I'm smiling to keepfrom crying

I despisethese people.

“ WORK IS CHAOS! I CAN’T GET A THING DONE!”

This is the often-heard cry of a frazzled IT Manager. Rapid changes in both technology and business mean that IT departments are constantly barraged with new projects—whether it’s writing a web app or implementing new infrastructure for mobile applications. It’s a challenge just to stay ahead of the curve.

But as IT managers attempt to keep pace, business pressure to deliver projects on time and on budget has increased. Whether it’s a lack of time due to too many meetings and interruptions or being unable to effectively manage work requests and resource loads, IT managers are struggling with the operational challenges of getting work done.

To increase productivity while still delivering high quality products and services, IT managers and teams must get better at how they work. They must become more efficient and effective, not just on project-based work, but also in managing other work. This includes the regular, everyday repeatable work, as well as the work that crops up in the middle of high priority projects that the CIO needs done now.

If you work in IT and are ready to pull your hair out because it’s always chaos, then keep reading. This piece examines the top 10 every day pains that prevent IT managers from getting work done and offers some new, as well as trusted, solutions for improving your productivity.

GLOBAL TEAMS ARE DISCONNECTED AND OUT-OF-SYNC

You’ve been tasked with managing the development of a new web application: writing the code has been outsourced to a team in India, another team in China is working on the architectural and design elements, while your team in the United States is responsible for testing and implementation. Effectively filtering information and ensuring that all steps of the project are happening in sync is more than just challenging, some days it feels impossible. The separation of resources and time zones has created frequent disconnects about the work to be done and who’s working on what. Unless something is done soon, you risk losing sight of the project—missing deadlines and potentially running over budget.

Bringing everyone together under one roof might seem like the ideal solution, but that’s not likely to happen. With 65% of companies allowing employees to work remotely1 and thousands of companies now outsourcing IT work to teams across the world, collaborating on a whiteboard in the conference room down the hall is simply not an option.

One way to solve this problem is by unifying the communication and collaboration process. True collaboration comes not from email and status meetings, but from learning how to work together on the right things at the right time. How is this done across a virtual landscape? By collecting information into a single online location that is visible and accessible to all stakeholders and team

members. Give your global teams a reliable way to see all work that needs to be done, the priority of that work, visibility into who is doing what, and the ability to accept work assignments based on their own availability. Your team, however geographically disconnected, will be in sync and you’ll be able to ensureteams and stakeholders are accurately informed, reduce bottlenecks, and increase overall team productivity.

1

YOUR TEAM IS DROWNING IN SPREADSHEETS

In your latest project, like every project, you have multiple spreadsheets going. You have one that outlines the project timeline and work responsibilities, another for all the requirements, and a third to track all the bugs. You’ve assigned a “gatekeeper” to each of these spreadsheets, but the process doesn’t work like it should. Team members create and update their own spreadsheets

or update on a different, older version than the gatekeeper is using. This means that in order to get an up-to-date view of the project the gatekeeper must run around collecting all the various versions of spreadsheets and merge them together to create a new, up-to-date spreadsheet. This running around may be burning calories, but it’s not an efficient way to work. And it’s costly.

Since studies show that people spend 50% of their time in activities related to document creation and management,2 it might be time to look for a better way to manage information. Rather than running sprints

across the building to collect the information you need, imagine using some of that time for innovation and project completion. Spreadsheets can be useful, but it is also time to admit they have got their limitations.

To eliminate time spent updating spreadsheets and to increase productivity, best practices for work management should be employed. These include:

• Use templates whenever possible

• Establish an agreed-upon version and naming system

• Provide centralized access

• Collect data in a manner that allows you to run ad-hoc reports across multiple projects

When best practices are employed and the time is taken to set up systems correctly, maintenance and update time is reduced. Leaving you time for something else—like getting real work done.

2

TRACKING AND PRIORITIZING WORK REQUESTS IS A STRUGGLE

Your team is working on a new website for a school district. You’ve outlined the requirements and determined each team member’s workload capacity. But now that the project is in full swing, there are changes and clarifications. For example, teachers would like to be able to update grades on an ongoing basis, not just post report cards. These change requests come at you in a variety of ways, such as emails, hallway conversations, instant messaging, and sticky notes, and they come from a variety of people, from stakeholders to other team members. This kind of chaos makes it hard to keep track of and prioritize all of the requested changes.

