Tagged: horizontal management

Maturing from a StartUp to a StartedUp culture – Series Part 2

The Startup and the 3 P’s: Product, Process and People

I will not pretend to know everything about startups and startup culture, but I will list the reasons why startup culture is exciting, at least for me:

You meet great people, people who have ideas and want to try things, people who have passion and want to make an impact, people who will challenge you to do better. There is passion for working together as a team, passion for building trust within the team and passion for collectively making an impact in other people’s lives; or sometimes, passion for just making something happen – to create. There is passion for possibly creating something that could go big – disrupt everything, all built from the ground up with the teams sweat, blood and tears where everyone is high on adrenaline. Suits? Offices? As long as you are connected with your team and are working well together, those things don’t matter. There is no red-tape, or big top-down structures, everyone and anyone has access to all. Anyone can start working on anything, there are many hats to choose from; wear all. You don’t get bored as things are evolving and stay fresh, there are new ideas, old ideas, odd ideas; anything can change anytime.

At the end of the day, a startup is defined by its growth; when a startup doesn’t grow, it dies; it stops.

There can be several growth stages for a startup, and startups evolve; once they start growing they are now “startedup” and will hopefully grow exponentially. In a perfect world, the cultural values that made the startup fun would remain and in some cases they do (depending on where the growth has lead the startup) but there are times where the culture itself that helped the startup grow and evolve starts conflicting with what is needed to grow to the next level.

Product Growth
Let’s say you follow agile and you end up with iterations, planned work, release schedules and a clear pipeline of what needs to be built. This all worked great when you had 2 products and a team of 10; since you have grown, the expectations of what you can or will deliver have also grown. Some brilliant folks in your team have discovered 2 more products that should be added to your portfolio; how do you grow your current 2 products (since they have a feature and defect backlog) and also work on these 2 new products without increasing your team size, changing delivery for current products or burning out resources? Before you grew, you may have had your own expectations of when and how you would bring on these two new products; now that you’ve grown, others may have different expectations from you and your team(s). Maybe you say “we need more people”, which brings me to the next point

People Growth
With the growth of the startup, either through sales, funding or more investment and the need to create more product it is decided that you bring on more people, and you do. You end up facing the same issue, how do you grow people with the same 10 resources you had who are busy working the two existing products; some of the people you bring on may be self-starters and will figure everything out by themselves but what about the ones who don’t? So now you say “we need some process and automation to free up some of the manual work so that we can do more with the same resources”, which brings us to…

Process Growth
How do you focus on process and automation to free up time when the people you have are busy with supporting the existing two products, or are supporting the existing two products and are also trying to bring the new hires on-board?

A part of me says that the above three growth challenges are not really challenges and that they are part of what it means to be a startup culture and are expected. However; there are a few by-products that the 3 P’s create that can become toxic, stop growth and hurt the culture if they are not accounted for when trying to grow.

The Frat party & the first team
The first team consists of the people that built the startup; it was their teamwork and effort that made the startup grow; anyone who comes later is an outsider and “we need to be careful about who we let into our frat party” (once upon a time I lived on frat row). This one is not intentional, but when you work closely in teams and blur the line between friendship and co-workers, you end up creating an inner circle and make it challenging for an outsider to easily integrate and feel welcomed. This by-product is a blocker for People growth.

The golden simple process
At some point there was predictability and little chaos in what all needed to be done (smaller team, less products) so everyone starts expecting things to always be perfect. Even though you have grown, you have kept your process simple and did not optimize for KPI’s and other metrics that can help with predictability, complexity, risk and estimation. There will be times where things change, dates get reset and/or product scope creeps. If you had built a roadmap of what releases when, had committed the teams to that and put all these releases with their iterations back-to-back (because of all the product that had to get pushed out to show growth and maturity) and dates or requirements change on you (usually not for the better) the team and its happy culture will get disrupted as it will take effort to get things back on track; when/if this happens all the time, it gets hard to get away from the domino effect and people burn out, get disengaged and/or leave. This by-product is a blocker for Process growth.

