Tag: Team

Be a Good Team Player

Written by Kupe Kupersmith on August 16, 2011. Posted in Articles.

I have written before about how critical it is to be a good team player. Regardless of your skills, you limit your growth and potential if you don’t play nice with others. We are taught from an early age to share, listen, use our magic words (yes and please), and never, ever bite. These basic principles are not just for 3 year olds. They should stay with you for a lifetime. I know there are some people who are just bad team players and others that only play nice with people of influence, like a boss or someone signing their paycheck. Although this post is a good reminder for them, it also relates to everyone. For most of us our intention is to be a good team player, but work stress and life in general get us out of our team player mode.

I teach a one day workshop, Improving Communication through Improvisation, where I facilitate an exercise to highlight the common traps we fall into during projects which make us not-so-good team players. The exercise is called group juggle. The group gets in a circle. One ball is tossed around the group with each person catching and throwing the ball to someone else just once. The ball makes it around to each person crisscrossing the circle depending on where each individual wants to throw the ball. Next, I introduce 2 balls, with each ball going in the same order. Then a third, fourth and fifth ball is added in. As the balls are flying in the air I encourage the group to move fast because there is not a lot of time for the exercise. Without fail balls are hitting people in the head, flying way out of reach, or being thrown to the wrong person. Sometimes a ball gets dropped and just lies at someone’s feet.

Once the exercise is complete the group discusses how the exercise relates to projects. Here are the common points discussed.

You may have guessed that the ball represents an activity or task, and my encouragement to move faster is the equivalent to a manager, business stakeholder, or a project manager pushing to get the project completed as fast as possible.
The cause for the balls hitting others in the head or flying past them is caused by others just wanting to get a task off their plate. The person passing the ball (task) was not making sure the receiver was ready for that ball (task).
Balls being left on the ground are like tasks that get forgotten by one teammate or one teammate having too much to do. No other team member stepped in to pick the ball up. Being a good team player means you will jump in when necessary to help out a team mate.

In life and especially on projects we do not accomplish overall objectives in isolation. With the help of others we come together utilizing each individual’s strengths to achieve the best results. You need to slow down and make sure your teammates are ready for the hand-off of tasks. You need to make sure your transition of a task is done in a way that works for your teammate. And when a teammate needs help be there for them. When you need help they will be there for you.

Do it for the team,

Kupe

Celebritize Yourself

Written by Greta Blash on July 4, 2011. Posted in Articles.

I just finished reading a wonderful book by Marsha Freidman, Celebritize Yourself,[1] which describes a three-step method to increase your visibility at work. I feel that after seven years of work in your profession as a business analyst, you should be recognized as an expert and if you are not, this book will help guide you through the process. Celebritize Yourself is about branding yourself as an expert. This book is not about becoming a Hollywood or TV reality celebrity, but about becoming recognized as an expert or leader in your field.

The three-step method to celebritizing yourself is

1. Write,

2. Speak,

3. Sell.

Write as much and as often as well wherever you can. If fact, everyone who is reading this article is invited to contribute to the Business Analyst Times website: http://www.batimes.com/contributing-to-ba-times.html about your own experiences pertaining to business analysis problems and solutions.

The second step, Speak, is your ability to give presentations to various groups through work-related projects or organizations such as IIBA, Toastmaster, etc. Speaking in front of a group is the number one fear that people have but as a business analyst, you are expected to give presentations about your work so why not take it a little farther by volunteering to give presentations outside of your work environment. The experience will provide you the opportunity to improve your speaking skills.

The third step, Sell, is about selling yourself as a business analyst for future projects or as an authority on business analysis topics so that managers will seek out your opinions. At one company where I worked, I facilitated a weekly brown bag lunch meeting for business analysts where we could share ideas about business analysis topics within actual projects that were currently underway. This proved to be valuable to the newer business analysts and project managers, and also gave me the opportunity to write and speak.