The key is to standardize work request practices. The Project Management Institute reports that when standardized practices are used throughout an organization, successful work performance measures are almost three times more likely. In addition, these organizations have better outcomes than organizations that don’t standardize.3

In order to effectively manage work requests, develop an agreed-upon process for how all work requests will be received,

tracked, and prioritized. Once you have a standardized process for all work requests, you can:

• See what work is outstanding and who has been requested to work on what projects

• Know which resources are still available

• Easily bundle interdependent work requests for increased efficiency

• Prioritize requests based on the highest overall business return

In order to make your standardized processes work, you must be firm. Whether it’s a dedicated

email address such as teamworkrequests@company.com or a collaborative calendar

that is easily accessible to everyone, any work request not submitted in the

correct manner doesn’t go into the work pipeline—it’s that simple. Stick to your guns on this and you will find work requests can be standardized and managed effectively.

3

Your CIO wants to know what the status is on a software development project, but you aren’t sure. It’s not because you aren’t tracking the process, it’s because you have several different tools tracking different components of the project. In order to provide an accurate status report, you need to first check each tool, update all the spreadsheets, then compile all the data in a manner that allows you to see what’s going on, and finally, create a report. That takes time and it’s time you don’t have.

You’ve taken to darting down the hallway to avoid bumping into the CIO and being pressed for an update. Even when you finally do stay late, get everything updated and compiled, and email the CIO, it’s not enough. The CIO gets hundreds of emails a day. Yours is just another one on the long list of those still unread. By the time the CIO gets to it, the data is out-of-date and has more details than the CIO wanted. The CIO just wants “the big picture.”

So how do you end your fear of hallway update requests and deliver real-time updates to executives?

• Develop a clear “up and down the organization” communication plan.

• Input all action items into one central online location that is visible to executives (like your CIO) and team members.

• Make executive touch points easy—create a simple dashboard or report that provides the big picture.

• Work closely with your executives to ensure that you’re providing data that correlates to real problems and solutions they want to know about.

Executives are responsible for thinking about what’s coming down the pipeline next. They are often the first ones an unhappy stakeholder approaches. Ensuring executives can quickly have access to the information they need when they need it is crucial.

DIFFICULTY DELIVERING REAL-TIME UPDATES TO EXECUTIVES4

At least I can seethis really well.

PROJECT STAKEHOLDERS WANT MORE VISIBILITY INTO THE PROCESS

You are developing a hotel reservation website. You have a long list of requirements and your team is working their way through them. The problem is everyone wants to be able to check in on progress at their leisure. But right now, they feel they have no way to know where their priorities stand in the process and they are tired of “waiting their turn.”

Disgruntled, stakeholders begin to work around the process by going directly to the engineers or developers and requesting they work on their priorities. Before you lose complete control, you have to find a way to rein stakeholders in and provide them the visibility they want. Here’s how:

• Involve stakeholders from the beginning so expectations are set about communication, timeline, and budget.

• When you have your initial kickoff meeting to gather requirements, explain that everyone involved must document everything in one centralized place, not in separate places on their own desktops.

• Work back through your project schedule in detail to thoroughly understand time frames and touch points so that when change requests come in later you can show what it will mean to deadlines and cost.

• Consider developing the project in “sprints” or short periods of time where specific features are developed. This can reduce “technical debt” when requirements change and it can help stakeholders feel comfortable that their priorities will be handled soon (e.g., in the next sprint).

• Cut back on having meetings for round robin status reporting. Make meetings count by using them to discuss

real issues, such as changes to the requirements, etc.

Following these steps will help cut down on stakeholder drive-by additions and act as a reference to original agreements. Visibility also encourages discussions about how implementing any new requirements will affect outcomes, deadlines, and resources.

5

A typical day goes like this: meeting, conference call, an hour in your office to work during which someone steals in to ask a question, another meeting, an urgent phone call about a crashed network, and so on. By the end of the day, you’ve put out 15 fires, but haven’t touched the real work that needs to be done. Either you stay late (again!) or your project gets even further behind deadline.

Isn’t this just how it goes? Usually, but it doesn’t have to be.

There will always be work that comes up and fires to put out, but since research has shown it takes five minutes to get back on track after a 30-second interruption4, it is important to eliminate interruptions when you can. To ensure you have a solid block of uninterrupted time try to:

• Look for patterns in the interruptions (who, where, and when). Then look for ways to manage and minimize these interruptions.