Single threads
When you were small, everyone knew what everyone else was doing, everyone shared and individuals had their skillsets. Now you have grown, 2 months ago you were 10 people, today you are 75, the 65 newer ones don’t understand the code base or the original design, there is some good documentation but they need more information and there are 3 key people who know different things about the original products; original products that you want the new 65 people to work on so that the first team can work on the two new ones; how do you distribute the knowledge known by the 3 key people, make them available to the 65 and allow the 3 key people to focus on their new projects? If they are constantly being pinged by others and cannot get their work done; their sense of accomplishment doesn’t scale much; especially if you did not plan for them to set time aside and help others. This by-product is a blocker for Product growth.

Each blocker is situation (just like leadership) and can be solved; we will examine and solve for each, before we move onto other “StartedUp” culture challenges. The next post goes into process KPI’s and metrics – addressing the golden simple process blocker.

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Horizontal Management – Maintaining momentum: Keep progress moving

While machines might give the same level of output everyday, the same doesn’t apply to people.

In a real environment, each member’s momentum and motivations will change without notice. This requires management to step in and make sure they are constantly evolving the processes so that members will remain motivated. Leadership is important to motivate key players, channel information to keep everyone engaged and make working horizontally routine. To accomplish this, management might bring in an outside champion, who will help wring in new ideas and “fresh” stream of motivation. Instead of looking at a project as a whole, it should be broken down into smaller goals that are realistic and achievable. Management should encourage and build on small success, to demonstrate that it was an important milestone and motivate members. Progress and results should be demonstrated so that members can all acknowledge the ongoing progress and success.  Management can keep the members interests by ensuring that they are always focused on achieving the goals that were set, and if deviation is detected, corrective action is taken to bring things back on track.

A horizontal team is dynamic as it is always changing, management needs to account for its dynamic nature and make necessary adjustments to accommodate/adapt to the change. Money is probably the best motivator, but too much money too early in the process can hinder individual initiative and prevent people from innovating. Since horizontal structures focus on team collaboration, a downfall is that meetings can go on forever and schedules can be missed; this can unmotivated some members who feel that decisions are not being made in a timely manner, which is why management can implement deadlines which will help practitioners develop a common schedule and manage workloads effectively so that the projects momentum is kept at a steady pace.

[Source: Moving from the Heroic to the everyday: Hopkins, Couture, Moore]

Horizontal Management – Building support structures: To keep Horizontal team in check with Vertical roles

Even though a “horizontal structure” is flat in nature, it does still need a (vertical) support structure.

The main purpose of a support structure is to help managers build lasting relationships and achievements with teams. There are two basic type of support structures that managers can mix and match when building or working with teams, depending on the requirements as each has its own attributes.

  • Informal structures don’t define rigid roles and responsibilities, they are open to interpretation and people can define their own roles and swap roles as needed, hence they are less resource intensive, more flexible and less binding on members; Informal structures help promote open discussion and communication among its team members; and
  • Formal structures are more rigid and roles/titles might be defined where members have specific responsibilities; this makes them more resource intensive but less ambiguous; they require some logistical skill and expertise to implement. These structures are great when consistency and quality are important factors.

It’s important for management to recognize what type of structure needs to be in place and when its put in place; as “when” a structure is erected, it can play an important role in the success of the teamwork initiative. If too much formality is introduced early, people might feel there is no difference in the “horizontal structure” and the “vertical structure” where vertical structures are rigid, formal and bureaucratic and would be less motivated to work with the initiative. In contrast, waiting too long to build a support structure or the lack of a support structure can hinder the ability of the team to successfully work together as a team, especially when they need to be able to adapt when in tight spots.

Since the resources and effort required are greater when setting up formal structures, informal structures are great for short projects, however when the projects will go on for a long period of time or are of large scale, formal structures would be more suited as they are less ambiguous and will stay well formed longer (as they are more solid than informal structures).

