Handover: "us" and "they"

In October, I got this question: “Can you help us to make our hand over process work?"

Interesting question!



Many agile-religious-people will automatically answer that there should not have been a hand over process in the first place. I think there is no such thing as "should not" in IT or in organisations in general. There are many very valid reasons why things evolve into what they are, and most organisations do have some form of hand-over at some level.  The challenge is therefore; what to do within this scope?

Interesting topic!!

This organisation have looked at what is the root cause of this situation in the first place:

• Optimisation for silos; this have ensured high quality of technical expertise, but also not optimising for the whole value chain
• The needs of the customers have been primary focus (very important!) now the focus needs to be on the longer term and market transitions as well (also important!)

 

Then the organisation looked at next steps:

• Acknowledgement of situation
• Management decision making for long term solution (including some reprioritisation)
• Communicate the target picture
• Involvement
• Firefighting: Add people with great people skills that can fix things between departments and make people talk to each other, and just make things happen
• Start working on the long term solution

Being part of this now, make me reflect on the whole "us" and "they" as a topic. And I do not think there is one single organisation completely without this challenge in one form or another. The big question is; how to deal with it?

I remember back in 2003, when I was fresh out of university with my masters degree, and got my first job. The company I worked for had recently re-organised from service-centric units to be divided into three departments: development, maintenance and operations.

We believed documentation to be the main API between the development and the maintenance parts of the organisation. To make software from development/projects work in production, the maintenance department only needed to list specific requirements to them –and perform audits.

This created an optimised environment for both projects and maintenance, however we also got some frustration based on the "us" and "them" feeling:

Frustration in the projects: somebody from the outside (the maintenance department) came in and disrupted the flow they were in. Lots of the requirements were way out of scope (not part of the contract) and presented in a not so collaborative manner

Frustration in the maintenance department: why did not the projects take into account how the systems were to work in the real life (real servers, real security, real logging, real installation files that actually work at night in the short and few hours of downtime the SLA could allow)

However, we also had some great people on board, that helped us remember that we were in the same boat:

I worked with a great project manager who repeated her mantra; “We have a shared goal here, for our customers and for our company. How can we make this work together?” This is a great take-away, and I have brought it with me and thought of it every day since. This learned us to see that we were part of the same problem and the same solution.

How to change the “us” and “they” mentality is only possible by working together. Working in different departments might work only if:

• the managers are well aligned and share the same goals.
• people from all departments are included in the project work during on a regular basis, at least weekly
• people from all departments are informed, before it is strictly necessary, and kept in the information loop.
• I do not think it is possible to over-share! invite to reviews, send out summary e-mails, drop by for coffee, have lunch together
• people from all departments are invited to parties, kick off and other events 
• do not underestimate the importance of team t-shirts :)

 

 

A great exercise is to think this through on a regular basis:

• Where in my organisation do we have "us" and "them" challenge?
• What can I do to improve the "we-are-in-the-same-boat"-spirit?

Presentation skills -and how to improve

Last week I did a talk at Smidig2013, and I did my best to use the presentation skills I learned earlier this year in a practical training class. You can find the talk here (in Norwegian). In this post I will summarize my notes from the presentation skills class:

1) Body language:

a) Standing still:

Stay still and firm when you talk. Be grounded on the floor.

I had a tendency to sway, both in hips and in knees. In the presentation I held last week, you see that I do this a little bit in the beginning, then remembering to stand still.

b) Moving around:

It is great to use the whole floor, do this: talk, move, talk. This means do not talk when you move, and it is ok to move and turn your back to the audience, but do pause the talking when you do this.

I have a tendency to much more swaying when I move, so for me, it is more important to focus on a then on this.

c) Arms

• do not touch yourself (not in the face or anywhere else.)
• you may have your arm(s) straight down beside you
• or you may use your hands to gesticulate –not in front of you, the best is using large movements out to the side (feels wired, but looks great, use video and record yourself and you will be convinced)

For me, I have focused on the first one of this, I am aware of the last one, but think this is hard. Most of my gesticulation is in front of me.

d) Words

Skip all words that do not have a meaning. Words like “ehm”, “sure”, “right”, “like” and so on. It is much better to pause and to have just silence. It feels strange, but sounds great!

After practising this and recording myself, I have been aware that silence is definitely my friend. When I need to think, it feels like minutes, but in reality, it only takes seconds. A pause only makes the content standing out.

2) Content

When all the rest is in place, off course content is the most important part of the presentation.

a) Introduction part one

(10-30 seconds) Get on the same page with the audience, let the audience know that you know the context and domain, and get each and one of them to buy in to the idea of you being able to contribute in the area of topic.

For me this was an eye-opener. Before I attended this class, I had the impression that it was smart to present any controversial ideas or summarise the whole point of the presentation in the introduction. Big mistake!

b) Introduction part two

(10-30 seconds) Let the audience know what they can expect during the presentation, i.e.: “in this presentation I will start by examining the three different options, and summarize pros and cons. I will also present the recommended solution and how to bring this forward”

I did not know how important it is to let the audience get a sense of what to expect, and this being key to engage the audience during the presentation, making them curios.

c) The PowerPoint

Who are the slides for? –It is not supposed to be for the presenter J The audience are only capable of either reading or listening –not both at the same time.

If it is important that the slides capture content for people not present (it is going to be sent out) consider making two separate slide decks or provide the extra content in the “notes” section.

I have fallen in love with pictures on my slides only. This is also what I used in my presentation at Smidig 2013. These are three slides from that slide deck:

 

 

d) The end

Summarize your point and present next steps or actions that the audence should take.