RSS

Driving Success: How TPMs Help Resolve Dependencies Between Teams

08 Mar
Driving Success: How TPMs Help Resolve Dependencies Between Teams

In today’s fast-paced and competitive business environment, cross-functional teams are becoming increasingly common as companies seek to innovate and stay ahead. However, with multiple teams working on various projects, dependencies between them can be a significant challenge, resulting in delays, miscommunication, and even project failures. Technical Program Managers (TPMs) can play a crucial role in resolving dependencies between cross-functional teams. This blog post will explore how TPMs can help facilitate effective communication, collaboration, and coordination between teams to ensure that programs are delivered on time and achieve organizational goals.

Facilitating communication: TPMs coordinate communication between teams, identify gaps, and ensure that everyone is on the same page. Regular meetings or stand-ups can be set up where teams provide dependency updates, identify roadblocks or dependencies, and prioritize tasks. These sessions can be used to share progress reports, discuss risks and mitigation strategies, and align on timelines and deliverables.

Identifying dependencies: TPMs often have a high-level view of all the programs executed within the organization. Thus, they can identify dependencies between teams and track their status to ensure they are being addressed in a timely manner before they become a blocker for achieving the company’s objectives.

Prioritizing and tracking dependencies: TPMs have a deep understanding of intra-team and inter-team dynamics, given the cross-functional nature of their role. Thus, TPMs can manage inter and intra team dependencies to ensure that one team’s work is not blocked by the lack of progress on the part of another team. They can prioritize the work of different teams based on their impact on dependencies and the company’s objectives, and identify and mitigate risks associated with dependencies across different teams.

Building relationships and trust: TPMs can help build relationships and trust between cross-functional teams to ensure they can work effectively, particularly when dealing with dependencies. This can be achieved by sharing information, being transparent, conducting joint brainstorming sessions, breaking down silos, defining ownership, setting clear expectations, and strengthening personal relationships by driving offsite events.

Improving transparency: TPMs can provide the necessary transparency to the team to drive efficiency in resolving dependencies. They can communicate deadlines to the right stakeholders to adjust plans accordingly and use tools like JIRA, Asana, Microsoft Project, Wiki, and collaboration platforms like Slack or Microsoft Teams to facilitate communication through shared dashboards and/or weekly reports.

In summary, TPMs play a vital role in managing dependencies between teams by facilitating effective communication, tracking and prioritizing work, building relationships, and improving transparency. They ensure that teams work together effectively and that all dependencies are identified and addressed in a timely manner to ensure program success.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on March 8, 2023 in Leadership, Management, small business

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Navigating a Layoff: 9 Steps to Take for Your Next Career Move?

16 Feb
Navigating a Layoff: 9 Steps to Take for Your Next Career Move?

With the current economic situation, many companies have begun downsizing their workforce in preparation for the future. This means that many people may know someone who has lost their job or been impacted by the economic downturn. To help navigate this difficult situation, I want to offer some guidance on what steps to take if you are affected by a layoff at your company.

Review company’s severance package: Understand what benefits and compensation are being offered and if it’s sufficient or not. I have often seen multiple people who didn’t reach out to their ex-employer to ask for their COBRA benefits, rehabilitation services, and much more. Thus, you should take advantage of these benefits by closely reviewing your severance package.

Apply for unemployment benefits: Many people who are laid off are eligible for unemployment benefits, which can provide financial assistance while they are looking for a new job. You shouldn’t be shy to take advantage of this benefit, after all you have paid into the system for this specific situation.

Create a budget: With no salary coming in, it is essential that you control your expenses, so that you can manage your lifestyle within your means. Thus, I highly recommend you to make a budget to manage your expenses, and prioritize bills and necessary spending while looking for new opportunities.

Create a plan: After being laid off, your natural instinct is to look for another job right away or take a small break before starting to look again. Regardless of your end goal, I encourage you to create a plan and make a schedule for your break, searching and applying for new jobs, networking, and updating your resume and online presence.

Network: So far, I have been very fortunate to find a job on referral, and hence, I never had to actively look for a job. Thus, I recommend you to reach out to your friends, family, and professional contacts to let them know you are looking for a new job and to ask for leads or references.

