So we went live as planned on Friday, on the date we decided back in December and only 2% over budget. This was the first phase of a major site refresh project, and I also believe we will go live with the second phase as planned in early October.
I see no reason why we won’t so long as we follow a similar approach.
Its a credit not to the project management process but to the team of talented and committed individuals involved in project delivery – the Customer Experience team, the design agency, the Amazon developers and advisors, our external testing team and more.
The approach basically boiled down to:
1 – having a committed team of talented people from across different organisations, empowered to work together and JFDI in order to get their areas of work completed to time and quality, and supported by myself and others to quickly resolve any blockages where needed. Its amazing what empowerment can do for motivation.
2 – top-down planning – a simple high level plan (more like a roadmap) with key milestone dates supported by more detailed plans for certain activities and deliverables where needed. Plans that the whole team understood and bought into, with dates they signed up to and were willing to go for.
3 – a good set of working relationships across the teams, lots of open communication – phone calls, face to face meetings, etc – and people being prepared to give and take around their roles and responsibilities, being flexible where needed to get the job done. Jobsworths were frowned upon – if someone had the time to do it, or it made more sense for them to do it because of their background knowledge, they got on with it and did it if it resulted in a better quality product or us remaining on track.
4 – everyone wanting success – Everyone wanted to deliver the project on time and within every team, people worked ridiculous hours, weekends and so on if it meant we kept on track. It probably helped that with each new milestone, I reminded the team responsible that we were on track to date (green) and that they might not want to be the one to turn us amber.
Fear of failure also does wonders for motivation!
So what did I personally do?
1 – Fortunately I have what I think are very good working relationships with the others in the “project management team” – both the head of CX and the Amazon Dev manager. Between us, we helped keep the project on track by reaching decisions quickly, being pragmatic and having open, regular communication.
Having good relationships with each of them helped me to try and build trust between the different organisations, reducing the pressure on teams from others and giving them a little flexibility and space to get their work done.
2 – I kept my nose out of the detail unless necessary to keep the project on track. We had people on point for certain deliverables or milestones and the extent of my involvement was to get weekly status updates from them and have chats with them on an ad hoc basis to get a feel of how things were going. But I also encouraged them to raise things with me quickly if they had a blockage that needed clearing.
3 – I pulled together a high level plan (more like a roadmap really) and ensured that everyone involved bought into it. Once work was underway on one set of deliverables I let the teams get on with it and looked ahead to the next set, ensuring we were ready for work to kick off, again looking for risks and issues and working to remove blockages in advance of when work was due to start.
4 – I kept asking myself what could go wrong with a certain milestone or set of activity, and then worked to guard against it. Whether it meant getting more closely involved, producing a detailed plan with the team concerned, chewing it over with the management team, whatever.
5 – I talked a lot. I played diplomat in encouraging individuals to trust, I played referee in disputes between organisations, I played taskmaster when it came to getting work completed on time, I played leader where needed to motivate the team and help them see the way forward and I played watchful observer when someone else stepped forward to sort something out.
In many respects I felt more like a sports coach than a project manager – prepare and empower the team and let them get on with playing while I look ahead to the next game – with a focus not on winning just the game but on winning the competition.
So roll on phase 2 – it might not be green all the way but we will deliver on time! Let’s JFDI, team.
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