Building High Performing Teams–3: Always Help the Team to Succeed.

As a practice in one of my previous organizations, we used to estimate the EPICs in “IED (Ideal Engineering Day)”, IED means the days required to complete the task in the ideal situations, where teams are available and dedicated to work on the specific task and don’t have any interruptions and/or impediments.

?Wait, I am neither promoting nor comparing the IEDs estimation technique with other techniques, but I am sharing one of my interesting learnings today, ‘How helping teams in achieving their goals can do wonders in increasing team performance.’

?If I am not wrong, in my analysis I found out that the ratio between “IED” & “Actual Spent Days” was 1:4. That means 75% of the available time had been spent on unproductive things like excessive & inconclusive meetings, delayed decisions, waiting time in getting responses, dependencies, blockers, backlog readiness, design readiness, lack of cross teams collaboration, unplanned leaves, dealing with ambiguities, poor infrastructure, inadequate tools, lack of resources to perform tasks, and whatnot.

?Front-line leaders (Engineering Owners, Product Owners & Architects) can play a big role in narrowing down the gap between “IED” & “Actual Spent Days” by creating ideal working conditions for the team. Ideally, they must be a few sprints ahead of the teams and resolve all the impediments proactively so that the teams can work in the most efficient and smooth manner.

?IMO, front line leaders have a very crucial role in the organization’s success. They work with the teams at the ground level, understand the teams better and have the highest influence in the teams. They can do miracles in enhancing the team’s output and “building high performing teams”.

?Thank you for your time in reading this. Please share your thoughts & experience as well.