Update your resume: While applying for the new opportunities, you should remember to tailor your resume to specific job positions and industries, and make sure it is error-free and easy to read, so that it doesn’t get stuck in the application tracking system (ATS) and has a better chance of getting viewed by an actual human.

Take care of yourself: Obviously, this is going to be a difficult journey, if you haven’t been laid off before. But don’t let the stress and uncertainty of a layoff get you down. Eat well, exercise, and take care of your mental and emotional health more than anything else. If you are physically and mentally fit, then you will be able to conquer anything.

Learn new skills: Even though learning new skills might be at the bottom of your list, since you must be focusing on finding a new opportunity as soon as possible, I still recommend you to invest some time in either learning new skills or refining your existing skills. This investment will pay off while you are interviewing for your next opportunity or in the future when you are solving different problems.

Look for job retraining programs: Many governments and private organizations offer job retraining programs to help laid-off workers acquire new skills and find new jobs. I highly encourage you to take advantage of these programs to seek professional help if needed. If the layoff caused significant financial and emotional distress, don’t hesitate to reach out to a financial advisor or mental health professional for help.

I hope these steps help you to cope with the situation and begin planning for your next career move. 

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 16, 2023 in 21st Century, Leadership, technology

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

Maximizing Your Startup’s Potential: How to Choose the Right Accelerator Program

11 Apr
Maximizing Your Startup’s Potential: How to Choose the Right Accelerator Program

Are you a startup founder who’s considering joining an accelerator program, but not sure which one to choose? Don’t worry, you’re not alone! Recently, I had an older colleague reach out to me with the same question, and it inspired me to write this blog to help others in a similar situation.

When choosing the right accelerator program, there are many factors to consider. One of the key factors is the industry focus. Some accelerators specialize in specific industries, which may be a better fit for your company. Another important factor is the accelerator’s network of mentors, investors, and alumni. Having a strong network can be a valuable resource for a founder.

Funding is another factor to consider, as most accelerators provide funding to participating companies in exchange for equity. It’s important to evaluate the amount of funding offered and the terms of the investment. Additionally, the length of the accelerator program and the location of the accelerator can impact a founder’s ability to access resources, talent, and investors.

Reputation is also an important consideration. The reputation of an accelerator can impact a founder’s ability to attract investors and customers. Finally, the curriculum and resources offered by an accelerator can impact a founder’s ability to grow and scale their company.

For example, when I was choosing an accelerator program for my ex-startup, SellGone, we found that StartupNV was a great fit for us. They specialized in helping tech-based startups in Nevada, had a strong network of mentors, investors, and alumni, and provided funding to Nevada-based startups who participated in their program. We also appreciated their curriculum and resources, which helped us grow and scale our company.

So, if you’re considering joining an accelerator program, be sure to evaluate these factors and choose the one that’s the best fit for your company. Good luck on your startup journey!

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on April 11, 2023 in 21st Century, small business, technology

 

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How to increase the velocity of your Agile Teams?

15 May
How to increase the velocity of your Agile Teams?

A year ago, I got an opportunity to lead an agile team for the Electronic Table Games vertical at IGT. This team was made up of very smart individuals, who put IGT’s name in the electronic table game’s market space within just couple of years. IGT was an underdog in this market, but this team’s hard work and dedication had allowed IGT to bring two successful titles to the market. Even though this team was successful in making this vertical profitable over time, their velocity was not sufficient to keep up with the already competitive market pressure. Thus, I was called to help the team.

Over the year, I have made many tweaks to this already successful team. And hence, I would like to share some of success stories from my experience that have worked for us. I am hoping that you could use these pointers to increase the velocity of your own agile team.

Co-locate your team: After joining the team, I quickly realize that the team could improve their face-to-face communication. Even though the engineering team talked to each other daily, the communication between the QA and Product Management team was infrequent and rare due to their physical proximity to the engineering team. Thus, we went ahead and relocated all of our QA and Product Management resources with the engineering team. This change promoted the face to face communication between the teams and improved our velocity by reducing communication time between the developers and the QA engineers. Obviously, this change was challenging, given my team was located all over the US. But we were lucky to have multiple clusters of the team where more than 4 people were together in the same building. Thus, co-location was practical and beneficial in our case.

