Organizational alignment is essential for sustainable growth in the right direction. As the workforce changes to include more remote positions, the organizational alignment tools companies currently use will need to be updated.

We will define organizational alignment, outline the benefits, give the most popular organizational alignment model, how to adapt to an increasingly remote workplace, and the top five tools for success.

What Is Organizational Alignment?

Simply put, organizational alignment is the process of aligning all aspects of a company – including its processes, policies, and goals –  with its mission, vision, and values.

The employees must also align with the company itself, and consider how their values are reflected in the workplace. Including this aspect in your organizational alignment strategy is important because it keeps the company and its employees working towards the same goal. It also promotes a united workplace where both the company and its employees can thrive.

How Organizational Alignment Can Benefit You

Let’s discuss the range of benefits that comes with building a company that is both well-aligned to execute on their vision and has processes in place to maintain growth. The organizational alignment affects not only the company’s success but also plays an influential role in the entirety of the workplace culture. The most notable benefits include:

• Higher Employee Morale

  Employees that identify with their workplace through shared values will experience a greater sense of belonging. This is increased further through a company that supports its employees. 

• Faster Growth

  Companies that have promoted alignment throughout their entire organization will discover higher productivity rates. Employees who share the same values as the company they work for will enjoy the work more and will want to help the company succeed. This productivity increase is also supported through your employees adopting company processes quickly. This can be fostered by placing your staff in roles they identify with and feel capable in.

• Increased Engagement

  People enjoy going to work when they are highly aligned with their roles. It’s important that your employees are able to identify how their tasks are directly related to their long-term goals within the company. How engaged your employees are will be a direct reflection of their alignment with the tasks they’ve been assigned, and will affect both their productivity rates and the quality of their work.

• Employee Empowerment

  Knowing your employees align with the company values and processes, you’ll be able to delegate more effectively. This will let you empower your team to make effective choices that reflect those core organizational values. This will not only create more responsible employees but will let them have a more active role in the company. Additionally, leadership will be able to refocus on the most important tasks to support their team.

The Most Popular Organizational Alignment Model

Over time, how a company implements organizational alignment has changed. Companies advance and expectations shift to reflect up and coming trends and new ways of working. How a company aligns itself needs to be adjusted to meet the new workplace demands. There is, however, one framework that is more commonly used than others and may be beneficial to your company if implemented well.

It’s important to note that this framework is typically used in a 9-5, in-office workplace. It may not transfer well to the changing workplace model where hybrid or remote work is becoming more common (but we’ll get to that next).

The 7S Organizational Alignment Model

This model focuses on seven areas that work together to reinforce and benefit the entire system. This method includes:

• Strategy
• Structure
• Systems
• Staffing
• Skill Sets
• Style
• Shared Values

Let’s break down each of these areas individually:

Strategy

This is how your organization works to further grow and maintain its competitive edge in your industry. It includes aspects such as project processes, marketing techniques, sales tactics, updated products, and services, etc. To maintain alignment with your company, you’ll need to review the current workplace strategies your company uses. Compare these to the company values and goals to ensure they are effectively working together.

Structure

This is how your company plans to complete tasks and projects. It could include how tasks are delegated, what departments you need in your company, how reports are managed, etc. To ensure effective alignment, review all structures in place and determine which ones reflect the core values of the company and support those of the employees.

Systems

This includes your policies and procedures, which have direct control over how a company functions. This section includes any programs and software the company uses, collaboration processes, project planning, and resources available. Review these aspects to ensure work is being completed in the same manner across the company so that it is coherent and maintains efficiency and effectiveness.

Staffing

Staffing directly refers to those individuals you choose to employ. Consider your hiring practices and training processes. How your company manages these two vital aspects will have a large influence on the alignment of your staff and company.  Intentionally create a workplace that accounts for the changing workforce. Hire people who reflect the values your company holds.

