Daily SCRUM Meetings

SCRUM must have been a nightmare for project managers attuned to the traditional methodologies. Traditional managers who(old timers) believed in managing the projects by controlling every aspect of the project. Not that they were experts in every aspect of the project. ‘More Control --> Better Managed project’, is just a myth. Teams are encouraged to come together (face to face) on a daily basis, communicate and coordinate their activities.

In the above context, the role of the project manager changes from that of a controller, planner to that of a facilitator. Team focuses on the delivery and the project manager facilitates the delivery by removing all the impediments. This is a paradigm shift indeed.

Daily SCRUM meetings are a critical aspect of this paradigm shift. They provide an opportunity for the manager to gain a firsthand understanding of the project activities and the issues/impediments associated with the project. Needless to say that project managers have a big stake in making these meetings effective. Like any other process or methodology, there is a chance that these meetings become ritualistic and the team becomes complacent, as time goes by. Project managers have to guard against the complacency and follow simple rules to gain more out of these meetings:

• SCRUM meetings should be held on a daily basis even when there are no obvious outstanding issues. Team has to come face to face and discuss three things, namely: work done the previous day, tasks to be completed on that particular day and issues or dependencies if any.
• Hold the SCRUM meetings earlier in the day so that the team has enough time to understand what needs to be done and coordinate with others to make that happen, during the day.
• Restrict the meeting duration to 15-20mins. The project manager should make the maximum use of this time to understand the issues and impediments. Detailed discussions on how to resolve a particular issue should be reserved for separate meetings.
• These meetings should be immediately followed by a SCRUM report. Project Managers should generate the SCRUM report immediately after the meeting so that finer details of the meeting are not lost. Also, the senior managers (or other stake holders) have enough time during the day to resolve the issues.

As mentioned above ‘facilitation’ is the key function of the project manager in an agile environment. One way to do this is to send the SCRUM reports to key stake holders across the organization on a daily basis. How the manager raises the visibility of any issue, gains management buy-in and resources largely determines the effectiveness of the project manager.

Coming back to the SCRUM reports; when used judiciously, these reports can be a great way to motivate the team. So, apart from all the burning issues, project managers need to make sure that the team achievements are equally highlighted in these reports.

Key Success Factors for complex multi site projects/deliveries

Multi site projects (deliveries) execution is a complex one. Traditional project management tools are hardly effective in countering the challenges associated with this. Multi site project execution calls for a more collaborative and disciplined (process wise) approach.

Success Factors	Challenges
Processes and organizational maturity	·        Processes across locations may vary ·        Organizational maturity level may vary ·        Systems and infrastructure may be different – so to assume the same productivity levels across sites is a big mistake
Leadership	·        Ability to motivate people in a virtual setup ·        Inability to monitor the progress as well as risks, or respond appropriately to the challenges quickly
Delegation	·        Lack of trust amongst the team members ·        Perceived inability to influence the outcome ·        Inability to monitor the progress using traditional tools
Team work	·        Increased overhead and communications costs ·        Differences in time zone – work hours stretched for co-ordination ·        Cultural differences amongst people from different regions
Staffing	·        Difficult to find the right people with the right skills – especially in multi-site setup ·        Increase in travel and overhead costs

Differences in time zone, culture or abilities pose a different set of challenges as compared to a single site project. Managers need to consider the key success factors (mentioned above) and the associated challenges carefully while planning.

A final word: There is no substitute for good leadership. It is vital that project managers possess leadership qualities for ensuring multi-site project success. After all it is no mean feat to be able to influence and manage a team that is miles away from you.

Increasing productivity through resource visibility

Resource Visibility
Business slow down in the last couple of years forced the companies to make their operations more efficient. Gone are the days when the Big 4 of the IT industry were happy to have an average bench size of 20%-25%. Enhancing productivity has become the norm. It is not an easy task though. The Big 4 of the Indian IT industry have more than 100,000 employees each. It must surely be a nightmare to boost productivity at such a scale. Compared to that, managing a small to mid size company might appear like a cake walk. But the fact that these smaller companies do not have appropriate Management Information systems makes their task equally challenging.