Reuse common components: At IGT, we were creating different games, and hence, all the developers were making customized software for each game. Even though we were required to make customized interfaces for each game, given the vertical that we work in, I looked for some common components that we could reuse. To my surprise, I was able to find many communication APIs and other architectural components that were common between each game titles. By making some minor modifications to those components, we were able to reuse them for other games that we were making. Thus, I believe that you should invest some time during your Sprint to look for common software components, which you can reuse to significantly decrease effort spent on building the same functionality. Developing a strong process around this mentality will help you in decreasing product development time.

Increase test automation: You might argue that this is compulsory for increasing the velocity of any software product team, but you would be surprised to see how many agile teams follow this practice. Since the focus of any agile team is on delivering minimum viable products, they often underestimate the investment that they need to make in testing. Thus, most of their testers perform some basic manual tests before releasing the product. In our case, we were able to increase our automation test footprint by providing engineering tools to our testers and investing heavily in test automation as compared to the manual testing. As a result of this change, we were able to improve the quality of our games and expand our testing footprint, which in turn increased our velocity.

Do you agree with my recommendations? Do you have any other ideas through which we can improve the velocity of our Agile Teams?

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on May 15, 2020 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management, technology

 

Tags: , , , , ,

How to become better at listening?

07 Mar

Coaching your line managersI can’t help but think about one of the meetings that I had a month back. During this meeting, I had to work with my team to create a road map of all the projects that we were going to do after few structural changes that had happened in our organization. It should have been a simple meeting. I should have presented company’s objectives for the next fiscal year to my team and then I should have allowed them to provide their input to create a road map which works for the team to achieve our objectives. It was a very simple task.

 

Unfortunately, I was unable to get the right answers from my team during that meeting. I am not sure what I was doing wrong at the time, as that meeting was not that productive and I was unable to get anything done. That incident got me thinking about the bigger question. Do I always ask right questions? If I do, then why am I not getting right answers? What am I missing here? What can I do to improve that process? After some analysis and introspection, I have realized that I was not listening to my team while I presented them with our objectives. And hence, I have come up with few practical tips and tricks through which I had improved my listening skills that I would like to share it with you here.

 

Be patient: In the past, I often fell into the trap of asking bunch of questions, all at once, so I don’t miss anything. Or worst, when someone is speaking, I actively tried to ask them my question right there and then, when they are talking, so that I can clarify things in the heat of the moment. Though this kind of a one-sided question dump had worked for me in the past in some situations, it didn’t provide most of my peers enough time to think and respond. Even though I was getting answers to my questions through this approach, often times I was not getting the right answer or an informative one. And hence, I tried to be patient with my questions during this last month. I also did my research beforehand, and found out what kind of answers I was looking for before asking those questions. I invested some time in noting down my questions while someone is speaking, so that I don’t forget what I wanted to ask, and at the same time I don’t interrupt my peers in between where they lose their train of thoughts. I tried to keep a pen and paper handy or used my OneNote on my phone to jot down any questions that I had, while someone else was speaking. This was one of the most practical thing I could do while listening to others and at the same time making sure that I remember my pointers to discuss.

 

Let silence speak: Other than being patient during meetings, I have also conducted various other experiments at my work within this past month. One of them being – using silence to speak for itself. When I was in a meeting, I often used silence as a tool to communicate when it was my time to ask questions. It was definitely a game changer for me. When I remained silent for few seconds before responding, everyone’s attention was at me before I even started speaking, and they were listening, yes, they were. I also used silence while asking questions to others. I would ask a question and then take a pause for a while. That approach did wonders for me, as it gave an opportunity to the responder to prepare their response before speaking. Obviously, it took a while before I got used to this practice, but this technique proved to be very helpful. If you want to try this technique then please make the pause long enough for the answerer to think but not too long so it becomes awkward. And while the answerer is preparing for his/her answers, try keeping eye contact, stand still, and try to feel comfortable while you wait. I am sure that you will get responses from people who hardly even spoke in the meeting. Just try it and let me know.

