Pressure Point

Questions of the week: What is the Pressure Point Syndrome System?

I write this article based on the insight of my conversation with my team in our monthly 1-on-1 call. I speak with each one of my team members. This article is a compilation of a whole week's takeaway. You can subscribe to the?Building Our Team?newsletter (2000+ subscribers)

Photo by Mika Baumeister on Unsplash

We have hit some workload which was not anticipated, and this article is a part of this subseries where I have created a system to demonstrate how the system can solve a problem; The name of the system is Pressure Point Syndrome.

This article breakdowns the three parts of the System.

1. Strategy Squad Problems
2. Strategy Squad Votes
3. Strategy Squad Solutions

1) Strategy Squad Problems

I asked my team 3 questions accepting the fact that we couldn't say no to the clients, and these are the same questions you read in the past articles.

a. Why couldn't we negotiate requirements into less work for us?

b. Why couldn't we use solution thinking to cut our work in half?

c. Why can't we stop doing work that is pure waste or rework?

Each one has to give 3 reasons/problems they cannot do it.

Instructions

1. Take out 15 minutes from your schedule
2. You will go to your name and give answers under your name
3. Give 5 minutes to each question and write the answers in 2-3 lines only
4. You will write 3 answers that come to your mind immediately. DO NOT overthink
5. Your answers can contain specific examples with client's name
6. Answers should be very personal to you and your reasons of why you couldn't or can't.
7. There is no right or wrong answers and no one will question your answers
8. If time is up put a dash (---) as your answer and move to next question
9. You will STOP as soon as 15 minutes are over
10. If you have answers to all questions, you will have 9 answers in the end

Examples of good Answers

• I cannot work with junior developers when there are hard deadlines because it wastes a lot of time in correcting their mistakes
• If we could have got _____ days to think more, we could have came up with an alternative solution for the ___________client
• I think ______ task for _______ clients could have been done by juniors
• I think ______ and ______ tasks during this critical time was a bad choice of priority
• We are afraid to tell _____client that we are not capable of delivering a task on time

Examples of bad Answers because we cannot do much about it

• I don't know
• My electricity is down
• We should have good training sessions with seniors before every sprint
• I don't like following the systems because it is boring
• I don't know Probench completely

2) Strategy Squad Votes

We collected 90 problem statements in the first step of the system. We plotted a matrix of ideas in the rows and columns with the team member's name.

Each staff got 1 vote for the problem statement for the above 3 questions. The guidance was the problem statement that is wide across the company and will have maximum impact.

The 3 winning problem statements are

1. We think more work will provide more value.
2. Team with a very tight schedule, we cannot share our tasks with any team member because everyone is busy with multiple tasks
3. I feel that the team has a tendency to under estimate tasks which in turn overwhelms them, which then leads to shabby work that will raise issues in the future.

3) Strategy Squad Solutions

Once we had the 3 problems to work on, we asked everyone to work on it.

There is 3 sub-steps to complete the solution thinking by creating idea.

• Step 1 - Brain Dump Ideas
• Step 2 - Build One Idea
• Step 3 - Craft your Idea

Brain Dump Ideas

A request to get a notebook with 10 blank pages. Pick 1 problem and allow them to think on paper. The objective was to get as many ideas as each one could write for the problem statement. Go for quantity and not quality.

It was instructed to go to some open public place alone. Park, big playground, beach, museum, big library, Hilltop or anything that you can pick. Make sure you carry a pen and mobile with you. When you start writing down the idea, you will only write 2 ideas per page. 1 at the top and 1 and the centre. The target is to write up to 15 ideas. Sit for 45 minutes even if you cannot come up with new ideas. In case you are stuck, reread 10 step hack.

Ranking your ideas - Rank the top 5 solutions in your idea that are easiest to implement, so number 1 would be the easy solution. Rank the top 5 solutions in your idea that will fix the problem to a maximum percentage (Impactful). So number 1 now will fix the problem up to 80%. Each idea will Have an Easy Score and an Impact Score. Shortlist only ideas that have both Easy Score and Impact Score. Add Easy Score + Impact Score for all ideas that have rank. The one with the lowest score is your idea that you will build on. Each idea already has some blank space below it; put a couple of pointers on the best idea you picked.

Build One Idea

Working on 1 idea with more data points so that you can craft.

Write down Easy Score Reasons answers to the following questions -

1) What made you think that this solution is easy to implement?

2) How much time it will take for the team to solve it permanently

3) How much time will it take for the team to solve it semi-permanently?

4) What type of task will make this idea easy to implement?

Write down Impact Score Reasons answers to the following questions -

1) Who would be the key player to fix the problem?

2) What are the data points that make you think we can solve that no one will complain about it?

3) What makes this idea a promising solution which will have a big impact?

4) What leverage does this idea have?

How can your idea fail?

Add any supporting ideas, some known challenges and doubts in your idea. Any hurdles or anticipation you can predict.

You may stop after 60 to 90 mins if nothing else comes to your mind. This document will be from 12 to 20 pages by now. Each question of Impact Score Reasons and Easy Score Reasons above will have answer 1-page answer.

Craft your Idea

Create a plan on how you would like to implement the solution. Go as details as you can. Outline big tasks and add some estimation time. Plan as if you have all the time in the world. What would be the big systems that would be in place? What would be one time task that needs to be there? What will be some template-based negotiation that would make the plan fail-proof?

Edge Cases - Think about all the edge cases why the plan would fail. Create a backup plan to overcome it and list down all the possible solutions.

Role Reversal - Now, Look at the document as if it is presented to you by someone. Put in all the questions you would ask them. Don't worry about how to find answers. Go challenge the idea and list all the questions to that comes in your mind that are not answered. this is like testing your work

If you are feeling ambitious, elaborate on tools, checklists and supporting ideas. 25 to 40 pages.

This article is a simple example of how your team can collaborate by investing a few hours a week and bringing the best ideas from the team and leveraging the human capital.

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