Several Real World PM Issues

The following text was my response to a post @ allpm.com with regard to "Several Real World PM Issues" sighted by the member.

There is no single (definite) answer to questions posted by you. I'd rather term those as "Situational", i.e. given the scenario and importance of a given attribute (or set of attributes) you make a decision. Nonetheless, I have tried responding those based on my assessment.

Q1. Your application is in testing for the last 2 weeks and you are supposed to deliver the application at the EOD. Your testing team has found a major flaw in your application in the afternoon. You cannot miss the deadline and your developers cannot fix the bug in couple of hours. How do you handle this situation?

#1 - You have to have a communication with customer. Apprise him / her of the situation, and your alternatives, i.e. if non critical, making a delivery with known issue, and patch / subsequent delivery with definite date etc. One thing is sure, you cannot ignore the customer, and just sighting a problem is also not enough. You have to have options with clear execution plans and outcomes, before you decide to discuss with customer.

Q2.Your team is into the 6th Iteration of 8 Iteration project. It's been really hectic for the team for the last couple of months as this project is very important for your customer and to your company. You have started noticing that some of your key resources are getting burnt out. How do you motivate these resources?

#2 - You have identified the need for motivation; however, do you also know what would motivate them? If you have also uncovered the attributes for motivation, it would be a matter of analyzing and planning of resources, within given constraints to address those attributes. Otherwise, first understand the factors / attributes that would contribute to their motivation, and then address those. Another situation could be the "work" itself is de-motivating. Under these circumstances, you need to assess the "rotation" on one hand, and make them realize their contributions and your gratitude for what you all have collectively accomplished. Further, you also need to apprise them bigger accomplishment on completion, and the satisfaction (reward, if any) that you all would be getting.

Q3.Yours is a dedicated team for a customer and it's been a dull period for you and your team. You are not actively involved in any development activities. Your team is providing support to the application, which you have delivered earlier. Your team is getting bored as the application stabilized now. Due to budget issues, customer is not going to give you work for another 3 months. How do you motivate the resources?

#3 - Any development activity would come to end some day- a fact that cannot be ignored. However, the business needs a definite and continued stream of revenue, which can only come through long running (continued) work. Think of rotation, building something innovative / constructive in "excess capacity" times, conduct trainings, or simply make them realize the "Job Security" that they enjoy because of mentioned work. However, I personally believe that any motivation would exercise only be effective, if it is based on study of a person, environment, and constraints.

Q4. You have a resource that who is not happy with his job and complains all the time. You have noticed that because of that the team morale is getting spoiled. How do you handle that resource?

#4 - Educate the person of consequences. If problem still persist, fire the person. The reason being, probability of correcting a non-performer (work wise) is more (and the cost is less) as compare to probability of correcting a person (and the cost is more), who may be brilliant, but does not believe in his / her work or organization policies.

Q5. Conflict should be resolved by person involved and immediate manager. Is this CORRECT???

#5 - Depends on the situation, and maturity of the person(s) involved. I'd be happy to provide my response, if you can elaborate.

Q6. There was a situation where more than one-way to accomplish the same task. Your onsite tech lead and offshore tech lead has different opinions about doing this and the feelings were very strong. Both are very important to you. How do you react to this?

#6 - We all know that there is no one decision, which will make all happy. Therefore, the best approach would be to go by merits, i.e. ask them to demonstrate and debate the merits of each, and quantify the merits via PUGH metrics (you can also make use of QFD tool, though with restricted usage). This way other person would see the merits of decision, and would also encourage him / her to build alternatives and do their thorough evaluation in future, even before some alternative is proposed.

Q7. You are at the customer's place and your application is in UAT/stabilization phase. Your customer comes up with a change request and says that it's a minor one and he wants to see it in the next release. What will be your response/approach to your customer?

#7 - The facts of the life is you cannot withhold or say no to business need. The customer is proposing a change, because this is what is required for his / her business. Therefore, work towards adapting changes with minimal disruptions. Therefore, apprise them of your change management process, and if the impact (adverse) and subsequent cost is more than the ROI / gain, the chances are that customer will either put the change on hold (if non critical), or will approve the "change implementation", as submitted bu you. The fact is, you have to be flexible, and you need to make the customer realize that you are flexible; however, every change has associated costs (not necessarily in terms of $$).

Q8. Your team is in between iteration. Your customer wants few more items to be delivered in that iteration which you are working now. How do you react to your customer?

#8 - Refer response #7.

Q9. How to motivate team members who are burned out?

#9 - Refer to my earlier response under similar situation.

Q10. Your customer wants a bug to be delivered at EOD. You have got the BUG/CR information in the morning. It will not be possible to develop, completely regress this issue and deliver it at EOD. How do you approach this issue?

#10 - What is your SLA in this regard? If the demand is as per agreed SLA, you should have taken enough measures to address these situations (hopefully). If not, and if you are not a regular defaulter (on your SLA), customer would agree for exception (subject to conditions / situations). However, if you are a regular defaulter, you need to put together your acts to improve the situation of SLA front, as ultimately it would have an adverse impact on relationship.

Now, specifically for mentioned problem (if you really need to have answer for immediate problem alone). Find out the touch points, critical flows, and test as regress as per critical path. If you do not have capacity issue, and parallel activities are possible, think of doing things in parallel and then converging and following a sequence.

I'm not bringing in automation and other things, as I'm assuming those as given.

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