SessionTwo012

C12. Sharpening Communication About Project Status and Dynamics
SteveSmith

Description
Are you fed up with projects that are disjointed and status meetings that go on forever, leaving all the open issues outstanding? Do you wish there was a better way to do and report on your project? Far too often, the members of a project team work in isolation and then silently suffer through weekly status meetings. Too often these meetings reflect the interests of the sponsor and glories unseen from the trenches. If you measured the new ideas gained versus time lost in these meetings, a vast number of people would rate the meeting as a waste of time.

But meeting planners have become "stuck" in a do-and-then-report paradigm, where the doing occupies a certain time and the reporting occupies a different time. Attendance is required; meetings are scheduled for fixed times and places. Perhaps the meeting sponsor basks in the glory of the sequential attentions of n persons and rates the meeting as excellent.

Steve has seen this pattern in company after company. He wants to help equip people with tools for changing how projects are built and statused. Join Steve to experience a traditional status meeting, discover alternate ways to meet and to affect project status.

Learning Objectives

Experience a hierarchical task structure leading to a traditional meeting, versus a less traditional task structure culminating in a non-traditional meeting.
Explore measures of personal and group value for the experience.
Allow individuals to develop alternatives for at least one component of the traditional status meeting.
Explore measures of satisfaction by participants versus observers in the meeting.

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Notes from the session

The notes are very rough. I copied whatever was on the flipcharts.

Poll #1 What's your personal return on time invested in typical status meetings?

Poll #1 What's your personal satisfaction with your team's process?
(Private ballot)

Observations/Suggestions 1

Lynn Wilson meetings
- Focus on who is the customer for the info
Put the info out in advance
Type of project & people
Introduce feedback cycles
Percentage of comfort level for metrics
Level of precision
Statement of risk & mitigation
Teams are complex adaptive systems
Parts completed
Plan, tasks, and colors

Observations/Suggestions 2

Liked metric pieces/min
Add trending/history
Wants issues to fix
Liked spin of numbers
Wants costs
Touch of reality - We are understaffed
What Depts were being successful?
Anticpate future problems
Add a picture
Competitive analysis
Refer to previous status report
Who has done what (list accomplishments?)
Progress against plan
Status Red, Yellow, Green
Why?
What do we/I need to do?
Stand up meetings (scrums)
- What was done in the last 24 hours?
- What will be done in the next 24 hours?
- Roadblocks?
Daily status versus weekly plan
Status meeting support different purposes
Talk about communication. Don't put together info no one wants

Status meetings serve different people and groups. Status meetings for the internal team are different than meetings for the customer or management. The safer the meeting the more the choices about what information is shared.

Sketch plan and where you are
velocity (work/integration)
Issues & Mitigation
Open communictation
"Pre-solve" problems prior to meeting
Information based on audience
Confirm directions
Progress to schedule/budget
Pre-lip notification
Change priorities
What we need
Tracking to integration points
Data
Single point status
- Stoplight metaphor
Accomplisments
Complaints and Recommendations
Restate objective

SteveSmith 2002.11.18

Updated: Monday, November 18, 2002