Communicating Performance

Theses days the lines are blurred as to client needs "I want a Senior Business Analyst that can lead a project. " or "I want a Project Manager but knows Agile and can use Jira." Regardless of the project role, the client wants Ish to get done. More importantly, they want to know that things are getting done. So, how do you convey this message?

The purist role of the Scrum Master is that they remove blockers and promote agile using tools like Jira to track the progress of the team. Jira is a great tool for visualizing the accomplishments of the team through burndowns and kanban boards. However, I think of these tools as more qualitative lag measurements than perhaps quantitative lead measurements.

There are, in fact, quantitative lead measurements such as cost performance index and schedule performance index. However, we generally don't tend to discuss these measurements as a rates. Rather, business stakeholders typicall discuss projects in a qualitative manner, such as, "How is the project going?" or "Are we done, yet?"

The project is slightly behind. A resource from another project recently freed up, I'm analyzing the impact of adding this resource to our team.

In the past few weeks, I have been working on the interaction model for an Alexa for Business application. At this point, I'm trying to think of responses to many of the questions that I typically receive as a Project Manager. The interaction model for the Alexa skill is coded so that I give voice to factual information from a database. As a project team member, you do the same. You take the facts and synthesize whether it is good or bad and respond accordingly.

The project is on schedule, I'm taking the team out to show them some appreciation!

Like the Alexa skill, you need information to respond. However, you need to capture information in order to measure. Measured performance not only helps you with your response but it also helps with determining action.

So, messaging is part fact and part action.

Do you envision, "Oh snaps! You need to act." coming from your Alexa for Business app? Connect to discuss today.

Duane is the President & Principal Consultant at N.B.D. Consulting Services a boutique management consulting company that focuses on the development of software and technical systems.