4 Steps to improve IT collaboration now

by Stacey Dickinson | Feb 12, 2007 8:00:00 AM

Tags: Team management, information technology, Stacey Dickinson, team, collaboration

Takeaway: If you can describe your current collaboration as just "OK," or worse, "not good at all," your collaboration efforts need some improvement and this article is for you.

The word collaborate according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary means "to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor." For today's IT projects, this definition translates to:

• More than one team is involved
• Individual contributors represent diverse job disciplines
• Teams are located in several different physical locations
• Communication often occurs across multiple time zones

If someone were to ask you, "How's collaboration working within your IT team on your current project?" What would you say? Would you describe it as: Excellent? OK? Not good at all? What if more specific questions were asked? For example, do you believe expectations across teams are clearly defined, communicated, and met? Does the work you receive from dependencies (teams or individuals) meet agreed upon acceptance criteria and timelines?

If you answered "No" or "not as often as I’d like" to those last two questions, or if you described your current collaboration as just "OK," or worse, "not good at all," your collaboration efforts need some improvement and this article is for you.

Why? Because there are many costs associated with collaboration failure. Do any of these apply to you?

• Deadlines are missed
• Project is over budget
• Volume of user complaints is high (or they refuse to adopt the application)
• Team morale is low
• Loss of trust among teams
• "Brand" or reputation of IT team suffers

So what can you do to reduce these costs? Take the following four steps now to improve collaboration for your current or next project.

1. Identify the #1 challenge you face when working across multiple groups. It’s not as onerous as it sounds. At your next team meeting, take 5-10 minutes and ask everyone to brainstorm all the possible challenges they face when working with other teams. Don’t allow specific names or personalities to come onto the list, just identify the challenge. For example, communicating across multiple time zones, lack of follow-up, knowing who to contact or who is accountable. (Be aware, the list could be 10-20 items. It’s constructive to allow individuals to vent their frustrations.) Next, ask the team to identify the top 3 challenges that are causing them the most pain or frustration. Once you’ve narrowed the list to 3, think about the cost associated with each of these items. Your #1 challenge will often become obvious. If not, you can ask your team to rank the list.
2. Analyze what is at the heart of this challenge or its cause. Ask the following questions:
• Is it a tracking/reporting problem? Risk and/or change management issue?
• Are incentives for collaborators to work together clearly defined?
• Is it fundamentally a communication issue (not timely, not enough or too much, big picture is unclear)? Your challenge could appear to have more than one root cause. For example, knowing who to contact or who is accountable for different aspects of the project or features of your application could be considered a communication issue or a tracking/reporting problem. What is at the heart of this challenge? Is it that individual team members simply do not know who to contact for what? (Root cause = communication issue.) Or, are some individuals not included on the distribution list of status and therefore are not informed or consulted on matters that may affect them? (Root cause would therefore equal a tracking/reporting problem. Many might argue the cause of this challenge is really a risk or change management issue. The point is to analyze what is the root cause for your particular team before proceeding to step 3 so that you can implement the appropriate solution.)
3. Choose and implement a simple "tool" that will help mitigate your number one challenge. Maybe you already have some procedure in place, a 30-page requirements document, or a detailed Work Breakdown Structure. Maybe it's too complicated or involved for the individual contributor. We live in a complex world of information overload. Don’t throw out the detailed documents and processes you need to help you manage and communicate your project objectives for specific team members. Do figure out how to make this information simpler and more accessible to all project participants. For example, if you determine that your #1 challenge is a communication issue because all team members simply do not know who to contact for what. Create a simple "contact information" spreadsheet and post it one click away from the home page of your team website. Include the name of each feature area owner, how to contact them (phone, cell, e-mail), the feature area of the product application they are accountable to deliver, and who or what component is dependent upon that feature area. If you’re working across multiple locations and/or time zones, it is often useful to include the physical address as well.
4. Measure if the tool was successful and modify as necessary. Identify an individual on the team to be responsible for following up within a reasonable timeframe (one month or less) to determine if the challenge has been addressed. If not, what aspects of your solution have helped? Determine what is needed to make this work better for your team and modify if necessary. Then, look back through your list of top three challenges, mark off the first challenge as "solved," and repeat steps 2-4 on your next prioritized challenge.

Solving your prioritized challenges with simple, practical tools will allow you to reap the benefits when collaboration works: projects are completed on time and on budget, customer satisfaction is improved, cost recovery is improved because you have identified efficiency gains or eliminated redundancies, brand perception has improved along with team morale, and the list goes on!

Stacey Dickinson has worked in the technology industry for over 23 years on many projects which required collaboration among numerous teams, with individuals from diverse job disciplines, located in several different sites (often across multiple time zones).