• Have two or three short blocks of “open time” throughout the day to update or assist other people.

• Set aside a dedicated work time where interruptions are not allowed and make sure it’s respected.

• Actively minimize distractions by turning off email notifications or sending calls directly to voicemail.

• Prioritize your to-do list and train yourself to go right back to where you left off after an interruption.

• Encourage team members to also set aside uninterrupted times of the day and avoid interrupting them.

Everyone is more productive when they follow a standardized process that allows time for both collaboration and real work. Interruptions become less frequent and are left for critical fires instead of every work request.

TOO MANY INTERRUPTIONS6

Can I just have 5minutes to myself?

8 hours down,10 more to go!

OVERBURDENED BY COMMITMENTS

It’s the same old story day after day. Too much work, not enough time to get it all done. And, every time you turn around, more work has been piled on. You could work non-stop for the next month and still barely make a dent. It’s not just overwhelming; it’s downright discouraging.

A recent study shows 66% of workers feel like they don’t have enough time to get their work done,5 so you are not alone. The problem is, if you don’t get things under control, you and your entire team are going to burn out. In addition, the quality of your work suffers. Instead of ensuring you are doing things right, you’re just trying to get things done. You are too busy to accurately track things or look forward to see what’s coming down the pipeline. This means sometimes tasks get repeated or logjams occur due to poor planning.

Fear not. There is a way to gain control of the situation and get your life back. To reduce

commitments, you need to start by better tracking the work and the time needed to do the work right. If you have a clear understanding of the time it typically takes to complete a standard request, you can more realistically forecast it into your team’s schedule.

But you also have to be realistic. Things will crop up that need to get done. In order to deal with uneqpected work requests or prioritiy changes, you should:

• Only allocate 60-70% of your and your team’s time to planned work

• Work frequently in smaller chunks or “sprints” to help teams have flexiblity to take on urgent work when it arises

• Make it okay to say “no” or “later” when the request is a lower priority business objective.

To reduce commitments, you need to start by better tracking the work and the time needed to do the work right.

7

YOUR TEAM OR DEPARTMENT IS ADDICTED TO MEETINGS

First there’s the daily “stand up” meeting, then there are project-specific meetings, then meetings to discuss the requirements with stakeholders, and meetings to discuss the budget. You attend all these meetings, but they are often not as effective as they could be. The CFO is absent from the budget meeting and, in the hotel intranet project meeting, one engineer talks the entire time about a bug he’s trying to fix and time is up before any of the other critical issues can be discussed. The team from India is on a different time zone so they never participate in the daily stand-up meetings, but without knowing their status your team can’t move on to the next set of requirements. With so many meetings and so little of the right things being accomplished in each one, you’ve begun to dread meetings. They’re not productive and they take up time that could be used to actually get work done.

Tired of all the meeting madness? You are not alone. In a survey by Salary.com, employees chose “too many meetings” as the biggest distraction and waste of time presented by the workplace.6 You know exactly what they mean.

The good news is that with a strong communication plan in place, you can significantly reduce meetings. By creating a communication plan that allows for frequent dialogue with key players, everyone can be kept up-to-date without the need for meetings. A good communication plan should set the context for

communicating with the team and stakeholders about both requirements and expectations. It should include:

• What types of things will be communicated

• How frequently updates will be pushed out and how (email, etc.)

• How changes will be addressed

• How disagreements will be handled

• Who has what role and when to talk to that person

Once the plan has been established, create a central place for accessing and updating the items in the communication plan. This will help keep teams up-to-date and eliminate some meetings altogether. When meetings are held, strict agenda and time limits should be followed.

8

Why did he book sucha small conference

room for this?

CAN’T ALLOCATE RESOURCES EFFECTIVELY TO MEET PRIORITIES

You manage a mid-size IT consulting firm specializing in setting up enterprise networks. One of your responsibilities is to effectively allocate resources. This means knowing who is working on what, if they have the resources they need, and if the work will be done on time. Yet, despite your best efforts, projects are often over budget because resource hours were greater than planned or projects are behind deadlines because resources were overcommitted.