If you look on IIBA’s website, IIBA.org, you will see that IIBA encourages you to give back to your profession by volunteering to write and speak on business analysis topics.

Volunteering activities include:

Willing and able to devote two to six hours per week to IIBA calls and volunteer-related work
Access to email, the Internet, and a word-processing program
Willing and able to attend committee meetings, as scheduled, via conference call or in person.

Before you start, the author recommends that you make a list of your strengths and weaknesses. What are you good at? Is it your organizational and planning skills, your people skills, communications? These are the things that come easy to you and that you thoroughly enjoy. What about your weaknesses? These are the things you struggle with and don’t enjoy and may even try to avoid or pass on to another team member. Do you need to improve on any of these weaknesses? What makes you unique from other project managers when you compare yourself to them?

Next, the author suggests you answer the following questions:

1. What’s Your Vision for Celebrity? Before you can finalize a plan, you must decide where you want the plan to take you. What is your business analysis vision? Make it simple and write it out as to what you want it to be.

2. What is Your Commitment to Your Vision? How determined are you to become a great business analyst? Do you have your CCBA or CBAP certification? Do you attend your local IIBA chapter meetings? Do you communicate with other business analysts? Do you read articles and blogs on Business Analyst Times and respond to what is written there?

3. What is Your Own Unique Message? Defining your message is not always easy nor is it always obvious. But it is important to have a distinctive message about your knowledge, experience and education. What part of it do you enjoy the most and what energizes you to perform the work that you have been assigned?

4. Why Does Your Message Appeal to You? What do you love about being a project manager? Is it the planning, the execution, monitoring and control, or is it the team members or the satisfaction of successfully completing the project that greatly benefits the organization?

5. Why Will Your Message Appeal to Others? It is meaningless to start this journey unless your message can resonate with others. How can you reach out to others to touch their lives and benefit them regarding business analysis?

6. Who is your Target Audience? Who will benefit from your message? Is it other business analysts, stakeholders or students? Identifying your audience is the foundation for your entire plan. That is your personal marketing plan.

7. What’s Your Plan for Celebrity? The plan should contain a defined goal and specific steps that are necessary to achieve it. You should write this, evaluate it and update it frequently before committing to it.

8. When Will You Start? I assume by now that you are enthusiastic and you are thinking about starting your own celebrity journey. Here is a quote from Amelia Earhart: “The most difficult thing is the decision to act; the rest is merely tenacity.” The author suggests that you start out small and add to it as goals are achieved.

9. Have You Picked the Right Teammates? You are looking for individuals that can help support and constructively criticize you and your work. Choose teammates who clearly want to help you succeed. Embrace them and listen to what they have to say, even when it’s critical of your work.

10. How Will You Measure Success? When you consider the time and effort you will put into this, what will you expect to be your reward? Is it recognition from your peers, management or family? Is it the satisfaction of helping others? Only you can provide the answer to this question.

In summary, celebritizing yourself is not a means to an end, but it’s an ongoing journey. It is a path and not a destination. Don’t let the hard work dishearten you or let obstacles stand in your way. If you apply the principle in this article or from the book, you will find the journey becoming easier and your expectations will be met. To walk the path takes a strong commitment to develop a personal plan that can lead to a successful career while helping others. It can lead to a strong sense of fulfillment in your life.

[1] Celebritize Yourself, Author: Marsha Friedman, ISBN: 978-1-886057-20-3, Warren Publishing, Inc 2009

Steve Blash is an experienced IT professional consultant providing business and technology leadership, mentoring and vision. His areas of experience include project management, I.T. management, business process improvement, business analysis, business intelligence, data analytics and data warehousing.

Faultless Facilitation – The Art of Team-Based Decisions

Written by Robert Galen on June 27, 2011. Posted in Articles.

Business Analyst’s guiding challenging, soft & squishy, crucial, and team-based conversations

Nowadays, I spend 100% of my time in agile teams either engaged in direct coaching, teaching, or participating directly within the team. One of the core tenets of agile teams is self-direction. This is a state that is much easier to say than it is to achieve. One of the more critical activities that fosters self-direction is effective facilitation and the role of facilitator.