Skill Sets

What are the talents and abilities your employees bring with them? This is important to the structuring of departments and teams. When assigning tasks or promoting collaboration, take individual skill sets into consideration and use them to find the best candidates to find success. Quality work is completed when people are working within their skill sets and feel capable to complete the work well.

Style

Often this is reflected in an organization’s management style. How your managers treat their employees, and their common practices, are a direct reflection of the company. Review your management through project management audits. This will help you ensure your managers are behaving in accordance with the company standards, and that they are upholding the values of the company.

Shared Values

These are the overarching aspects of a company that are deemed most important. These values are involved in all decisions a company makes, and are the guiding force for all projects. Use the shared values of your organization to create a clear and strong mission statement. This mission statement will be the largest supporting factor of your organizational alignment.

Including these seven elements in your organizational alignment practice will help you create a strong, supportive workplace. While some of these are transferable to the remote world we’re beginning to experience, there are some important areas that will require some updating.

Changing Organizational Alignment For A Remote Workplace

Now more than ever, companies are adopting a remote workplace. For some companies that means creating a new hybrid working model where people split their time between working from home and working from the office. For others, it could be a fully remote model bringing lower operational costs by removing the need for a physical workplace. However a company has decided to include remote options for their employees, their organizational alignment strategies must reflect those changes. 

Early research is finding that people are feeling more aligned with their workplace through remote work, in large part to it giving them a better work/life balance. It’s also showing increasing rates of employees feeling understood by their workplaces. To continue building better alignment with your staff, there are three important things you should be including in your organizational alignment strategy:

• Promote Greater Flexibility
  Allow for greater flexibility to suit everyone’s individual working style. Some people prefer to get a lot of work done in the morning, while others find they produce better work in the afternoon. Letting your employees choose how they will frame their work hours can contribute to employee success and company growth.
• Adjust Your KPI’s
  Key performance indicators will need to be reflective of your employee’s output as opposed to their input. The important part is your employee getting their work completed, meeting all expectations, and maintaining quality. The hours they spent working to make it happen isn’t as important and doesn’t define their value as an employee. Place more weight on what your employee produces, and their ability to meet their deadlines and expectations, than you do over how long they sit at a desk.
• Update Workplace Policies
  Create updated policies to support remote workers without infringing on their current benefits. Some companies have begun removing perks and previously provided compensation from their employees who have taken a remote role. A company that maintains current standards and creates supportive policies for their new remote roles will help maintain alignment with their staff and discover greater benefits through doing so.

5 Ways To Align Company Goals With Employee Goals

Organizational alignment is most powerful when its focal point is on matching company values to those of your employees. Creating a strong relationship between your company and its employees is vital in the changing workplace. Here are five things you can do to build a united organization:

1. Be clear in your mission statement and company values. Keep this in mind throughout any hiring period. Use these values and goals to guide the interview questions to get a strong sense of your potential hire’s personality and probability of aligning with the company.
2. Include regular employee reviews that include goal planning. This will make your employees feel valued and supported by the company. People want to feel they can grow within their company and that they are supported in doing so. Take time to help your employees create a strategic plan to achieve their goals within the company, and provide them with the resources to meet those goals. During regular review periods, measure their success, discuss the areas they are struggling with and reevaluate the plan, making changes to reflect your employee’s progress. Not only does this keep your employees happier, but it also fosters a higher level of commitment, reduces employee turnover, and creates a highly skilled workforce.
3. Send out regular surveys to let your employees tell you what they’re enjoying about the workplace and what they’d like to see in the future. This is a great way for you to gauge what your employees need, and include some of them in future policies. This will help your employees feel heard by the company while creating a better workplace for them.
4. Keep up to date with current workplace trends. Review reports and research findings, and let this guide you in creating more supportive, updated company policies that will benefit your employees while reflecting the values of the company.
5. Hire and train a highly capable management team. Strong leadership is the foundation for your company’s success and they are often the first contact point for your employees. They must reflect the values of the company, and create a workplace atmosphere that is in alignment with company policies. They must want to see their employees succeed. Managers should be skilled in empathetic communication to support their teams and create a healthy workplace. They need to be present and promote connections between their employees, building strong relationships and creating a welcome environment. By tying your company values to your manager’s leadership style, you’ll foster a healthy and happier workplace where your employees enjoy their work and want to work hard to see their team, and company, succeed.

