Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

At noon the day before yesterday, Mr. Wang Lijie (@ Invincible Brother) threw out such a question among the FDCC certified students of IDCF:

The organizational structure of a traditional enterprise company has many levels, and many departments work together to make the traditional project management very heavy and very procedural. Now the proportion of projects involving cross-projects, cross-departments and suppliers is more than 70%, and the efficiency of R & D is low.

In the face of such a situation, how to manage and cooperate with all parties? What should be done in the short term and in the long run?

To solve this problem, the friends in the group discussed it based on their own experience. We talked about more than 200 Wechat messages at noon. We sorted out and shared some of the contents of this discussion with you.

Focus 1: what are the possible causes of this problem? 1. The departmental wall leads to inconsistent positions of all parties, resulting in obstacles to advance.

There are more and more collaborative projects, and there are many levels of organization. It is speculated that the reason may be that the department wall leads to too many voices in the project that are difficult to manage, or the progress of multiple parties may be out of sync, which makes it difficult for the project to advance.

2. Management, implementation, culture and other problems lead to the failure of a good system.

Problems may arise from leadership, team execution, teamwork and other factors, which can not be solved by project management. Many teams have perfect institutional processes, but the skills of team members encounter bottlenecks, or good institutional processes can not be implemented, and no one is in charge, lack of supervision, lack of incentives, lack of rewards and punishments, leading to a vicious circle.

3. Problems caused by the style of the top boss

The big reason for this problem is the boss's style, the orientation of the goal vision, whether the corporate culture, working atmosphere, organizational structure, decentralization and authorization settings are reasonable, and whether it will lead to inefficient and asymmetrical communication. If the advancing team does not have the right and driving force, there will be problems that can not be controlled and no one will listen to; at the very least, the transparency, inspection and adjustment of the project itself have not been done well. Many traditional enterprises are the shell of project cluster management and agile heart.

4. This is caused by the characteristics of the long-term project itself.

Long-term projects are too dependent on suppliers or customers and require a lot of communication and coordination. Long-term projects must be inseparable from project planning, project objectives, priorities and phases, so it is difficult to avoid the shadow of traditional project management. Generally speaking, the internal platform research and development or C-side agile is used, while B-end delivery is still waterfall, which is wrapped in agile.

The characteristics of long-term projects: the demand is not continuous, phased delivery is not balanced, subject to a lot of external factors such as customers or suppliers, and a lot of changes. If a separate independent project team will lead to the unreasonable use of resources, it is also not conducive to the unity of the company's business platform architecture, which may lead to a lot of customization and personalization.

Focus 2: how to diagnose specific problems and find out the cause? 1. Communicate regularly, improve the process and find out the problems.

You can first organize various departments to participate in regular communication, and the process improvement team will coach you to use Kanban or other ways to ensure that each project has priority, visualization of progress, and exposure of contradictions and problems. Moreover, with the priority of the upper level, there can also be a reference in the case of resource conflicts at the lower level, and it is easier for counsellors to find other hidden problems, and then solve more specific problems.

2. Project visualization, comparative interviews, positioning problems.

First of all, we need to conduct an interview to see "whose" and "what problem". Secondly, we use value stream or other tools to draw the flow of each role of the project in each department, and combine the swimming lane and value flow map by role / department to make a map, which can clearly show the current situation of the project, try to identify obstacles and obstacles, and compare with the interview results to find the real problem.

Focus 3: are there any effective solutions in the long / short term?

1. If it is a functional organization or a resource-centered management team, it is difficult to solve this problem fundamentally. If the proportion is as high as 70%, it is best to sort out a typical case for analysis, reorganize the business, make clear how to achieve the shortest delivery path to customers, and then adjust the organizational structure according to the actual situation.

2. In the short term, you can consider choosing a project as a pilot project and try project management; in the long run, you can consider dividing it into business groups according to business, expertise and other characteristics for management.

3. Classify and classify strategies, distinguish between key points and non-key points, and identify the key points of each project management.

Short-term: focus on key projects, clear responsibilities, clear problems, transparent progress

Long-term: set the system process, equipped with QA quality assurance, phased management follow-up.

The core is: technical R & D and non-technical R & D can both be project management, but there should be a distinction between management points and grip settings.

4. The intermittent agile method can be adopted in the product research and development part, and after the priority of Sprint, the Sprint switching of multiple projects can be carried out.

5. In the long run, organizational reform should be carried out according to business, similar to the division of tribe in Spotify, and the organization should be decoupled as far as possible; at the same time, the project should be managed by imitating the management process of multi-level Kanban, and the project status of different granularity should be aligned at different organizational levels to clarify the progress of the project.

6. It is recommended to keep short-term projects, find a long-term valuable non-high-risk project as a pilot, set up a virtual organization, connect the performance within the group, and take your time with all kinds of agile methods for project group implementation.

Focus 4: how to solve the problem of long project cycle characteristics?

According to a complete MVP business closed-loop design and iteration, the long-term project is divided into small phases; short-term projects with no effect can appropriately allocate some resources to short-term effective projects. In short, demand departments should be ventilated first, unifying the overall goals of the organization, rather than fighting for self-consumption on their own.

Discussion focus 5: how to solve the problems caused by external factors (suppliers)? 1. Visualize and find out why you are waiting

There are often developers waiting for the joint transfer of suppliers, but because there is no transparency, other projects are waiting for these development resources, which is a waste. The problem is that we don't know that we need to wait, and if waiting is known, then we should be encouraged to put the waiting task on blocker and then move on to the new task. So, no matter what the problem is, you have to be visual before you can see waste and blockage, and then you can say how to solve it.

2. Have your own processes and standards

To develop joint adjustment with suppliers, the key is to have their own processes and standards, independent and controllable architecture, design by BA and IA, and participate in the review.

If there are many suppliers, it is necessary to agree on the interfaces one by one, and if the progress of the suppliers can not keep up, our own people will do other things first, and the relevant functions can either be replaced by manual methods, which can be solved as long as we communicate well. As for the problem of suppliers, if there is no this function, which department is the most painful, then let which department to promote, the supplier must also have contract constraints.

Discussion focus 6: how to get the upper-level support for reform?

The reform cannot be pushed from the bottom up, and if the upper level wants to change, it needs a plan at the middle level and can be implemented at the bottom.

First of all, to make the top bosses feel that this is a problem, traditional companies are basically long-cycle waterfalls, and Agile is just a gadget.

Very often, the executive tells the boss that there is a problem, but the ability of persuasion and promotion is lacking, there is no strong evidence, and there is no reliable proposal or alternative. The boss cannot make a decision if he only talks about the problem without the antidote.

Reform decisions are difficult to make, often stuck in opacity, unable to expose real problems, and often stuck in knowing where the problem is but there is no alternative.

Therefore, the traditional management believes that the documents required by ISO, CMMI, IPD and so on are very important. To make the R & D process transparent and visual, to really expose the problem, to make the top boss aware of the cause of the problem and to find evidence is the key to persuade the boss to reform.

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