Leveraging Scrum then, this ‘art’ largely falls within the realm of the Scrum Master. A large part of that role is directed towards focusing the teams’ energy on effective discussion, debate, and decision-making. Trying to create an environment where the team experiences what Jim Surowiecki calls The Wisdom of Crowds. The key point is that the collective wisdom of a team, group or crowd is quite often greater and more valuable than any singular domain expert.

These team-based innovative solutions surround architectural & design choices, surfacing and analyzing critical customer requirements, and crafting the simplest yet most powerful feature sets in response. There are often a myriad of directions or choices a team can make and getting the path right isn’t always easy. Effective facilitation can be one of the differentiators for teams hovering between average and outstanding delivery.

5 Dysfunctions – The Passionate Debate…

As it turns out, technologists seem to debate everything. Or at least that is my experience from over 30 years of software development. They’ll be just as passionate about naming conventions for a particular nondescript configuration file as they are about designing a high performance databases for a new large-scale CRM application.

I think it might have something to do with personality type or perhaps just a fondness for debate. Regardless, just as we have a tendency to be overly optimistic with respect to estimates, we have a tendency to deaden the horse on nearly all technical topics.

I recently read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni and received some excellent training surrounding that material. One of the key points the instructor made focused towards encouraging teams to have Passionate Debate…but about the Things That Truly Matter. It’s the last part that we often forget as technologists.

A good facilitator will try and focus the discussion away from the myriad and towards the things that truly matter. It’s a prioritization game that aligns incredibly nicely with the agile methods.

So what does this have to do with BA’s?

If you’ve read any of my posts about agile and BA’s, you’ve seen me continuously reframing your role—for example, from an early requirement provider, to a whole-project oracle for requirements and their evolution. Or reframing towards establishing an ongoing and intimate partnership with your customers.

In this post, I’m trying to influence your facilitation skills. I think most BA’s have a wonderful capacity to facilitate team-based discussions surrounding requirements. But I feel you can extend that towards general facilitation surrounding all aspects of an agile team attacking a project. It’s this extension that I hope you entertain.

A Quick List of Facilitation Tools & Techniques

So, if you’re a BA who wants to improve your facilitation skills, I thought I’d provide a list of some techniques that I’ve found helpful in guiding teams’ towards successful agile execution. While these tools and techniques can be helpful in all contexts, I feel they’re particularly helpful in agile contexts. Enjoy!

Ask why; ask why five times

There is something quite powerful about asking why. Why are we doing this? Why is this complex design the only way to solve this problem? Why are we taking on so much scope in delivering this feature?

In lean circles a common approach is to ask why five times. The tactic is to peel the onion and drill through peripheral points into the core of an issue or requirement. And when you ask why, don’t be afraid to wait for an answer. Allow time for folks to think about the question and respond. Sometimes that silent pause can be most helpful in getting to the essential core of a discussion.

Ask silly questions

One of my favorite approaches to foster expanded discussion is to ask silly or frivolous questions. Sort of putting myself out there as being clueless, so that others will seize the moment to correct me and explain the options, true nature of each, and why we’ve chosen the direction we’re taking.

The other side effect is that teams’ will also re-examine their drivers for a decision and often look for simpler approaches. It sort of shocks their nervous systems into reconsideration. But clearly you need a thick skin and self-confidence to take this approach.

Make controversial statements – see who responds and how

A variation on the silly question approach is to make absolute or other controversial statements. Let me give you an example. In your business domain, designing and testing for high security is an important criteria.

So in a requirement planning session you exaggerate as to how little security testing you’ve seen in the requirements—knowing that there is a reasonable level. You’re looking for team members to respond with the facts. You’re also looking for realization across the team of any security testing ‘gaps’ that might still exist.

