Alexa's Blog

Hi fellows.

After I have told you about team leadership, next I want to say a few words about the team working space.It´s an important factor for your team productivity and as a Project Manager is one of your duties to ensure a medium of work as best as possible.
First of all I think we should look at the room where the team is located.Best would be that each programmer to have it´s own room but this is a nice dream right ? Well, if that is possible then would be best, but you should be aware that not all programmers feels comfortable in this situation.Some of them like to have someone close to them, so best would be to have at least two in one room. If that is not possible, then I think is ok to go up till seven, but no more.

There are a lot of big companies that are using big spaces and create there small isolated desks and put a big number of people in the same room. Personally I hate that for many reasons and I think that is the worst way to make people productive. In fact I think is all about money because many studies show that is the cheapest method.

Next thing is too look how much noise is in that room and who´s make it… That´s right, when people don´t talk, there is a lot of background noise in the room which comes from computers and keyboard typing.If you don´t believe me, just listen.You will notice that too. It´s important to have silent fans and hard drives in your systems and militate with your upper boss to get the best set of keyboards for you and your team. Those days you can find quite easy and cheaper good cooling systems and good keyboards.The investment is not so big and the noise reduction you get is quite significant.

Get good computers.I don´t mean here the most expensive you get, but be sure that is enough powerful to help your people in their job without to put delays in their work. Memory is an important factor and having at least 1Gb of memory is a must those days(I am not talking by Vista here! he he…).

Give them the right tools for work.I know a lot of cases where in order to keep the budget low programmers are working with primary tools. For example using a simple free text editor when editing html and working on projects with over 300 files.That might be ok for quick edits or code inspections but is a big impediment on big projects.Some coders make a passion for some tools.Try to see which are those and if they are productive buy them.If not work to make them understand why is best and the time to make a switch to a verified set of tools by your team.The general rule here is to use the right tool for each task.I hate when someone try to open a screw with the wrong screwdriver… Sometime just takes too long:)

Get them big monitors which works at high resolutions! For me my desk space is never enough.The same rule apply to my desktop space… And I get frustrated when switching from one window to another.Programmers usually work with many applications at the same time and they need many windows opened. Switching between them is a real pain, specially when you are a bit stressed with a deadline… There are plenty of good monitors out there and not so expensive. You can get a 21″ or 22″ wide monitor quite easy. If that does not work for you, why not adding a second monitor to their system ? Dual monitor graphic cards are also cheaper those days and the combination of the new card + monitor is affordable.I don´t say to do that in one day for all your guys, but you can give them one by one at the end of a project as a motivation factor.They will like it, believe´me:)

If there is a phone in their room cut´ it off! You have no idea how much silence you will get! Ask your boss to call you by email or messenger, or whatever other method he can, but not by phone.Same rule apply for programmers.If they need to disturb someone, at least to disturb only one. Not all the team!

If you keep meetings in your room try to have them at a given hour of the day.Programmers might start instant meetings to solve a problem.If all of them are involved then ok.If not make a rule to move the brainstorming in another place and let the others working.

And there is one more… Get them good chairs! Don´t forget that your people are working at least 6-8 hours each day on that chair.Their health is important and you don´t want to have them spend a lot of time visiting doctors with back or neck pains.Look at your boss and if his not complaining about such problems ask him to get your programmers (and you) the same model of chair:)

That´s all for now. Hope to see some comments on this.I will really appreciate them.

Bye:)

Hi Folks,

Here is a new chapter from my Team Management and Leadership series.Today I want to speak about so called “Jelly Team” , what is it and what are a few steps to build one.
Like I said in my previous posts, the main goal of every project manager should be to take care of his team as best as possible among the other responsibilities he have.I don´t know why, but doing a search on Google did not returned the results I expected and I am very surprised about that.There are many methods of managing teams out there and nobody cares or put accent on this issue which I think is a vital one when working on projects.Or maybe I just use the wrong therm ? Who knows…

However, let´s go a bit and look what a jelly team is from a project manager and his team point of view.As you know, every team work best if the players can communicate and fell better together, if they share the same goals and have the same aspirations.To make this happen the project manager and the management staff needs to provide an healthy medium of work and keep their eyes open to the emotional status of all team members.Stress and pressure might affect them in a bad way and for sure sooner or later will generate conflicts inside the team. A continuous conflictive situation is not something you want to have in your team and you should take measures to avoid them as soon you see any minor sign.

