Mission Control

This is the attempt to define the difference between ‘What to do’ and ‘How to do’. I am putting my Product Owner’s hat to try to tackle it and step back from the implementation issues.

Be prepared

The lessons I keep learning from almost every project is ‘Be prepared’. It means that, in most cases, the velocity of a development team is the function of the level of ambiguity they are dealing with. The more vague requirements and directions you give, the less time is spent effectively on getting things done.

This is the sort of a contradiction with ideal Scrum process and the reality. Agile approaches assume teams be cross-functional, empowered to make a decision. While this is great in theory and is absolutely necessary in for better teamwork, it does have it complications in the real-life. Especially when it comes to the ‘real-life’ of startups and outsourcing in general.

The main complication is the availability of resources. The limited amount of financial resources results in only limited availability of human resources. And here we go, – the teams are not that cross-functional any longer.

So, be prepared: teams cannot make all of the decisions, regardless of the level of detail. You need to stay behind the wheel to be prepared to give the directions, eliminate ambiguities and drive ‘how to implement’ discussion.

Think ahead

Not to slow down the velocity you need to think ahead. You can only do it when you stay informed on what’s going on the project. Get to know the team members better, analyze how they are making (and avoid making) the decisions, see what’s in the backlog so you would be able to steer before you hit the sandbank.

If your team is missing usability expert – be the one. If team does not have aesthetics guy, make your own vision clear in details. By thinking ahead of what issues may arise, you eliminate the need to mitigate the impact of the risks down the road.

This said: think ahead and be quick in crossing the bridge between ‘what to do’ and ‘how to do’. You are the key team member. Make yourself available to close the gaps and make the team truly cross-functional.

Stay calm

Staying calm does not relate to the topic of this post, but I could not resist to put it here. It gives the ‘captain’ metaphor a bit of completeness.

So, stay calm. There is nothing worse than erratic captain. Remember: you are always the last who gets to leave the ship