iDEA Inspiring Digital Enterprise Awards

Teamwork

Step 4/4

Once the team structures are in place it is time to get on with the teamwork itself. This is often in the form of a project - a one off team effort to achieve a goal. So how do we do this? One easy way is to use the following steps:

1 Specify the goal(s)

What is it you are trying to achieve? Break this down into specifics. For example, build a new app to find the latest music releases, delivered in 2 months, available on all major phone operating systems.

2 Plan

Work out what the goal means in terms of your team and what they will need to do when, again make this as specific as possible so you can produce a detailed plan which you will then monitor.

3 Define

Be very specific about what will be delivered when and by whom.

4 Prioritise

Make sure the most important things will get done.

5 Risks

Identifying what might go wrong and planning for this early helps reduce the number of problems a project has.

6 Check with stakeholders

Who is involved in the project other than the project team? Is there a customer? Check that those involved all agree with what is being planned.

7 Be realistic

You will need to estimate timescales for tasks. As you do more projects these estimates will get better, and you should record how long it takes so you can use this for future estimates.

8 Understand Roles

Teammates should understand their roles and responsibilities and each person should have their own own to do lists which they regularly monitor and update.

9 Internal Communications

Teams should have regular communication through project management tracking software such as Slack or Trello, and/or through email exchanges, phone conferences or face-to-face/online meetings. Individual teammates should raise issues quickly as they arise so the team can address these as soon as possible.

10 Milestones and Reviews

Project planning deadlines should be met to ensure the overall project is completed on time. Reviews should be built into the project to check progress and make decisons as things change in the plan.

11 Signoff

Once the project is completed everything should be checked against what was expected and the project can then be signed off and completed.

All the useful information for what went well and badly and the actual times it took to do things against what was estimated should be kept so it can help with planning the next project.

Manage a Project

Select which of the 11 phases of teamwork the following scenarios in the development of a weather forecast app fall into:

At the end of this 12 week project we will deliver an app that forecasts the weather. It needs to work on Android and iOS and be available in the Google Play and Apple App Stores.

We'll need a design team, a development team, testing team and a project manager to see this project through. We have 12 weeks to do it. Let's draw up a project timeline, budget allocation and scope out exactly what we're going to do.

We'll be using instant messaging in Slack for project messages. Key information should be emailed. Any issues should be raised in our morning stand up meetings as soon as they present themselves or emailed to the project manager. Talking to each other is going to be vital in delivering this project.

The design team will be responsible for how the app will look and the user experience. The development team will do all the programming to power the app and talk to the people responsible for the weather feed. The testing team needs to test the app and make sure no errors get through. It is the job of the project manager to ensure good communication between the teams.

Once we've defined the scope of the app, we need to check that the client agrees with the plan. The client will also need to see the designs and be happy to go ahead before we implement them. We don't want to do the work, just to find the client wanted something different.

Design should take two weeks but we've allowed another week to allow for adjustments following feedback from the client. Experience tells us that we should need four weeks for the development. We've added another week as a contingency, giving us five weeks in total for the development.

We'll have client reviews in weeks 1, 3 and 11. Deadlines are week 3 for designs, week 9 for first version of the app. It's important that we hit these dates, so the project doesn't slip.

One of the dev team is on holiday for weeks 6 and 7 of the project so we need to make sure their workload can be covered. We're reliant on a third party for the weather feed, so this is a risk. There are some unknowns on the development side which we have estimated time for but could take longer (or shorter!) than we think.

Designs will be delivered by the design team at the end of week 3. The development team need to deliver the first version of the app for testing at the end of week 8. Testing team will be needed week 9 and need to finish and feedback that week. Both dev and design teams will need to have the app ready for launch at end of week 12.

This project is for a client so they have the final say in whether we can launch or not. We're aiming for launch at the end of week 12, so we need final signoff during week 11.

We should look at the things that could have knock-on effects first. It's very important that we get the weather feed connected early on. Designs need to be complete as soon as possible, so as not to delay development.