There are times when hard deadlines in projects can lower the moral of the team. Despite all the efforts to deal with complex requirements, sometimes is impossible to move deadlines, reduce the scope, cut the quality efforts or add more people. So, what to do?…
Here is when the overtime´s ghost appear and it seems like the only solution to take. It is a popular tool because it’s cheap, easy, and occasionally effective. It takes nothing more than a manager saying, “I expect you here until 10 pm”. And no matter what arguments (It´s well known that this is the wrong approach to take), managers need to meet alternatives.
So, what to do?
Well, while I was reading Mike Cohn’s book, Succeeding with Agile, I found this:
“Tony Schwartz and Catherine McCarthy believe they have the solution. They point out that time is a finite resource—we cannot add hours to our day. Energy is different, they say: We can add energy. We know this intuitively. There are days we come into the office energized and are hyperproductive. And then there are the days we do little more than watch the clock. If we can add energy to the team, it will have more of the former and fewer of the latter days.”
Time is a finite resource—we cannot add hours to our day. Energy is different: We can add energy
And It comes to my mind the Moving Motivator’s technique of Management 3.0.
It has worked for me with two of my teams.
The first thing we did was to find out how the interests and values of each team member were reflected in the project. Knowing this, we asked for at least two things that we could do to reach a better environment, where they can grow according to their professional drivers. We also observed how every solution that we offered affected their motivation-cards.
Finally, solutions came up and we collected it. We called this: Energy backlog.
People asked for remote working, better furniture, technical workshops, more autonomy and a Nintendo console to play during their breaks (not recommended for “serious” big corporations with old fashioned minds), and so on.
Thus, into our backlog, we made two groups: individual’s energizers and group energizers (common claims). We prioritized first the group energizers as a quick win and then the individual’s energizers. Therefore, we made a plan to implement this.
The results were amazing: We increased our velocity between 5 to 10 percent in one month. And while our “energize backlog” progressed, our velocity was continuously increasing so we were able to reduce our overtime by 30%.
So, next time you have to deal with overtime consider this: It is not a problem with overtime, it is a lack of alternative solutions. I recommend to start with Moving Motivators.