Put on a different hat (Development, Sales, Marketing, QA, Architecture, Regulations, PMO, Management)

One of the more powerful actions you can take is changing your point-of-view or perspective. That’s why personas are so powerful when developing User Stories. They help you to clarify the ‘User’ in the “As a _____” clause.

But you don’t need formally defined personas to put on different perspectives. Simply ask the team to consider the requirements, design, or problem from various lenses. I think the facilitative art is in selecting the perspectives based on the problem at-hand and not simply going down a by-rote list.

Devil’s Advocate

I sometimes struggle when someone adopts the Devil’s Advocate position. I’ve seen it miss-used as a stalling or blocking tactic from those who aren’t truly interested in specific directions or decisions. In these cases, it’s an unhealthy plow.

However in the healthy case, it’s a wonderful perspective. It focuses the teams’ energy on the opposite case, causing them to think about decision alternatives and how to defend & strengthen their case. Often it drives slight alternative approaches that might not have otherwise surfaced.

Recognize / thank folks that exhibit and weigh-on with candor

Actively recognizing folks who are weighing-in with valuable feedback is another way of encouraging feedback. First acknowledge those that are engaging and thank them for their contributions. If someone takes a risky position or challenges an incumbent in a courageous manner, I like to point this out as well.

In fact, the more candor I see being driven into the debate, the more I visibly appreciate and recognize it. Now you have to walk carefully here as a facilitator so you’re not perceived as picking favorites.

Exaggerate – small or large

This one of my personal favorites and I probably overuse it a bit. It’s related to the controversial statement option above. However, in this case, you minimize or maximize the point being made. It serves to get the teams’ attention and focus them on the “shades of gray” related to any discussion.

For example, if I detect that the team is minimizing the testability aspects of a design discussion, I might ask them how they’d propose testing it if they had to do it? What if they didn’t have any ‘testers’ at all? In this case, that exaggeration might pull the teams’ consideration towards the importance of building in efficient, up-front testability.

Ask quiet folks to weigh-In OR ask loud folks to weigh-In last

Team dynamics often seem to include quiet and loud characters in their fabric. Part of the role of a facilitator is to equalize these voices – in an effort to create an environment where all voices (opinions, options, thoughts) are heard.

One technique for loud voices is to privately ask them if they’re aware of how influential they are on the teams’ decisions and to ask them to weigh-in more carefully and after others have had their opportunity. For quiet members, often simply asking them directly will get them to engage.

Or assigning them a position that you think they’ll struggle with—in order to drive them from their comfort zone. Another approach is to setup ground rules that expect everyone to fairly contribute to decision-making.

Facilitative Tools

As a means of wrapping up this post, I thought I’d share some traditional facilitative tools:

Clearly rank options as a team; then converge on the best option based on team discussion – removing outliers first.
Discussion, then team voting; re-vote as required. Use a technique where you surface supportability of a decision vs. agreement with the decision.
Time-boxed discussion; then a pre-declared decision-leader decides if the team can’t come to a decision within the time-box.
List Pro / Cons and vote as a team – consensus or majority or decision-leader led decision.
Explore the overall cost of doing it vs. the opportunity cost – not doing it. Keep the discussion focused on value & cost—making it a mathematical decision of sorts.

Quite often it’s useful to write down or specifically quantify your discussions – making lists, ranking items, and generally clarifying the discussion in words at a whiteboard or on a flip chart. This has a tendency to bring the team back towards reality and help them to converge on a direction.

A large part of this is driving towards a decision—often the hardest part of facilitation. So having a variety of decision-making models can help.

Wrapping Up

I hope you found this post useful. I also hope it inspired you to work on your facilitation skills—particularly if you’re part of an agile team. Why? Because many teams spin-and-spin around discussions and desperately need quality facilitation. I hope you can broaden your role to help fill this need.

