Case study of how SILOS impact an Organization

SILOS are leaches / parasites that will suck up the organisation's potential & energy by working on the loopholes of an organisation.

This is a typical case study of such SILOS. SILOS bully and influence others to be part of their group or face consequences. Unfortunately talented pool of people leave the organisation because of these SILOS TOXICITY.

STATEMENT

We have a team of Project Managers…and they are doing nice job. But they are still struggling with work overload.

1. Is this because our Project Manager spend much time in assigning tasks and doing meeting with the developers/QA/Designers and spending less time in improving the process?

Fundamentals

Your Project Managers need to understand some Fundamentals. Lets take SCRUM as a choice of Agile Framework that your Project Manager have chosen. Now,

Project Time that a Project Manager should spend on a Scrum Project

15% time is for Project Management on a given Project. If they are consuming more than that they are gobbling development time & need to apply empiricism (Transparency, Inspection & Adaption) . Like in Agile's Scrum Framework the scrum events have a logic and purpose.

?For a given 2 week sprint of 10 Working days X 8 Hours / day = 80 Hours.

Project Management time would be 80 X 15% = 12 HRS on a given project 2 weeks sprint and 1.2 hours per day

a) Daily Scrum takes 15 Minutes X 10 Days = 150 Minutes or 2.5 Hours

b) Sprint Grooming Sessions of 2 Hrs per sprint

c) Sprint Planning Session of 2 Hours per sprint

d) Sprint Retrospective of 2 Hours per sprint

e) Sprint Review of 2 Hours per sprint

?Total 10.5 Hours of allocated 12 Hours. So, we have a save 1.5 Hours at our disposal

?Solution 1

As an Agile Project Manager ;

i) let the technical team know the road-map (Sprint Goal)

ii) Prioritise your Product Backlog

iii) For the specific sprint let the technical team pick up Prioritised stories from Product Backlog to Sprint Backlog complete in a sprint.

iv) Ask the team to give Story Point

(estimates) on each Story and themselves decide Dev & QA assignee (not the Project Manager),

v) same way asks the DEV team to provide Hours estimate comprising of both DEV + QA and not separately.

vi) Ask the Testers to develop Test Plan& Test Cases then share them with Developers.

?By taking these steps in a "Sprint Grooming Session of 2 HRS you would transfer all OWNERSHIP of work to Development Team

Saved 1.5 Hour Brief

Utilize your 1.5 Hours (leftover) with Team leads for the;

i) User Stories that were estimate 5 & Above (may be 1 or 2 max 3)

ii) Track Project Progress through tools like JIRA and find out the reasons why certain work took more time

iii) Prepare for Sprint Review where the DEV Team should showcase the product to internal stakeholders like (Account Managers in your case) This gives Developer a chance to understand the Vision from Customer Point of View and to gain next sprint (Sprint Goal)

iv) Prepare for the Retrospective where you and team would have enough stats to perform empiricism (transparency, introspect & adapt) to make things good for the next sprint. (Again you would be letting the DEV Team take ownership)

So the answer to your question is your Project Manager are insecure and aren't letting the DEV Team take ownership and thats why they are always beating around the bush and would never hold Retrospective & Review Calls properly.

2. Are they using Project Management Software for just task assignments – but not effectively?

They are not using Project Management Software ( I assume JIRA) with its potential.

Like JIRA has integration with GIT & Slack. So whenever developer merges code in GIT a message will fall over the specified slack channel that PM could verify. No need for PM to sit with Developer

Similarly whatever comments on a user story are made by anyone in JIRA would fall on designated slack channels

There are many METRICS in JIRA that a PM could use

Solution 2

“You can take a horse to water but cant make him drink”. You have to work out a way for your PM to start using JIRA to its full potential

3. All resources including (Dev, QA and Design Team) are not self-organized? In Agility - a self-organizing agile team is completely responsible for assigning and tracking their own work and progress, correct?

Solution 3

As I said before you have to ask the Project Managers to transfer ownership to team and not hold it with themselves.

Another aspect is PROCESS should NEVER prevail over FULFILMENT?. Meaning don’t enforce a process where its not necessary, keep aligned of your objective and try to place processes only where they are absolute necessary.

4.Tripple Constraints (The Scope – The Time – and The Cost) is really disturbed?

Solution 4

By now its proven that the Project Managers are holding everything with their teeth. Train them to let go. I know it’s a slow process and you need to be patient

5. Effective communication is not implemented across the board & across teams?

Solution 5

Again, you need to teach your Project Manager to transfer ownership. Without transferring ownership, they won’t be able to build Agility where communication is inherently excellent.

6.?Turnover rate is increasing day-by-day?

Solution 6

As of many surveys done on “Why turnover rate is high in organizations” recent reports suggest “CULTURE TOXICITY” as the main culprit and not the Salary.

This organizational toxicity is built over a period of time because of existence of “SILOS” within an organization. These SILOS will always resist change and will never let the change come. If you can deal with these SILOS you will see a drastic improvement. Otherwise talented pool of resources wont indulge in politics rather would switch over to non-toxic organization.

One of the examples of SILOS are the employees that have been working in the organization for more than 10 years and not letting competitive resources get hired and if they did, they made sure they can’t deliver. Since these SILOS have been there for long, they are fully aware of the loop holes within organization and influence others in removing capable resources by false complaints.

Ask yourself why you can’t hire a decent PM? And there is the answer that these SILOS are rejecting talented resources during interview.

7.?Risk Log/Register, Risk Management is not implemented properly?

Solution 7

Understandably the SILOS will never let it happen. How could a SILO survive if there was TRANSPARENCY. There will be an INTROSPECTION (where SILO will be clueless and loose power). ADAPTION by team means again loss of importance that SILO will never accept.

You are asking too much!!! SILO will kill you.

8.?Employees are not productive?

Solution 8

Need to improve employee moral score with various Agile / Non-Agile Techniques and through Facilitation

9.?Project Status Meeting is not happening on a regular interval?

Solution 9

Project Status Meeting / Scrum of Scrum are somewhat a weekly calendar events and more often a call made to discuss something important. As long as Sprint Review to Customers / Stakeholders (Account Managers ) happens with good feedback and with proper release management its OK.

10.?Stakeholder analysis is not done?

Solution 10

Signs of Top Trending SILOS and Insecure Project Managers. Need to work on them

11.?And many others?

Solution 11

Need more details.