The subtle ways we waste our team's time
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A presentation about ways a product manager or team lead can waste a team's time. I focused on communication (meetings and written), decision making, leadership This was presented at the first PM Nights event in Walldorf on the 29th of August, 2018
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The subtle ways we waste our team's time
- 1. The subtle ways we waste our team’s time Note: some are not that subtle
- 2. Hey, I’m Alex • Talk about companies • On site and remote • Multiple frameworks (kanban, scrum, pitching) • Calculate how many different teams you have worked with
- 3. In an ideal world, the PM job would not exist
- 4. What do I mean by ideal? • Well…
- 5. “Lucky” for us, it is far from ideal • I think it is virtually impossible to achieve the ideal state of a team as described above. • However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aim to help our teams achieve it • But one fact we have to realize is that we are an extra member added to the team with the goal of helping the team achieve that ideal state • More simply put, right from the start, by our presence we add friction to the team dynamics. And it is expected that this friction generates value
- 6. Friction?
- 8. Average week for a scrum team
- 9. A time for value added trade • And so we add friction and consume their time • And consuming that time, we create value • And the promise or expectation from all sides is that we reduce more friction from all the connections to counterbalance the extra point we add into the mix.
- 11. 1. Communication
- 13. Your role in the team meeting • Meetings • Are you moderating the meeting? (talk about your role in the meeting, trying to talk last, to disagree well means to understand well, listen to understand, not to reply, answer the exact question)
- 14. Common point of discussion • Meetings • Do you have a common point of discussion?
- 15. Communication through tasks • Meetings • How are you communicating through the tasks you create? Are they easy to follow and implement? Do they have everything in one place?
- 16. Give feedback early and often • Meetings • Giving feedback early and often
- 18. Empowering the team to decide • Letting the team make most of the decisions (talk about bezos’ decision making framework)
- 19. 19 Solve the problem before your team does
- 20. Democratizing access to data & insights • Democratizing data
- 21. Defining principles with the team • Democratizing critical thinking
- 22. Experiment / Hypothesis driven • Hypothesis based iterations • Give an example of a hypothesis and the scientific method
- 24. Solve the problem before your team does • Solve the problem before the team does (and what impact it has)
- 25. Proper team member onboarding • Proper team member onboarding
- 26. The elusive but frequent time sinks • Be aware of invisible but frequent time sinks: holidays, vacation, code review, qa, time wasted in between these process phases, newness of team or topic
- 33. Less really is more Jeff and Ben can confirm
- 34. ”Ship it” in order to ship it! • d
- 35. Sometimes just doing it costs less • Sometimes it takes less time to do it than to debate about it
- 36. Let your team own the problem
- 37. Less silos, more team
- 38. Comfortable with the unknown & mistakes
- 39. Focus the team on outcomes, not output
- 40. Is the goal crystal clear and omnipresent?
- 41. In an ideal world, the PM job would not exist
- 42. Thank you. Questions? On twitter? @Bleau
Hinweis der Redaktion
- - Currently a product manager in the User Profiling department @trivago. - I’ve had the chance, maybe even luck that in the past 5 years I’ve worked together with over 10 different teams, from 1 to 10 people in size, coming from diverse backgrounds, nationalities and cultures. And I’ve had the chance to try out a lot of changes and frameworks like kanban, scrum, pitching, etc. - I’ve been on teams working on projects related to digital signage, software as a service, mobile games, physical products and recently building and shaping trivago’s core B2C product. - I also like bowties, although with trivago’s casual style I don’t have so many opportunities to wear them…
- User, product, business knowledge Communication Initiative and motivation Decisions Time management and sense of urgency
- I think it is virtually impossible to achieve the ideal state of a team as previously described. However, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t aim to help our teams achieve it But one fact we have to realize is that we are an extra member added to the team with the goal of helping the team achieve that ideal state More simply put, right from the start, by our presence we add friction to the team dynamics. And it is expected that this friction generates value
- How much friction are we creating?
- How complexity rises when your team or small group grows in size. At 10 people there are 91 potential connections. https://churchhealthwiki.wordpress.com/2015/07/05/teamwork-the-rapid-complexity-that-arises-when-your-team-or-small-group-exceeds-10-people/
- Total = Almost one day spent with you, 10% 1on1 meetings? Ad hoc discussions? Feedback or decision discussions? Also, the team spends most of their time speaking with the PO/PM
- And the promise or expectation from all sides is that we reduce more friction from all the connections to counterbalance the extra point we add into the mix.
- The main areas I believe a PM brings value to the team and there is a lot of space to reduce time wasted: Communication Decision Making Team leadership
- With a focus on meetings.
- Meetings: - Do we need them? - How about a well crafted email, or a slack message that requires action, or a doodle for organising an event? - Do we need everyone? Are you needed? - Meeting agenda? Cool. How about a meeting goal?
- Are you moderating the meeting? Are they still talking on topic, does everyone get to have a say, is the group making progress Trying to talk last Listen with the intent to understand, not to reply Answer the exact question
- Teams lose hours because of this (from the start)
- How are you communicating through the tasks you create? Are they easy to follow and implement? Do they have everything in one place? How specific are you in communication? Is your team able to act or decide based on what your message contains? The infamous slack message: Hey…
- Have you delayed giving feedback to someone until the end of the yearly evaluation? If yes, who should be responsible for the costs of the person not improving on that feedback?
- Letting the team make most of the decisions
- Source of the image: http://oneslide.org/post/146402359101/bezos-decision-making
- Making all data and numbers and insights available to your team and also teaching them how to understand and make sense of it.
- Democratizing critical thinking Defining principles with the team
- Hypothesis based iterations and experiments
- Solve the problem before your team does
- Proper team member onboarding
- Be aware of invisible but frequent time sinks: Code review and QA review Time in between the process phases Vacation and holidays Newness of the topic Newness of someone to the team Newness of the technology
- Task creation and preparation
- Design and User Testing
- Business intelligence, logging, analytics
- Translations and copywriting
- Other teams and stakeholders
- - https://www.crisp.se/gratis-material-och-guider/multitasking-name-game - https://insights.sei.cmu.edu/devops/2015/03/addressing-the-detrimental-effects-of-context-switching-with-devops.html Less really is more No context switching Jeff, Ben game – 4s vs 7s
- Smaller, more frequent releases “Ship it” in order to ship it. A sailing ship never goes straight. It goes for a short while in one direction, then evaluates its position and adjusts. It “zig-zags”. In a similar fashion, the path to achieving a company vision or goal is rarely a straight line. It is more pragmatic where possible to ship in smaller increments, evaluate and adjust.
- Sometimes, it is cheaper to just have one person do it: - 5 people out of flow for one hour - 1 Person half a day working on it Do you want 5 people to get out of flow and debate for an hour or do you want one person to timebox for half a day?
- The entire team owns the problem. Start thinking and talking about the problem together Involving stakeholders as well
- Ooops, that slide was supposed to be hidden. That slide is from the trivago version of the slide deck.
- Team works as a team Pair programming Pairing design with devs, UX with devs and design, etc. Pairing B.I. with devs Involving Q.A. early, not just passing to Q.A. This also helps when one of your key devs is sick
- The team will tend to focus on what you also decide to measure Similarly, when someone is on stage, they can control what you focus on. If I make a mistake and move forward, people will notice it, but then probably dismiss. If I stop and stress about it, most likely a lot more people will notice it.
- We are adding friction We have the potential to add a lot of value A lot of that value is being lost along the way Getting closer to that ideal state means you’re doing your job right, and you can go on holiday without any stress.