Resource utilization, hence productivity, can be increased if we can precisely identify their slack time. So, having resource visibility is the first step towards creating efficiencies. GWD Suite (Project Module to be precise) has a simple yet effective feature – Resource Visibility Matrix – to give the planners the visibility of all the employees.

Resource Visibility Matrix gives detailed insight into task allocation for all the employees. Managers can use this insight to improve project planning i.e. identify bottle necks, streamline resource loading and manage employees’ skills (some of which may be critical and rare) efficiently, thus boosting efficiency and project profitability.

Caution!
Multi tasking is a highly over rated word. Loading your employees with too many tasks at a time will surely backfire. Too much time is wasted in context switching and ultimately this will lead to burn out. Prudence and restraint is required of the project managers. Resource Visibility matrix or any other tool for that matter, should be used for optimal task allocation.

Relevance of project management tools

Why project management tools are important?
Managing systems complexity has become the number one challenge for the high tech companies. One of the reasons for this increase in complexity is that customers are demanding customized solutions. Another reason is the way in which software systems are tied together. A system may have many sub systems; some of which may be off-the-shelf components, third party solutions or from open source. Integrating these myriad systems is indeed a nightmare.

A more sophisticated approach is needed to build and manage these complex systems. Today’s project and portfolio managers should not only have the right skills and qualifications, but also be equipped with the right tools and solutions. A good project management solution can help a project manager to effectively facilitate project execution and develop collaborative relationships within the organization. Such a solution can also be a great asset to the PMO, to promote best practices and discipline across the organization.

How to make the right choice?
There are a lot of solutions available on the internet, for free. Organizations should definitely explore these options but should mind the fact many of these might not suit their kind of operations. Evaluating a tool and adopting it across the organization involves lot of effort from the process champions. There are other issues like lack of product documentation and support, customization, quality guarantees and security. So, even if the tools are freely available, adopting these tools carry huge costs. Organizations and process champions should consider the long term overall costs and benefits of acquiring these tools instead of focusing on the upfront acquisition costs.

Process champions and project managers should ask these questions before finalizing any solution:
1. Best Practices: Does the solution come with a set of processes and best practices relevant to your business?
2. Customization: Can the tool be easily customized to help continuous improvement of the processes and the changing needs of the organization? Can the tool be scaled up to cater to growing number of employees?
3. Metrics: Does the solution have in-built facilities to collect relevant statistics from ongoing projects and compare them against the industry and organization’s benchmarks; spot deviations and issue timely alerts?
4. Budget: Does it fit into my budget? Does the vendor provide flexible buying options like SaaS, hosted services, yearly and perpetual licensing plans?
5. Support and Training: Is the vendor reliable and will they be around to provide product support post purchase? What are the training costs involved? What is the kind of documentary support that the vendor is providing?

Organizations should also look at utilizing the project management tool for entire gamut of project operations. Popular software packages like Microsoft Project are meant exclusively for project managers. Tools like the GWD Suite have features which can be leveraged by everybody involved in the project operations. GWD has role-based approach to feature access and licensing. This makes it a highly effective project collaboration platform. More on GWD Suite features later.

Go ahead and make the right choice!
Project success rate is dismal. Some sources claim that 7 out of 10 projects fail on delivering the promises. When looked at closely, better decision making ability and leadership are critical for successful projects. The right project management tool ultimately empowers the leaders to take better decisions by providing them accurate and timely information. So, go ahead and make the right choice!

Future of Outsourcing To India

Started in late 80s for bottomline growth, Indian outsourcing has been evolving very rapidly and are at cross roads. More companies are now using offshoring and even more are finding India R&D Centers as a way of growing topline through not new products developed in India for global market but also through growing sales in India markets. GE, Microsoft, Cisco pioneered this. But even $10MM companies can do this effectively. This evolution is now becoming a revolution for companies emerging stronger from long recession.