In some situations (both business and life) the administration (management, the state, any party that gives us tasks) has the wrong attitude, and that attitude is very familiar to us from the IT sector: I do not understand that IT vocabulary. This attitude creates a tendency to leave IT projects to IT teams completely, without interest and inquiries.
This way of thinking results in a lack of management interest which has the direct consequence that the technical team is given more freedom in making its decisions.
What’s the problem here?
Isn’t the Self-Empowering team a pillar of a good Agile way of working?
Well, freedom of independent decision-making is one of the principles of Agile teams. And that’s good. However, that means a properly created and educated team with all the default roles in the team. (NPR according to Scrum we must have a Product owner, Scrum Master and plus the whole development team)
If this is not the case, problems arise because technical teams generally do not understand business objectives well and may accidentally (or intentionally) oppose the business objectives of both the project and the organization itself.
Management should pay due attention to IT projects and regularly monitor and take an interest in the progress of project work.
If your technical team does not know how to present what they are doing, they may lack project management training, and they may not know exactly what to do and what the main goal of the project is.
How to solve it?
There are two answers to this problem.
The first is the correct selection of the Project Management Team.
According to the Prince 2 project management methodology, every good Project Team must have all three business interests represented.
These interests are:
1. Business – ie. An organization that will directly benefit from the project product itself.
2. User, – ie. The role that the product will use in the future to achieve this benefit.
3. Supplier, – ie. The role that the product should make that the user will use in order to realize the benefits.
These three roles according to the PRINCE 2 methodology make up the Project Committee. (Project Board)
This Committee (read management) delegates project management to the Project Manager.
In order for the project manager to be able to successfully lead the project, the board itself formally agrees on all major aspects of the project, and delegates those decisions to the project manager to implement in the project itself.
One of the main features is just timely communication. This communication was defined before the project itself, and the board thus has an insight into the current state of work on the project in real time.
The second answer is the choice of project methodology and its application both on projects and in business processes themselves.
For example, according to Prince 2, the Project Manager is not responsible for the final product of the project but for the project as a whole, ie its management. If the user and the business have not well defined the product they want to get from the project, the responsibility is on them.
As the Board delegates project management to the project manager, it also gives him the tools to work successfully and control all aspects of the project.
Which means that communication with the board (management) is not done by the technical team. The technical team communicates (reports) with the project manager, and he communicates with the management.
The methodology itself provides a common language and better understanding for all stakeholders. On the one hand, it is clear to the management what and how is being done on the project, and on the other hand, the team is aware that it has the support and understanding of the management to work on its daily activities on the project.