Authority and roles in informal structures are more ambiguous and can be swapped around; In formal structures, the roles and responsibilities are more definitive, hence less ambiguous and in that regard, formal structures would work best in situations where important decisions need to be made.

[Source: Moving from the Heroic to the everyday: Hopkins, Couture, Moore]

Horizontal Management – Developing shared framework: Working for the same goals

When we work as a team, we usually work for the same goal(s). There will be times when we might stray away from the goals that were originally specified and we will not realize it. By developing a shared framework we can help ensure that we are all (still) working towards the same goals.

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With open discussions, patience and a shared fact base (mental model and vocabulary) we can deal with conflicts internally (within the team) and develop a shared understanding of the key issues.

One major issue of working with a team is accountability, as many forget their individual accountability and it becomes unclear where the accountability lies (does it lie with the individual, or a team as a whole?). This is probably because the lines of individual accountability and the shared sense of purpose become unclear because of the focus and emphasis on the “shared” attitude towards everything and it is important to acknowledge the difference and maintain the separation. Clarifying roles, responsibility, shared goals and results upfront with open discussions and debate will help resolve accountability issues in advance. We might need to revisit and re clarify these elements as they might evolve over time due to changing circumstances and new opportunities. Having a shared and clear understanding of planning and reporting can help accomplish all these tasks (involved with developing a shared framework).

[Source: Moving from the Heroic to the everyday: Hopkins, Couture, Moore]

Horizontal Management – Mobilizing team and networks: Ready for action

A team that does not work well not only is not a team; but is a blocker towards any success. It is a team (not) that does no work. – yes the not is from Borat.

We must be able to organize teams and networks to be ready for action as this helps the team get off the ground and moving. In order to help get things going as smooth as possible we can focus on a few key elements that can build teamwork and networks, these are leadership, teamwork attitude, common understanding and trust.

Leadership: In my experience, I have always enjoyed working on projects when I was able to be the leader, I think this is inherent to our nature that most of us want to be leaders instead of followers as it makes us feel important and think that we have make a significant contribution to the project. When working as a team, one of the great benefits (that most do not realize) is that the leadership can be shared equally among the team members, it can and should shift from person to person depending on what is required and the person’s strengths, this gives everyone a feeling of accomplishment and an equal and important say in the processes (even if it may not be). When working horizontally team members should be allowed to have debates, open discussions as they are key methods of identify opportunities and resolve conflicts that may arise….. so long as you can focus and move forward.

 Teamwork: Rewarding team members to play nicely as a team always gets peoples motivations up. Teamwork makes a horizontal partnership cohesive so management should encourage early team building activities and open engagement that help develop a sense of collective ownership. This can be encouraged by giving incentives to work successfully as a team, such as recognizing members for their team efforts by giving awards and rewards.

Common Language: Recently I worked on a project where I was using the phrase “data entry” to describe an action where “any user enters data using a graphical user interface”. One of the team members was having a very hard time following the discussion because to him “data entry” was specific to “data entry personnel” (people hired to do data entry), who used a specific data entry user interface that was different than the user interfaces used by others, this was because they didn’t need the pretty features as all they did was repetitive data entry. This is why it becomes very important that the team members have a common mental model and have developed a vocabulary that is understood by all as this helps develop a working culture where misunderstandings or unclear terms will be kept to a minimum.

Trust: Trust is very important in maintaining relationships, it is the glue that holds a team together, if someone does not trust other members in a team, or does not fully place their trust in the team they will not be completely open and might not want to take part in discussions or coordinated efforts. The need for trust makes it important to invest in relationships and build credibility, this can be done by undertaking small tasks, being open and honest with others and delivering what was promised. When team members trust each other they will be willing to risk more together.