 

I am hoping that you all learn from my experiences and become better at listening. If you have any other ways through which we can be a good listener then please feel free to share it through your comments here. I would really appreciate your feedback.

Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on March 7, 2018 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

How to change your organization to innovate faster?

05 Jun

Picture of PhysicsFirst of all, I would like to thank you all for such an overwhelming response to my last blog. I haven’t yet responded to all of your emails and personal messages, but I will respond to them within next few days.

While going through your messages, I have also realized one thing, most of you are not happy with just innovating at a restricted budget, but you are looking to innovate at a faster pace than before. With the technology and the world moving faster each day, I can definitely understand your sentiment. Thus, in this blogpost, I will provide you with some strategies through which you can increase the speed of your innovation at your workplace.

Eliminate hierarchy: Large organizations often find it hard to respond to new market opportunities and change quickly due to the hierarchical burden that comes with these organizations. Thus, if it is possible, we should create smaller R&D teams in our organization which has its own budget and, who can work independently within this organization. If you don’t have that liberty to independently manage the R&D team, then you should at least keep it simple. Try to keep the product cycle small, and perform frequent inspection. Purpose of these inspections shouldn’t be profit based, just yet, but it should be a checking point to make sure that the research is headed in the right direction.

Change incentive system: From Microsoft to Google, we always hire R&D personnel from science-oriented background, and hence, their interests lie in technology, not in markets. These employees, being from technical background, are not trained to engage their customers in the decision making process. Thus, if we want to change this culture of “obsolete innovation”, then we have to start by changing the incentive system, itself. If we use stock options to align the work of our technical staff with the firm’s financial performance, then they will be able to understand the business environment in which your organization does business, and they are more likely to innovate things that help your business.

Create new roles: Changing the incentive system alone wouldn’t help you to change the culture of the entire organization. In order to kick start this organization-wide change, you need to create some new roles within the organization to focus explicitly on customer engagement. This can be done with either existing or new personnel who are placed in important positions within R&D where they can effect change. You can also build new, multi-skilled teams to help change existing practices within R&D. This might involve building teams with both marketing and technical skills to reduce traditional barriers between R&D, sales and customers. It may not even be necessary for all R&D personnel to change or take on a more customer-focused role. Just having one in five in an R&D team being more customer-focused might be enough.

I have seen this strategy work for many small businesses, and I am sure that it can work for you too, if implemented correctly. Please provide your feedback on this blogpost through your comments. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

 
2 Comments

Posted by on June 5, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management, small business

 

Tags: , , , ,

How to innovate with less resources?

18 May

Critical Thinking

Regardless of what kind of business you run, small or large, you always have to keep on innovating, otherwise your business will become irrelevant in no time. But when times are tough and when you don’t have much money to spend, how do you still keep your commitment to innovate more? Thus, through this blogpost, I am going to provide you with few suggestions using which you can innovate on a tight budget.

Involve customers throughout: Your customers are your best critique. Thus, you should involve them throughout the product life cycle. Rather than wasting your money on getting the second-hand market data or hiring focus groups, you must engage directly with your customers in their natural settings. Involve your existing customers with your R&D teams to unearth new or unmet needs. Interact with users in new market segments by actively involving customers in new product design processes, as well as tracking customers’ use of the product after purchase. The focus on customer needs will enable R&D to replace its costly and scattershot approach to product development with more efficient, user-focused investment.

Seek cheaper solutions: Too often, we reinvent the wheel and end up with too complex of a product for our customers. Customers, however, are more likely to be impressed by products that solve their problems than by mere technological prowess. When you have unlimited resources at your disposal, it is easier to go overboard with your R&D efforts. But when you have very limited funds, you should be guided first and foremost by your customer insight, and produce easy-to-use offerings that may lack bells and whistles but are good enough, especially if they come at a lower price. This approach will not only help you to bring your products faster into your markets, but it will also help you in getting the faster feedback for your products in real time.