From my point of view a jelly team is closer to the ideal team where all things are going well and all members are happy to come and work.It´s the team that can solve quick problems, and any employee aspire to get into sooner or later.Is a “magic box” which you know that once opened can solve all your problems in time and budget.It´s the team which know each members strength and they are able to distribute the work inside to give maximum of productivity.It´s a team who got others teams respect and in most of the cases have a nice or silly:) name. It´s the team for witch the word “team work” mean something and they put all successes and failures on the team name and not for them selfs.Is the team that can easily accept you inside if your profile match or quickly reject you if don´t.
If you can identify some of the previous aspects in your team, then you are on the right way.Keep them together and do your best to make them happy working with you.

How to build a team like that ? It´s a long way, but here are a few points about how you can start

• Look for team members which can easily communicate
• Look for team members who share the same hobby’s
• Look for team members who like to share they knowledge to others
• Give problems and tasks at the team level instead of individuals and ask the whole team to provide a solutions.
• Share part of your management tasks with them.This will make them collaborate and organize the team work “inside”.
• Monitor who are the persons that tend to motivate and animate the team.Try to see how they are doing that and what other members like from their personality.
• Treat them equally from the professional point of view.Even if some members are weaker in some areas, if the team spirit works, the other members will get implied and add it on the right way.If not, they will reject it sooner or later.
• When a new member is proposed, ask the team first and get their opinions.
• Inspire them to get a name for the team(if they don´t have one already ) and help them to make this a “brand” inside and outside of your company.
• Stay in front of your team and protect their work medium.Fight with your managers to get the best conditions and required tools.

You can do that? I think yes, you can do many of the above points. And if you start with a few and your team is starting to become “jelly”, the other ones will follow also in a much easy way.

That´s all for today.I will really enjoy to hear some opinions, good or bad ones from your experience.

Happy jellying!

Ok, like I promise in my previous post, here is it the next part of Team Management and Leadership.

In my previous post I talked about some things that a new Project Manager should know about his team and why that is so important. Next I would like to talk about some mistakes that usually new team leaders and Project Managers do.Is not a checklist or something like 10 points to project management success.In fact I have no idea at this moment how many will come out..:).

To start I want to say a phrase I heard some many years ago and sound something like this: “To really know a person, put the power in his hands.“. It´s a good test for any new leader, in fact I think is the best one you can have.The leadership preparation is a long and hard way. So new Project Managers and leaders be aware about how you use the power you get.The leading means control and your role is to control two main things: the project evolution and your team spirit.
Both of them are related and your power can affect both of them directly, good or bad.

No a bit about control…

Control is good… yes for some people the power to control others is good, exciting and… whatever you want else. But the big problem in most of relations is not the control itself, but HOW YOU DO IT.
Let´s go a bit over a small scenario… You have your team, you have a project and something important for delivery in one of your hot days.Everything was set in the morning meeting, you know the problems and you have the solutions. Basically all you have to do is waiting for your team to finish their tasks.How do you control if they will finish them in time ? Of course you can work on your daily items too and just wait for them to finish. But you are new and you have the feeling that something can go wrong… so why not check them as often you can to be sure that everything follows your plan ? How often? What about 30 minutes ? Sounds good right ? You can´t go wrong with that.A small “ping” to get the status from each of your guys and maybe animate them a bit can´t hurt…

Let´s see what happen… You start your first round after about one hour and go to see how things are going.You see your guys working hard trying to keep the schedule done.They are so deep in their work that even not see you there. And you start asking the first one: “How is it going ?”

Damn you just did the worse thing possible for him.You just break out his “flow”. And what ? He will get it back… after (more…)