In my next post I’ll be sharing another tool for facilitation – Edward De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats model and how it can also help your facilitation. Till then, happy decisions…

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

Maximizing Team Effectiveness by Greta Blash

Written by Greta Blash on June 27, 2011. Posted in Articles. 1 Comment on Maximizing Team Effectiveness by Greta Blash

As Project Managers we are responsible for the team we have been assigned. Often we have no input into the selection or replacement of the team. In these situations we need to make sure that we are able to maintain the best people, while improving the effectiveness of the others on the team.

I recently read a new book entitled No Nonsense Retention – Painless Strategies To Retain Your Best People by Jeff Kortes. Even though the book addresses management issues that may lead to people leaving an organization, there were many good points that would apply to Project Managers as they manage a project team.

Some of the must-do actions include:

1. Supervisory Training – Even if the project manager does not hold the title of supervisor or manager, supervisory training can improve their ability to manage others. Uniform, basic and consistent – without training “like sending warriors out to fight a war with outdated weapons”. If the company is unable to provide this, take the initiative to continue your personal growth through training or reading books and/or articles on management topics.

2. Manage by walking around – With today’s communication technology we are often more apt to sit at a computer (or smartphone) rather than speaking directly with our team members. Because the majority of messages are conveyed through body language, tone of your voice, and other non-verbal cues, this lack of personal contact can lead to miscommunication, confusion and a host of other problems. Obviously this is easier to accomplish when the team is co-located rather than a virtual team, but this one-on-one communication becomes even more critical in the virtual team environment. Not only does the Project Manager have a better understanding of what is happening by watching and communicating with team members as they perform their tasks, but the team members have a chance to get to know the project manager through these interactions.

3. Know and understand each team member – It is important to understand each team member, not in a prying manner, but rather to understand what is important to each individual. If you know about a person’s life, you will understand what motivates them. Just as it is important to listen to our children, we must take the time to listen to our team members. Make sure that you are available and accessible to your team members.

4. Treat everyone with respect – Respect is about how you treat a person. How you demonstrate how you value that person is appreciation. These two actions can set the tone of the team. One of the first actions is to remember the importance of saying “please” and “thank you”. It only takes a few extra keystrokes or seconds to include these in every request.

Another important demonstration of respect is to avoid jumping to conclusions. It is critical that when situations arise that you investigate the situation by asking questions and listening to all sides of the story.

Make sure you not only tell your team members that you appreciate them – but also it is important to show them appreciation. I personally always have some little candy bars or other “kudos” to recognize small achievements and recognition.

5. Convey expectations – It is important to make sure and convey what is expected of each team member, and then hold them accountable when they don’t meet the expectation. Without both parts of this action, the project manager often sends a mixed message. In order to make sure that the expectations are met, the team members must have the tools and supports that is needed to succeed. This includes examining any barriers that need to be removed to help them get back on track.

6. Remove underachievers – When the expectations are continually not met it is critical that the individual be removed from the project. This is one of the hardest tasks that a project manager must perform. If substandard performance continues, it affects the entire project team. At first the rest of the team often takes up the slack “for the good of the team”, but after a while the bar is lowered and the overall quality of the project suffers. When a piece of fruit in a bowl starts to decay, it doesn’t take long for the rest of the fruit to become affected. The same is true of project teams.

Even though the book was geared to retaining good employees from an HR standpoint, many of the points are very apropos to the over team environment on projects. Since most of these points were directed at the supervisor or manager, every project manager should take the time to evaluate their “team management” sphere of influence, and see if some adjustments are necessary.

Problem Solvers and Fixing the Corporate Order

Written by Abid Mustafa on June 7, 2011. Posted in Articles.

In companies that are obsessed with politics and intrigue, problem solvers rarely fix issues and are more likely to spawn new problems that weigh heavily on the organization’s ability to serve customers and respond to market trends. This is because most problem solvers in such organizations avoid thinking about the political dimension of problems. For them problem solving is apolitical and necessitates issues to be understood and analyzed, root causes identified and validated, and initiatives developed and implemented that eventually result in workable solutions. The solutions— by and large—are delivered in the form of processes and governance models, roles and responsibilities, training, automation etc. Problem solving in this manner always conforms to the politics of the company or what I like to call the “corporate order”.

