-functional project team and establish project leadership, define the team’s roles and responsibilities, and relearn how to hold effective project team meetings. Here are some key points to remember:
Cross-Functional Team Leadership
Team leadership can be ambiguous if not addressed directly.
The project manager must show his unique value-added to the team in the leadership area.
Core team members need to support the support team members.
Roles and Responsibilities
In the agile environment, roles and responsibilities are defined by expertise and desire.
The boundaries defined by an individual’s role are permeable and should encourage others to cross those boundaries and become involved.
Individuals need to learn to cross boundaries in order to solve multidimensional problems that have never been encountered before.
Your role is what you do.
Your responsibility is what you decide.
In agile environments, decision making is decentralized.
Meetings
The number/frequency of meetings is proportional to the level of uncertainty. Generally, projects requiring agility will require more meetings.
People are generally part of several project teams simultaneously—we need to respect their limited time during meetings.
Meetings can be made more effective by identifying required and optional attendees, and letting them know what’s expected of them so that they come prepared.
Project managers need to change perceptions about meetings so they can become a valuable and agile communication channel for project information.
Communications Plan Workflow
This section describes how to use the sample template when creating an actual project communications plan. It will guide you through a process that’s meant to help you head off common miscommunications and facilitate the agility of your project team.
The communications plan template is designed so that individual sections can be easily included or removed from the final output. Also, there are many different types of projects, and one process definitely does not fit them all. You are encouraged to customize this process where applicable by modifying or adding sections.
An electronic copy of this workflow can be downloaded from http://www.xocp.com.
Identify the Project Team
Uniquely identifying the project team is a good first step toward eliminating confusion and setting project accountability.
Project Manager
This is the person responsible for managing the overall project.
* * *
Project Sponsor
This is the primary person who wants the project done and who is authorizing that resources be expended to complete it.
* * *
Team Members
These are the people who are contributing to the project. If appropriate, you may want to include a specific organization or functional area that the team member is representing on this project team.