[Source: Moving from the Heroic to the everyday: Hopkins, Couture, Moore]

Working Horizontally (agile) & understanding Horizontal Management (work/team structures) and its issues

In line with the content on SDLC and ALM, along with today’s needs and desires for teams to be more flat.. or vertically structured: My next few posts are going to be about working horizontally, or horizontal management (work/teams/structures), or. let me throw in a buzz word .. “working in a more agile manner” 🙂

Horizontal management is: about working collaboratively across organization boundaries. There are no hard and fast rules to horizontal management it is an art more than a science. This type of management is pervasive, occurring at entry level in an organization. It involves bringing people from diverse organizational and occupational backgrounds together into teams and networks with a common purpose and shared culture. Group thinking is encouraged, but this can be seen as a risk because it cuts lines of accountability and authority and pursuing consensus at the expense of serving the public interest.  [*]

In a nutshell, working as a team/group is working horizontally. One might think that working as a team is an easy task as we all have done so at some point in time, but this is not the case when teamwork is the bases that can make or break the success of an initiative, especially when used in complex processes like software engineering and process improvement and we are in a teamwork state for long periods of time. There are various dynamics that come into play when working as a team, for example some might not get along or trust other members, some might not be motivated or good team players and others might forget their individual responsibilities. Working as a team requires that everyone get an equal part so that everyone has an equal interest in working together, towards a common goal, build long term relationships and be equally motivated for the long run. An interesting relationship between horizontal structures and software development is that working in a horizontal structure is viewed as an art, which is the same way that software development was viewed as before it was realized that it needs to be a manageable process, our focus will also be to help make horizontal management a manageable process.

Some of the issues that horizontal structures bring with them that need to be addressed are:

  • Working with others as a team slows down fast paced, ready for action members
  • Members are sometimes not motivated enough to work as a team, which damages team effort and progress
  • Members usually trust their own judgment and find it hard to put that trust in the hands of others
  • Each member may have their own vision and own motive, maybe a goal they want to accomplish as part of their job function and have their own priorities.
  • With everyone on the same level, who provides direction and leadership? Who is held responsible?
  • People need to be assured that their time and effort is resulting in progress.
To understand and address these issues, we need to have a look at the various “dimensions of horizontal management”

Key Dimensions of horizontal management

Working as a team rather than working as an individual does bring with it a few issues that need to be addressed:

  • When we work alone it is easier for us to switch gears and start making progress because we don’t have to wait for others to be ready, progress begins when oneself is ready, in a team progress begins when “everyone is ready”.
  • When we work alone we know what our goal/vision is, we know what we want and know how we are going to get there if we start straying away its really easy to pull ourselves back; When we work as a team, its possible that not everyone knows that the common goal is, they might have their own goals or own ideas of how things need to be and what takes priority over the other, when working as a team its important to make progress by combining all efforts towards a “shared goal/vision”.
  • Working alone means that you are responsible and accountable, you need to get the work done and you need to manage your own time, when working as a team, who does what gets blurred this is why a “support structure” must be in place (depending on the requirements) so that vertical roles and responsibilities are not forgotten.
  • When you work alone, since you are in control (and responsible) of the progress, it is easier to maintain your momentum, you know how much progress you have made, you know how successful you have been and if needed can make changes to help maintain momentum; Teamwork introduces attributes that may effect momentum such as meetings that go on forever, goals that seem unrealistic or far fetched, not knowing if all the effort in working as a team is paying off or not and so on. When working as a team, we must be able to “maintain momentum” on a daily bases.

Hence there are four key dimensions for horizontal management that revolve around horizontal structures and keep the horizontal structure/movement intact: [*]

  1. Mobilizing team and networks: Ready for action
  2. Developing shared framework: Working for the same goals
  3. Building support structures: To keep Horizontal team in check with Vertical roles
  4. Maintaining momentum: Keep progress moving

Each section would detail a significant amount of content so I will break it up into 4 posts to cover this topic….. eventually.

[*] = Hopkins, M. Coture, C. Moore, E. Canadian Centre for Management Development, 2001. Lessons learnt from Leading Horizontal Projects