We’ve all been there. Dreamt about keeping a project team intact over the whole project. In fact, I start almost every project believing that we’ll be the same persons in the end as when we started. Then reality hits and suddenly there’s a change of person in one of the roles. Two persons. Maybe three or more if it’s a long project. Then all of a sudden person no one comes back to the project again.
It’s far from ideal and never in any plans. But it’s the reality of projects.
There are many reasons you can’t win a battle of change in team members. Either a more prioritized project needs them, they are leaving the company, going on parental leave, or something else. No matter what you’ll do better helping the project out by making it easy to jump in and out of it.
The confusion stage
There are a couple of questions that most people ask themselves when joining and leaving a project. You want to get them past this first confused stage as quickly as possible.
Entering your project
Who am I? Who are you? Who are we all in relation to each other?
Where do I find information?
Where do I find decisions or frameworks we need to work within?
Who takes decisions?
What am I supposed to work on? Until when?
What do others expect from me?
Leaving your project
Who will take over from me?
What do they need? Where and how do I transfer this knowledge?
Is there anyone on the team who needs something before I leave?
When is my last session with everyone?
Areas to focus on
It’s possible to solve in many ways, here are some pointers to work with to make sure your project is easy to jump in and out of.
Communication channels
Make it clear and not something that generally floats around in your team’s emails with everyone in cc. You’ll need a clear way to keep track of the communication channels. Depending on the project size and company policy you can combine different ways, just make sure it’s clear and in your project presentation. For example
- Project group email for official inbound and outbound communication.
- Communication platforms like Slack or Teams for unofficial communication within teams or persons.
- In system communication on detailed changes in the work like drawing systems or design systems.
- Weekly summary of the hot topics and decisions that were made.
You want to make it easy for a person joining your project to understand what to say where and where to expect to find what. A person leaving will feel sure that it’s all documented and available for the whole group without any extra effort from their side.
Regular feedback loops
For some people, this is the worst thing to listen to. The same topic again and again and again. But for a new person jumping into your project, it’s nice to hear about a topic that’s been up and now is getting closed or getting updated to everyone. I promise you that the repetition of information can’t be enough emphasized.
- Make it a regular part of your stand-ups/meetings
- Make sure to catch the brief history and current status of the subject
- Look ahead and include why this is important for the next steps
Separate documentation areas
It’ll quite quickly be a mess in your documentation area between working documents and final ones. Some even have “final draft” as a status, making it quite uncertain if that triumphs over the “released draft” or “final 0.9”. Just avoid it all by keeping a separate area for what’s been released from your team and what has been handshaken with stakeholders.
A new person jumping into your project will need to quickly get an overview of what has been finalized and what has not. You can still have different folders or tags but make sure to keep the official documentation separate altogether. Make it just that – official.
Meeting wheel
In the armed forces, we call it a “Battle wheel”, companies usually call it a meeting structure. Whatever you want to call it, make sure that you have a clear picture to show a new team member the cycle of the work and decision areas the project goes through. Choose a time frame that is suitable for your project, a weekly one? Bi-weekly? Monthly?
