Are you satisfied with the price-performance ratio of your project team?
Many companies regularly invest significant amounts of money in project teams in order to achieve their goals. These teams are usually interdisciplinary, made up of internal and external experts with specialist and technological expertise. Despite the high costs involved, companies remain dissatisfied with the progress made and the results achieved. High complexity, time pressure, excessive demands, and compromises in the solution place a strain on the team and the organization.
Why is this?
In professional team sports, it is well known that the coach has a major influence on the team and the result. Even if he does not actively play himself, he accompanies, shapes, and motivates the team to perform at its best.
It's no different in project teams: Take the backlog, for example—it should contain all to-dos, prioritized and refined. A good refinement routine creates clarity about the goals (the why, what, and how), making reliable planning possible in the first place.
We often see that many things happen on the side, and transparency, focus, and quality suffer as a result. A typical symptom is that set goals are constantly being pushed back and the velocity and thus the price-performance ratio is not right. This is not the fault of the individual—it is due to the way the team works together.
If you provide the team with an experienced coach, they will help the team achieve precisely this excellence.
A look at the backlog
Let's take the roadmap, for example—often a collection of to-dos: unprioritized, unqualified, and unscheduled. Teams often fail to distinguish between small tasks and business goals, are overwhelmed by the many backlog items, and have difficulty making decisions. At the latest when the team is asked to solve tasks it has never done before, it falls into chaotic working methods. However, there are proven strategies for bringing an epic to fruition, and modern tools such as Atlassian & Jira offer sophisticated tools for this purpose.
An experienced coach can help your team optimize its methodological approach and apply the tools in a tailored manner to shorten cycle times and thus increase the price-performance ratio.
A look at the roadmap
When we talk about team performance, it is often a personal perception. Does the team make performance transparent at all? What are the criteria for good performance?
If your team operates an e-commerce or data platform, for example, that is continuously being developed and requires support, a few well-chosen metrics are enough to improve collaboration. Textbook Scrum offers Dev&Ops limited budget conditions, but not a sufficient answer.
If you provide the team with an experienced coach, they will help the team achieve an optimal way of working that combines goals and conditions with selected metrics and personal experience.
Missing performance metrics
Focus on responsibility and competencies
And let's talk openly about responsibility within the team: cross-functional does not mean that everyone can do everything – and not equally well. A reliable team consists of experts who together have all the skills needed to achieve the goals. Since vacations, illness, or even changes in the team can sometimes occur, it is particularly important to ensure that there is backup for skills, and to do so on a long-term basis. When everyone is available, everyone can concentrate on their strengths and tasks.
If you provide the team with an experienced coach, they will casually help the team develop this skills backup. Whether through refinement sessions, demos, or targeted task rotation, the coach consciously and actively ensures a communication style that promotes enablement within the team. The most important aspect of this is the team retrospectives, which bring the areas for development within the team to light.
And what are your teams “suffering” from?
My name is Slava Baryshev. I have been supporting companies in their digital transformation for almost 20 years and look forward to helping you and your team achieve greater efficiency, effectiveness, satisfaction, and innovation.
I like to use Atlassian tools and best practices—but not exclusively—and can help your team combine them with their individual needs.