Resource allocation involves several steps: inventorying the work you know about and estimating the work you don’t; determining how many hours each piece of work should take; and logging all tasks for all team members. It may not be rocket science, but it’s difficult. According to a recent study, 50% of respondents reported that their top risk was lost productivity because resources were not optimized.v

To become more effective and efficient at resource allocation, follow these best practices:

• Track actual hours against planned hours so you know if you’re on budget

• Make sure project plans are kept up-to-date

• Mark completed tasks complete

• Allow resources to provide input on the projects being assigned to them

• Include holidays, time off, and internal work in your resource plan

• Have a clear understanding of your team’s available hours

Effective resource allocation is complex and requires in-depth analysis on many levels. Make sure to track historical data on resource capacity in order to estimate how much time needs to be budgeted for upcoming projects, and prioritize and rank tasks based on overall business strategy and deadlines. It is only by taking the time to analyze resource allocation and making that information visible and accessible to all team members, executives, and stakeholders, that resources can most effectively and efficiently be allocated for current and upcoming projects.

9

No one else uses thisthing, but it’s my favorite.

TOO MANY TOOLS MANAGING TOO MANY PROCESSES

You have been tasked with managing your firm’s global infrastructure upgrade. You’re using project management software to manage the project, but you find it is only meeting a fraction of your needs. You add another tool to improve bug and ticket tracking, and another to improve online collaboration. Next thing you know, you’re using five different tools and that’s just you. Each team is also using different tools to manage their pieces of the project and how they communicate and track issues amongst themselves.

Working on a project is a coordinated effort. When there are too many tools in play, it can create large silos between different enterprise teams and stakeholders because the tools don’t integrate well or allow data sharing. This also makes it difficult for senior managers to get all the information they need. Information is scattered amongst the different tools and collecting it is often time consuming and difficult. It also makes it hard to see who is working on what and when, so in the end, no one is on the same page.

What you need is one tool that can truly “do it all.” One tool that provides a single, central place to better manage and control the chaos of work and improve visibility and productivity by eliminating wasted time dealing with fragmented, siloed tools and processes. One tool that eliminates unnecessary meetings, better allocates resources, creates true collaboration, and provides real-time updates to everyone.

Fortunately, there is such a tool…

10

WORKFRONT: A SINGLE SOLUTION TO SOLVE YOUR WORK PROBLEMSAn Enterprise Management Work (EWM) solution from Workfront allows you to unify your tools and processes into a single system that can manage the entire lifecycle of all types of work—both structured and unstructured—from initial request to delivery and measurement. Even better, it’s one system that people will actually use because it’s easy, relevant, and works the way people naturally work so it isn’t just another step in an already complicated process.

Workfront Enterprise Work Cloud tracks all components of your work—including collaboration, document sharing, and real-time status updates—in a centralized location. It streamlines repeatable work processes using custom-built templates; employs process improvement to enhance productivity and efficiency; and provides all levels of an organization with visibility

and insights into the truth about workloads, dependencies, and when things will really be done. Workfront also shows managers and senior managers who is working on what, who has bandwidth, and how to justify the resources you have and the ones you still need.

Ready to stop pulling your hair out and start getting real work done? By unifying all your processes into a single system that can manage all work and provide visibility across the organization, you’ll not only be able to say good-bye to those 10 pesky problems that have been preventing you from getting work done, but you’ll actually get work done. And not just work, but the right work, at the right time, done the right way.

+ 1.866.441.0001 + 44 (0)845 5083771workfront.com

WORK CITED 1. “New Study with Business Professionals Reveals 65 Percent of Companies Allow Working Remotely.” USamp. April 16, 2013.

http://www.usamp.com/our-company/press_releases/pr_041613.php2. “Bridging the Information Worker Productivity Gap: New Challenges and Opportunities for IT.” IDC. September 2012.3. Langley, Mark A. “The High Cost of Low Performance.” Project Management Institute, Inc. Pulse of the ProfessionTM, March 2013.4. http://www.baselinemag.com/c/a/Intelligence/Seven-Steps-to-Lower-Information-Overload-738613/5. Ibid.6. Gouveia, Aaron. “2013 Wasting Time at Work Survey: Everything You’ve Always Wanted to Know About Wasting Time in the Office.” Salary.com

http://www.salary.com/2013-wasting-time-at-work-survey/ 7. “Resource Management and Capacity Planning Benchmark Study 2013. Conducted by Appleseed Partners and OpenSky Research.