No matter how hard problem solvers try to fix problems, the corporate order always ensures that facets of the solution they deem threaten their interests are either lobbied away or sufficiently diluted before the green light is given for implementation. Even the implementation of the solution is not secure from the prying eyes and ears of the corporate order. If they discover that red flags can expose their incompetence or heap embarrassment upon them, project and operational reports are skillfully manipulated to steer initiatives into paralysis or the initiative is given a death blow.

In such environments problem fixers— executives, program directors, project managers, line managers etc— quickly learn to mould their thinking to accommodate the interests of the corporate order, even if it is detrimental to the corporate interests. Subsequently problem fixers spend huge amounts of intellectual capital, invest considerable money and exert much effort in producing and delivering solutions that are fundamentally flawed both in scope and application. From the outset the purpose of such solutions is to maintain the status quo i.e. keeps the executives that preside over the corporate order in power. Problem fixers are only permitted to solve those problems that enable the custodians of the corporate order to meet their performance targets and maintain good relations with the board.

Problem solvers who adhere to the purity of their thinking and are sincere to the corporate interests find it extremely difficult to conceal their frustrations in such working environments. They often clash with the interests of the corporate order—many do so with a poor understanding of the political situation. In the end—depending upon the level of seniority and political influence—they are either brow beaten into submission, contained but isolated or their employment is terminated. This usually happens after a lengthy war of attrition—often disguised in business jargon, so that unaware employees do not become suspicious and can be used as pawns in the ensuing power play—and the company’s resources, money and time are wasted in such pursuits.

Those problem fixers that survive the onslaught are intellectually scarred and find it difficult to even attempt to solve future problems. They procrastinate fearful that their solutions will be rejected by other employees who work under the shadow of the corporate order. Such problem fixers very quickly lose credibility and relegate themselves to problems they cannot solve.

If problems solvers truly want to solve problems in politically charged companies, then they must frame the problems in the context of the corporate order. But to do so, they must excel in three areas.

First, develop a firm understanding of the corporate order and its political influence on the entire company.

Second, learn to think politically and not intellectually. Unlike intellectual thinking, political thinking has no rules. Its source is the statements and deeds of those who engage in politics at work. Techniques such as generalization, modeling and analogies rarely work to uncover or counter the motives and plans of the corporate order. Conversely, the corporate order is apt at exploiting such techniques to imprison problem solvers in their thinking thereby rendering them impotent. Hence, it is incumbent upon the problem solver to build a profound understanding of all the major players at work, their domains of influence and how they maneuver politically to safeguard their interests. In sum the problem solver needs to possess a crystal clear picture regarding their personal political plans and actions.

Third, the problem solver must have the courage to challenge the existing corporate order. Challenge here should not be confused with mere confrontation with the guardians of the corporate order that ultimately yields a compromise—this will never lead to proper change. At best the problem solver’s concerns will be accommodated by the corporate order, but at the mercy of their terms and conditions. Moreover the problem solver will be regarded by other employees as a lapdog of those executives under whose control the corporate order thrives. To produce effective change the problem solver must expand the support base to include other executives willing to spearhead the cause, and then challenge the corporate order until it is reformed or reconstructed. This is a high risk strategy—failure will certainly be a career-ending move for the problem solver, but success will usher in an era of genuine problem solving and propel the company to new heights.

Don’t forget to leave your comments below.

Abid Mustafa is a seasoned professional with 18 years’ experience in the IT and Telecommunications industry, specializing in enhancing corporate performance through the establishment and operation of executive PMOs and delivering tangible benefits through the management of complex transformation programmes and projects. His experience has been gained in industries as varied as utilities, telecoms, financial services, transport, and education, working for several blue chip companies such as Centrica, London Underground, British Telecom, Oracle, Enron, Logica, and Wateen. Currently he is working as a director of corporate programmes for a leading teleco operator in the MENA region.