Use of crowdsourcing: If you are on a tighter budget, you should definitely look for crowdsourcing your R&D efforts. Obviously, you can’t crowd source everything due to your intellectual property rights and other concerns, but you can crowd source plausible product ideas and gauge their initial public reactions. Ideas that garner sufficient support can be then packaged with supporting data and sent to the relevant managers, who in turn signal their view of its potential to executives responsible for taking such ideas forward. You can also use social media networks, where customers reveal and share their preferences to yield a wealth of market insights at lower costs.

I hope, my blog can help you innovate new things for your business within a restricted budget. If you know any other ways through which we can innovate with less resources, then please feel free to share it here through your comments. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on May 18, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management

 

Tags: , , , , ,

Schedule the best virtual meeting by following these rules

05 May

VideoConferenceIn my last blog, I have talked about some ways through which you can schedule a perfect virtual meeting. Thus, I will continue my discussion in this blog, and provide you with some more tips to make your next virtual meeting perfect.

Allow extra time: If you are scheduling a virtual meeting for the first time, then please schedule some extra time for dealing with the technical challenges that you might face during the meeting startup. Use this extra time to work out glitches that often occur with new technology. Over time, when your team members are familiar with login or startup procedures, you can then reduce the meeting duration by the amount of time that you might have otherwise spent on connection issues. If you have a new member joining your team, then you should arrange a trial meeting to check connections and ensure that the new member is up to speed before a larger group meeting.

Provide more lead time: The lead time required for virtual meetings might be longer than for in-person meetings, since in addition to the virtual space, you need to ensure that all participants have the necessary information about the meeting before they join in. It is your responsibility, as an organizer of the meeting, to ensure that every team member understands the goals of the meeting and has sufficient time in order to prepare for it. After all, if critical decision makers or technical experts are not prepared in the meeting due to short notice given to them, then you will end up scheduling a second meeting for the same agenda.

Provide detailed information: If you are going to organize a virtual meeting with multiple people joining in from multiple locations and through multiple means of communication (phone, video, etc.), then you need to be more detailed in your meeting requests. Meeting agenda should at least specify this information: name and contact information of the person calling the meeting, meeting purpose, meeting start time and expected duration, names of invited attendees, meeting location including connection information, phone numbers, URLs, connection passwords or login IDs, or any other information attendees need in order to participate, and list of the topics to be discussed and time limits for each topic. If you do your homework in creating your meeting agenda beforehand, then you won’t have many issues during the meeting itself.

Invite limited people: Virtual meetings are often encountered with various challenges from time differences to technology difficulties, and hence, you shouldn’t try to complicate things by inviting people who are not needed in the meeting. Make sure that you have everyone in the meeting who needs to be there, but don’t over crowd the meeting with the people who are not needed there. By inviting limited people in the meeting, you will be able to keep everyone focused on the task at hand, and there will be less of a chance for any confusion due to people talking over each other on the phone or video conference.

This is the end of my two part blog about scheduling a perfect virtual meeting. I hope, these advises can help you in scheduling your ideal meetings. If you have any recommendations from your side, then please feel free to share it here through your comments. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on May 5, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management, technology, Virtual Team

 

Tags: , , , , ,

How to schedule a perfect virtual meeting?

21 Apr

VideoConferenceOther day, I was attending this virtual meeting, and within 5 minutes in the meeting, I realized that some of the key stakeholders wouldn’t be able to make this meeting due to their time zone difference. Within 10 minutes into the meeting, I also realized that other participants were not well prepared, and we might have to convene some other day to discuss these same action items.

Obviously, scheduling a perfect in-person meeting also requires some level of preparation, but to schedule a perfect virtual meeting is a challenge in itself. You don’t just need to make sure that the meeting agenda is well defined and thought out, but you also need to handle logistics challenges imposed by difference in time zones and technology limitations. Thus, in this blog, I will provide you with few tips through which you can schedule your perfect virtual meeting.

Be agenda ready: Whether your meeting is virtual or in person, you should always have a well-defined agenda for your meeting, which should be clearly stated in the meeting request itself. If, for whatever reason, you can’t explicitly mention your agenda in the meeting request, you should send out an email to all the participants with this information beforehand. This approach will not only help your participants to set some basic expectations about the output of this meeting, but it will also help you to make sure that your participants are prepared beforehand with the desired information, so that they can respond to your questions and come up to some kind of an agreement.

