3

Simple Habits

Of a Highly Effective Team

Andy Harjanto
http://andyharjanto.com

Thousands of Studies
On Team Behaviors, Morale, Motivations

Im not interested in repeating any of these

All of these based on My 20 years of experience working with a team of..

Big and Small

Local and Global
Fortune 500 & Small Company
As Developer or Program Manager or Architect or Consultant or Testers or Founder

Used daily by 100s millions of users or only 10 users

Used by Enterprise or End Users

Many Studies and Research offer too many broad recommendations

Lets be real and specific

Lets focus on Three Critical Behaviors

You just need to remember this word

But not this kind Its a kind that make your team fly high in auto pilot mode

rogress

OT

You heard this so many times

We are making progress

But, do really we know exactly what progress we made and how and when was achieved?

Human Brains

Lets make them active and happy

frequent, small exciting activities, accomplishments

Milestone
Hmm, It seems miles and miles away 3 months?

6 months?
9 months?

When was the last time you predict milestone date correctly?

And in the mean time, the world, technology are changing

1 week
Thats your

milestone

Thats short and frequent enough to remember teams accomplishments

..and long enough to get a meaningful task completed

Work Items
..each belongs to one of these buckets

This Week

Not This Week

For a large work item, cut it into pieces It has no more than a week worth work

Simplify. Dont prioritize Just focus on these two buckets

Prioritization Problem:
Low priority items never get done

30 minutes a day
Thats all the team needs

to review new, existing work items, to bucketize, and to celebrate accomplishments

Keep Focus on the destination, make sure you dont go the wrong way

Its much better to score many small wins frequently than one big one only once

Still,
The Biggest Factor Affecting Progress Is

Human
Factor

Progress Expectancy for Each Individual

Culture-Fit . Talent . Drive

Yet another topic for future discussions

Lets repeat

1 week
2 buckets
for work-items

microstone

P for PROGRESS

30 minutes
daily meeting

wnership

Having a Sense of Belonging is a Crucial Factor in Team Morale

Individual Contribution To The Team

plays important role in shaping up sense of belonging

Problems are everywhere

inspire your team the culture of

veni, vidi, vici

Lets translates it into a contemporary interpretation

I see

the problem

I own the problem I solvethe problem

How?
Follow these 4 simple steps

When you see a problem

Step

Write the problem

On a.. hallway whiteboard, Or shared database Or shared medium

Discuss the problem

in teams 30 min daily meeting
Step

Step

assign

1Owner

Every work item has one and only one owner at any given time

And dont forget to put work item in the right bucket

which implicitly implies when the resolution is expected

Owner is now responsible for finding solutions within the expected timeframe

Step

*Owner can work with others

Tell the team about accomplishments and celebrate a little victory

Dont fall into this trap

Debating countless hours to make decisions

Many decisions are reversible and have little impact on the final results

Writing a book/heavy spec to impress your team

Things are moving so fast, it will be obsolete by the time you finish

<10 slides are sufficient for explaining problems, proposing customer experienc and describing solutions

Hang on to your ego?

Team relies on you as owner to deliver results on time. If you cant deliver, pass the baton as early as possible

Lets summarize

3vs

(vini,vedi,vici)

Culture

O for Ownership

1 owner
for a given work item

4 steps solving problems

write, discuss, assign, solve

PO

ransparency

Transparency a foreign concept in workplace

Concerns over information leak, spreading bad news and chaos

Online Users Are Used To Transparencies for Years

Social-Circles Broadcast Yourself

Self-Expression

Sharing Content

Present Yourself Sharing Pictures Your Story

Always Connected

Instant Notifications
Self-Reporting

Help Others

Breaking News

Low cost distribution

The results are undeniable

Knowledge Sharing
Mobility
Immediate Feedback
Engaging

Quick Answers

Whats wrong with this picture

Low value information consumed by many with great interest

Yet, high value information is hard to find in the work place

John just copied and shared a document to a server

No one notice until they visit the server

However, constant stream of updates, like facebook, may not work in business settings well

Why?

Online user can browse, dismiss low value updates in social networking settings

Heavy streams of data hardly matter

In workplace, high value updates require attention and possibly actions

Predictable, low volume of updates are preferable

Grouping is the natural way for a team to partition and collaborate

Sales

Engineer

Manufacture Management

Transparency within a group is not only desirable, but it also reduces amount of information to process

This is another good reason you should break organization into a smaller group

..dont get larger than

12

Activities to Capture
for all group members to see or be notified Uploading new documents People joining group

Completing Work

New Work Items

Updating data Creating Data

What on your mind updates

Comments

Get Everybody To Engage in Activities

Edit

Comments
Vote

Publish

Lets summarize T for Transparency

rouping

design for small size

Capturing Activities

Increase Participation

Now
Were all well-connected, well-informed, driven toward one goal Get Things Done!

So, remember this word

POT
Ownership

Next time, you hear:

My team sucks
Tell them:

Quick, get them addicted to POT

For more presentation like this, visit, follow, subscribe to: Blog: http://www.andyharjanto.com Twitter: http://twitter.com/harjanto Contact: andy@guppers.com

A service that uses POT as the foundation: http://www.guppers.com