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In contrast, there is the group of people that have been on that project from hell. They are a team. They wear that project with pride, like the multi-colored, burnished decorations on the chest of a four-star General. These people give each other hugs, buy coffee and talk about the time that Joe slept in the crawlspace between network pulls and Jill cranked out hundreds of lines of code while QC was testing until the wee hours of deployment eve. "Man, those were the good old days," you hear them say, talking like Viet Nam vets gathered around the campfire.
In one case, the team building lasts few hours; in the other, it lasts forever. The difference is the former had a completed mission the latter was only talk. Even if the mission had a dubious success, the team lived through it and created a bond that is nearly impossible to break. That is the team-building event—delivering something that provides value, vision or velocity.
Defining The One Thing
The best item to deliver is something the customer can sink their teeth into. This brings the team pride. It creates confidence between the team members and builds the customer's trust in them. This in turn builds even more pride inside the team. It is a wonderful snowball effect that yields great returns. The trick is finding that one thing early enough in the project to get that early win. The inset case study gives an example of what was done on one red project recovery. There are many others.
My favorite is when maintenance is included in the project. Maintenance is an easy target since it should never be in a project. Getting it out of the project makes everyone happy—almost everyone. Customers and end users detest waiting until the end of a nine-month project for bug fixes and engineers hate having to wade through bugs while they are trying to add new pieces to a system.
The solution is easy. While part of the team is dealing with the planning and the design functions, have a small subset of the team do the maintenance tasks and, if feasible, deploy them; otherwise, simply build a clean tested system ready for the rest of the team. Either way, the customer sees progress and is happy to know the team is making tangible progress.
Yes, there are people frustrated by multiple updates and the associated cost. Customer satisfaction, though, usually outweighs these concerns.
If All Else Fails
If success cannot be shown by building simple prototype or deliverable, identify something to streamline the project. There is always an overhead process or ongoing task that is waiting to be removed. Maybe it is a redundant status report or an unneeded meeting. Excess processes hang around, because... well... that is the way it has always been done. Process improvement makes people happier, they work more efficiently and will save the organization and project money. The customer will be pleased, too. If a process truly cannot be found, determine whether the team has been overlooked for a computer refresh or tool upgrades. Although these actions are usually done to build trust in the Project Manager, they go a long way to building the team.
Success
Success in a project needs to start early. Success requires a team. Early wins instill success in the team. The cycle feeds upon itself and grows. Teams dreaming of success are far less apt to be successful than team that start with little successes. Give them a win and they will perform beyond your wildest dreams.
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