Keep time in mind: Whenever you are scheduling a virtual meeting, you need to always be aware of different time zones from which your attendees will attend this meeting. After all, you won’t be attending a meeting at 3am in the morning, unless it is very important, right? Same goes for your meeting attendees. They are not going to put an extra effort to attend your meeting at 3am in the morning, just because it is convenient for you. Thus, before scheduling the meeting search for your attendee’s time zones and schedule the meeting at appropriate time.

Share the pain: Sometimes, due to the vast time difference between two virtual teams, it is impossible to schedule these meetings within the regular working hours (8am to 5pm) of both the teams. And hence, it is very important to share the inconvenience across your team rather than always have the same person/team meeting before breakfast or late in the evening. If you have to schedule regular meetings across multiple time zones, then you should rotate the pain across the board by changing the team each week that has to stay late to attend the meeting.

I hope, this blog can help you in scheduling a perfect virtual meeting for your team. In my next blog, I will provide you with some more insight into how to schedule your virtual meetings better, but in the meanwhile if you have any recommendations from your side, then please feel free to share it here through your comments. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on April 21, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management, technology, Virtual Team

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

What should you look for when hiring someone in your virtual team?

06 Apr

Virtual InterviewVirtual Teams are slightly different from your normal teams, and hence, they require slightly different skill-sets from your team members. Working in a virtual team is not for everyone, only certain types of individual can perform well in a totally remote team. They should be highly motivated, enthusiastic, and flexible. Thus, it becomes very important to hire someone who can work effectively with minimal supervision than hiring someone who is familiar with a particular toolset. And hence, I would like to provide you with some tips through which you can assess the personal qualities and the tools experience of a candidate during his/her interview.

Technology competence: If you are hiring someone who can work remotely, then you need to make sure that she is comfortable with technology. You can perform a simple test during the interview itself to gauge the competence of the candidate with technology. Just set up the interview using the technologies that you would use when working with the team, such as VoIP, web cams, email, instant messaging, and so on. It will quickly become apparent how comfortable the candidates are with working with the technology and how they handle it when things go wrong.

Self-accountability: Here is where the behavioral and scenario-based questions come into play. You should ask very specific questions which can help you understand how the candidate reacts to a big problem and how she holds herself accountable for the work that she does. You can ask questions such as… How do you organize your workspace? How do you plan your day? How do you keep up with the office when you are traveling for work? How do you manage distractions when working from home/office? What types of distractions are the most difficult for you to overcome? Etc. With these questions, you are trying to find out if the candidate can work on their own, or will they require hand holding to perform their basic tasks. After all, working in remote team is no joke.

Ability to work remotely: Once the candidate answers your questions, ask more detailed questions that examine the candidate’s motivations and behaviors. It is very important to find out how comfortable is the candidate with working remotely. Ask specific examples about the time when the candidate has worked remotely. Tell them to elaborate on their experience. For example: How was your experience working remotely? Was it positive or negative? What did you not like about that experience? What organization techniques have you implemented to identify your priorities? When working virtually, how do you establish a rapport with teammates you have never met? By asking these questions, you are trying to figure out if the candidate is comfortable working remotely, and how she will fit in your remote work culture.

Synergy with your team: As with any hiring decision, skills alone are not enough to ensure that a candidate will be successful on your team. The candidates must also possess personality and character traits that fit with the other team members. If you have a choice between someone who is knowledgeable but obviously difficult and someone who is less experienced but enthusiastic, consider choosing the less-experienced-but-enthusiastic person. You will likely have far fewer personnel issues, and may get someone who will build team synergy.

I hope, my blog can help you find the right candidate for your virtual team. If you know any other ways through which we can improve the hiring process for a virtual team member, then please feel free to share it here. Thanks – Bhavin Gandhi

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on April 6, 2016 in 21st Century, Leadership, Management, Virtual Team

 

Tags: , , , , , , ,

← Older posts
 
%d bloggers like this: