ISDA Process Planning Kick Off Meeting
June 6, 2008
"Begin with the end in mind"

The questions we want to answer:
    a.    What's our communication process?
    b.    What's our decision making process?

• we don't always understand how decisions get made
• we don't always know what the the value is to the community
  • are we asking the right questions?
• can we have a balance between management and staff in these processes?  A collaborative approach that would need the managers to get the buy in
• what are the political aspects of our work?  We need to take those into consideration...
• goal is to come up with "best practices" that can be tweaked for ISDA

How do we want to approach tackling this?  Our process...

• work on a communication strategy first, then move on to decision making process
• each team member will answer the following questions:
  • how does communication currently happen?
  • what worked well and WHY?
  • what did not work well and WHY?
  • how would you like communication to happen?
• we will meet as a group and discuss these scenarios, then apply our suggestions to a hypothetical (Pat will draft) to see what works
• make recommendations based on hypothetical
• extrapolate out to decision making process if applicable
• present to management team

Next meeting: June 13, 2008 3pm Downtown Crossing

June 13, 2008

Kinds of communication: 

• difference between how it works within teams and between teams
• lateral vs vertical communication
• person to person vs distributing information to a group
• QUESTION: How do we communicate when we have an issue?

What helps communication:

• identifying resources and skills sets and reaching out, asking questions
• knowing what each other is doing on a daily basis
• cross training
• listening (and some times not listening when appropriate)
• filtering information as it comes down (when is it too much info and when is it not enough?)
• making sure you cover the WHY (often not communicated at lower levels)
• getting buy-in
• asking for input

Ideas on what to include in a communication strategy:

1. objectives
2. target audience or stakeholders (internal and external)
3. message you want to convey THE WHAT
4. rationale THE WHY
5. tools (existing and new) THE HOW
6. resources you need
7. time line THE WHEN (frequency)
8. lessons learned

 Tools we use:

• daily vs weekly vs bi-weekly meetings
  • rotating who has responsibility for the agenda
• IM
• email
• Daptiv
• Jira
• RT
• Tech Time
• Phone

*Need to have some minimum standards of how and when we use these tools, expectations for basic structure and organization (Daptiv, Jira and Wiki).  Pat wants this as an action item - to document recommendation.

Next step: We will apply this to the hypothetical below and see what works.  We will also decide if we need to narrow the scope to vertical communication only.

•  based on that discussion, we will put together a draft recommendation for the group to review and comment on

Next meeting: Friday June 20, 2008 at 2pm Downtown Crossing. 

Ideas on what to include in a communication strategy:

1. objectives
2. target audience or stakeholders (internal and external)
3. message you want to convey THE WHAT
4. rationale THE WHY
5. tools (existing and new) THE HOW
6. resources you need
7. time line THE WHEN (frequency)
8. lessons learned

June 20, 2008

Hypothetical

Team X has been working on an application and the big release is coming up.  The company as a whole does not do any standard quality assurance, and the Team believes that this is an issue.  They feel that due diligence includes QA for this service as well as other products being developed across the organization.  They want to begin investigating tools since testing would need to begin asap.  How should their needs and concerns be communicated?  How should the tool selection be conducted and a decision made?

Group feedback:

• Identify the SCOPE of the issue
• Identify a subject matter expert - internal or external
  •     Get the right people involved - look outside your own team
• Be clear about what you need and for how long
• Communicate this to your manager
  • They should communicate back to the leadership - people who make the final decisions
  • Socializing the problem
  • This is how you get resources and communicate who is doing what

• Manager can step in when there is a resource constraint or when there is cost associated with the problem
• Clearly identify who is responsible for what
  • Decisions
  • Work
  • Prioritizing

• Make recommendations based on research by the group - be able to support your argument
• Sometimes making a decision is more important than the decision itself
• Hard to calculate ROI on much of what we do
  • things like the MIT reputation are immeasurable
• Resistance to having things go "higher up the chain"
• SME and manager can present recommendation to leadership team - opportunity for feedback
• Be accountable
• Sometimes a recommendation or decision goes against policy or the policy hasn't been clearly defined yet "road block to decisions"
• Is there a stigma to "good enough"?  Do we shoot too high at first?  How do we manage expectations?
• Neglecting the "let's try it" scenario - experimentation or pilot allows for better requirements gathering
• Talk to the customer
• Resistance to raising expectations
• Don't make promises - focus on the business problem you are trying to solve
• Don't avoid conflict

ISDA Communication Strategy v3.ppt