Self-managed team: dream or reality? Светлана Старикова Sigma Software

067 720 56 47 bellastart@gmail.com

TEAMS VS PROCESS

ON VIRTUES OF

SELF-MANAGEMENT

Сколько у вас лет

опыта работы в ИТ?

Briefly about myself

Кем работаете?

Medtronic Received FDA Approval for World's First Hybrid Closed Loop System for People with Type 1 Diabetes

My first PM experience

DMAIC cycle, Six Sigma Project

Management Roadmap

Define

Develop a vision for

Six Sigma project

Map the project management

process

Understand client

needs and set project

requirements

Measure

Collect data on process defects and possible

causes

Review process data

for a relatively long

period to identify each

cause

Organize hierarchically

and visualise process

data, use Pareto

analysis Estimate starting

sigma level

Develop detailed

process maps

Analyze

Write description of focuses problems

relating to the process

Explore potential causes to process failure/inefficiency

Organize potential

causes and collect

additional data

Quality cause-effect

relationships by statical

methods of analysis

Develop detailed

process maps

Improve

Create possible solutions for root

causes

Select the most

feasible solutions

Design

improvement plans

Run pilot test for

the plans

Implement the plans

and evaluate results

obtained

Control

Design and document standard practices for process improvement

Train and develop

personnel

Keep track of

process

perfomance

Update standard

procedures

Summarize and communicate results

and communicate results obtained

Develop recommendations and

future plans upon project completion

Ideally, PM is only critical for

Define

Control

Control warning

(controlling one’s

behaviour is wrong!)

Cultural anthropologist, James

Redfield suggests that attempting to

control another person's behaviour

is a type of neurosis, based on

childhood feelings of

powerlessness.

CONTROL DRAMAS

The Intimidator

The Interrogator

CONTROL DRAMAS

Some curious

statistics

An astounding 97% of organizations believe

project management is critical to business

performance and organizational success.

The median salary for project managers is

$87,500 in the U.S.

There are projected to be 15 million new

project management jobs within the

decade.

Businesses identified “capturing time/costs

against projects” as their biggest project

management challenge.

Self-managing team:

dream profile

Outstanding communication skills

High level of self-discipline

Proactive

Result-focused rather than process-dependent

Adaptable to changes

REALITY

THINGS

Important (related to you)

Unimportant (related to others)

Making unimportant

important

Moral appeal does not always work (developers

are not often empathic)

Give and take game (be more pragmatic)

Enforcing VS enabling (generally, people like doing

things they like. Just ensure they’re busy with

those 80% of the time. Correction: at least ensure,

20% of team members who bring most value are

on what they enjoy doing 80% of the time …)

Eliminate before you delegate (do not expect

people to clean up your mess, delegation is about

respect)

MAKING UNIMPORTANT

IMPORTANT

Make it fun

WHAT IF THEY SCREW UP?

Human error

Factors which influence the probability of human error:

Professional skill

Mitigation: feedback and regular performance review

Complexity of the task, completeness or contradiction of

information

Mitigation: get the f****** PO!

Physical and mental conditions, including stress and time

pressure

Mitigation: just give them some slack

Untried new technologies

Mitigation: give them time and use buffers

Social factors and organization

Mitigation: shield them

TEAMWORK Project box with blinking light: 8.47 British pounds

Writing a speech to make co-worker look stupid: 33

minutes

Getting the results you wanted - PRICELESS

Ant algorithm

efficiency

procedure ACO_MetaHeuristic while(not_termination)

generateSolutions()

daemonActions()

pheromoneUpdate()

end while

end procedure

POINT

The more people work on the

process problem: the bigger is

probability to get it resolved in the

most optimal way.

Parkinson’s law:

we’re people after all

How to avoid time waste?

Single responsibility (one person is

responsible)

Open-close (avoid scope creep but allow for

flexibility)

Member substitution (ensure no knowledge is

isolated)

Talent segregation (do not confuse with full-

stack, just ensure you have different experts

on the team)

Dependency inversion (depend upon abstract

principles and goals to allow for team

extension)

So why do we need

processes?

1. Processes are contracts by which we agree to

act. And contracts are better in act when bi-

lateral

2. To document our informal agreements in case

someone forgets

3. To keep the track of ant trailing

4. For education

5. For building team spirit (rituals rule)

WHAT ABOUT SCRUM?

Three cases when

SCRUM may not work…

The team is not mature enough

The customer is not mature enough

PM wants to have everything under control

(see control dramas)

SO WHAT I DO AS PM?

After you’d built the team, focus on the main business challenge: “capturing time/costs against projects”

THANK YOU!