Not sure if there’s a silver bullet, but there are certainly lead bullets. I found this really helpful:
https://hbr.org/2015/01/what-everyone-should-know-about-mana...
Ask HN: As a team lead how to handle project going off the rails?
11–20 of 212 posts
Re: Ask HN: As a team lead how to handle project going off the rails?
#12I suspect that you did not managed expectations. PO was not really working as the proper owner and have no clue about progress and effort being put. Your direct manager does not care as it can always blame everything on you. And the team is not so great if they have problems with "comfort zone".
First get PO on board. Choose the process that will push PO into the central role: Kanban, Scrum, XP(anything really). Work with the PO to create user stories, estimate and calibrate. PO should work with stakeholders to ensure that the timeline is realistic.
Get your team a proper training. Hire someone to do training on the tech you use. Get some courses from Pluralsight/Udemy that will be mandatory for everyone on the team. Extra day in month spend on training is not much but it will up-skill people quickly.
Drag in your manager. Get him into a meeting and ask for a guidance of the senior manager. Make him co-responsible, he might help with funding on the project. Cut features to absolute MVP. If nothing works, escape sinking ship.
Re: Ask HN: As a team lead how to handle project going off the rails?
#13* Put a risk database in place - what are the project risks, mitigation strategies, probability the risk will happen and the impact on the project.
Start tracking this risks DB on a weekly basis
Involve your Manager and the product owner in the risk analysis and mitigation task.
It is shared responsibility of management.
Each week update the ETC and show how it has changed as a result of the risk mitigation.
Sit down with the product owner and juggle the features to get to an optimum mix of ETC, features and risk.
He/She has to take responsibility along with you.
Up and Down and sideways...
Re: Ask HN: As a team lead how to handle project going off the rails?
#14It sounds to me as if you're doing a 'big bang' when you should be doing something incremental instead.
Great way to lose your people because at some point the only way to make the artificial deadline is to increase the pressure on the team building it to satisfy the manager. Those that can move out will do so, you will be left with the people that do not have much in terms of options to finish the job.
This movie has played 1000's of times in badly managed tech companies.
Re: Ask HN: As a team lead how to handle project going off the rails?
#15Sounds kind of familiar. We started a mvp/prototype that was handed to one guy without that much of a planning. That guy is really good coder but not a product owner/manager, documentor or planner. You see where this is going? This was about empowering team members with responsibility.
Without a concrete plan it was really hard for the rest of us to help or say what's really important. And so began the feature creep for something that was suppose to be a quick prototype ended up being whole implementation which took half a year to get first somewhat working version.
The problems for us was we didn't know status of anything as it was always promised to be ready in 1-2 weeks but feature creep made it bigger and bigger. We tried to help with planning sessions etc but that wasn't enough to get the prototype back to track.
As everybody got a bit too rosy picture of its status, our salesguy started selling the idea forward. The timing seemed to be right etc but we didn't have even proper deml version as the one guy chugged on with his waterfall ad hoc dev style...
After our sales guy confirmed there's lot of demand for this proto and we got the first somewhat working version out and when the next steps were not really sane, we made an intervention which we felt we should've done four months earlier.
First we had a team discussion and decision what should we do together for the situation and then we created concrete plan for the next steps we felt we needed to get first sane version out. Then we made this public to everybody.
The funny thing with this intervention was that the guy who made the feature creep proto felt relieved after this. The biggrst reason why we were so reluctant to intervene was that this guy would get badly demotivated but he had chugged on so long he did get really stressed and frustrated with the situation but didn't know how to get help in the hole he had dug in.
So my advice is to talk out loud and make things visible. Timelines, features bot yet implemented etc. Maybe a gant timeline etc. These helped us to get the project to a sane point shere to continue.
Re: Ask HN: As a team lead how to handle project going off the rails?
#16Assess the product delivery in terms of risks. Look at what's on the roadmap and build a 2x2 matrix of the intended features.
Get some post-its and write down each feature. Organized on the 2x2 with these axes X: "risk/complexity" Y:"desirability" (that's business & customer desirability.)
Setup a meeting with your products owner and others to try and get a good deal of feedback and communication, reorganize the 2x2 matrix during the meeting to build understanding of risks and priorities.
With everything on the table the big risks should be clear and addressable. The product owner will be able to make some changes to the product plan.
Visibility and transparency is key, don't do an ass covering exercise, and act sooner.
Make sure you understand what has been difficult and outside the teams comfort zone, where improvement could be made etc.
Also be aware of the motivations for the product owner and empathize. Build & strengthen that relationship.
Better feedback loops, better clearer/slicing of feature requirements... I could only generalize, but aim to improve communication and even if all goals aren't met it will be a healthier place and contingency will be easier to work on.
Re: Ask HN: As a team lead how to handle project going off the rails?
#17I do not believe in blindness optimism which seems to be the way things work in Silicon Valley. But That doesn't mean you are not going to achieve it, but you have to strategically plan your features / function.
A Project or Product are never really finished. There is always a long tail of things to do or remake. In case of the goal being so far ahead, pick three ( or may be just one depending on teams size, but no more then three ) things / function / product features, that it MUST work, start sprinting towards those goals. Make them sound as easy as possible. Make a deadline that they know they could sprint to. My experience has taught me, may be only 1 out of every 10 or 100 person can see the bigger picture. Human are not very good at broad perspective, that is why you must set small enough goals, that is mentally easy to comprehend, and therefore mentally easy to achieve with hard work, but not impossible, damaging morale.
Most of the time, ( if not all the time ), once you prioritise those goals and reach within 80%, of what looks nearly finished project. This is a good time to talk to direct manager, because your last 20% of project will likely take the same amount of time as your first 80%. The higher management will hopefully, having seen the good enough 80% work, decide on which direction to go next. ( Which is another broader set of view on how to jiggle product / project / business/ operation / expenses priorities. )
Re: Ask HN: As a team lead how to handle project going off the rails?
#18Whatever you do, DO NOT ADD new team members to an already delayed project. It will delay it further. Break down the project into simpler tasks that can be assigned to a team member and be tracked. Attach strict responsibility of task to team member. And last and most important, talk to your Management about timelines. Make it very upfront that it will take X number of days and no lesser.
Re: Ask HN: As a team lead how to handle project going off the rails?
#19> we're not going to make the release
> At what point should I start sounding the alarm?
Immediately.
IMMEDIATELY
Re: Ask HN: As a team lead how to handle project going off the rails?
#20Words I've used with success before: "I've got some bad news. I've been running the numbers and based on our current progress, it doesn't look like we're going to hit our release schedule. Now, it's possible that we've just hit a slow patch and we will pick up steam later on, but my experience has been that this rarely happens. Everybody on the team is still really optimistic and we're working very hard to hit the release, but I wonder if we should start to make a contingency plan. For example, if we take this part out and plan it for after the release, I think it will help. If we pick up speed again, we can just roll it back into the process. I really don't want to add any more people on the team right now, because we have a really good chemistry at the moment. I don't want to risk losing time by trying to integrate someone new. What do you think?"
If the response is, "You'd better hit the dates or heads will roll", then respond with, "Of course we'll do our absolute best!" and start looking for a new job.
If the response is, "That's disappointing, but we can't change anything because all of our marketing/whatever is dependent on you finishing everything on that date." Respond with "Of course we'll do our absolute best! Let's see how it goes for the next 2 weeks and hopefully it will get better". Start poking around under the hood to see if there is any wiggle room for pushing things out (i.e. are you being fed BS, or is it really the case that the company is doomed if you don't deliver). 2 weeks later have the appropriate conversation. One time I had to say, "I completely understand the position we're in, but I'm sorry to tell you that the odds of us completing our part of the work on time is extremely low and I can't think of a way to fix the problem. I think we're going to need to work on a new business plan." Basically its realistically discussing the "we're totally screwed" reality. Try to find the best compromise that you can, while looking for a new job in the background :-)
Otherwise just play it by ear. Unreasonable product owners will be unreasonable no matter what you tell them. You might as well tell them the truth. If they are going to flip out, then let them. If your product owners flipping out bothers you a lot (it bothers me a lot ;-) ), then look for a new job.
However, my experience is that when you are not flipping out yourself and are open to listening to the other person's problems, usually good things happen. I don't often look for new jobs when my projects aren't working out as hoped.