Top 5 Organizational Alignment Tools For Success

Promoting strong alignment throughout your company can be challenging without the proper tools, especially with the changing workplace dynamics. Here are five tools that can help you find success in organizational alignment.

1. Use A Project Management Tool
   One of the most impactful tools you can use to support organizational alignment is by using online project management tools to support a hybrid or remote workplace. Implementing a tool like this will help you connect with your team and manage your project all from one place.
2. Clear Organizational Processes
   Create clear organization processes that are promoted company-wide and reflect the changing workplace. Include strategies and expectations around document sharing, team calendars, security, and data analysis.
3. Utilize OKRs
   Objectives and key results, or OKRs for short, are important tools to include in your company alignment strategy. This will help you track the outcomes of your objectives and measure their effectiveness in regard to company values and overarching goals. This can be used in an in-person workplace as well as in a remote one.
4. Make SMART Goals
   Using the SMART method will help you create your goals in a way that makes them both actionable and measurable. Creating your goals in a detailed way like this will help ensure each goal your company is working to achieve is supporting the overarching goals of the company altogether.
5. Communication Systems
   Solid communication systems include expectations for how the staff is to communicate. Is email more efficient? Do employees need to respond quickly to inbound emails, or can they respond when they are able to do so in a way that fits their schedule? Include the expectations of communication in your workplace handbook or have them easily available for all staff to access and review. This will help you create clear communication processes, which will make connecting more efficient and predictable.

Whether you’re looking for ways to streamline your business or just getting started, a resource plan is a must. Mapping out what you need to get the job done will make your company run more efficiently today and in the future.

Are you considering putting together a resource plan, but are not sure how to get started?

This guide will introduce you to the essentials of resource planning and explain why it’s important for managers at all levels of an organization. We’ll also provide tips on how to get started with your own resource plan and our own recommendations along the way.

What is resource planning?

Resource planning is the process of determining how much or what kind of resources are needed for a particular task within a team’s project. This involves deciding how many resources need to be allocated to your team members based on their skills and capacity.

The goal of resource planning is to recognize, forecast, and set-aside various types of business resources such as human capital or equipment for a business. The strategic use of resources can help a management team become more efficient and effective.

Types of Resources

There are a variety of resources available. The following is a list of some of the most prevalent types:

• Human resources – This includes all of the key personnel who will be working on your project. You need to know what their specific roles are, what qualifications and experience they have and how many of them you will need. You also need to know what their working hours will be and what tasks they’ll carry out within the project timeline.
• Financial resources – This includes all of the money that will be spent on your project. This helps you to determine how much it will cost as well as what kind of budget is required.
• Technology resources – This includes any equipment that will be used to complete tasks, as well as software and applications that are needed for projects.
• Facilities – This includes any physical structures or places that will be needed for your project, such as the work environment and office spaces.

With resource planning, you can keep your team organized and on task. You’ll have a good sense of their capacity so that they don’t burn out or get too tired with all the work required.

A resource plan is, generally, created during the start of the project. It’s usually created by the person in charge of the project. This person will be responsible for identifying the needs required for the project.

Why is resource planning important to project management?

Planning is essential for the success of every project. This is why understanding what your project needs, and identifying the specific resources it will take to accomplish it, are essential.

You risk adding unnecessary stress and strain to your project if you don’t have a resource plan in place. If you don’t prepare properly, your team may not complete tasks on time or miss milestones.

Simply put: It’s not good for business to keep your employees in the dark about what their responsibilities are and what tools and equipment they need to get the job done.

A proper resource plan will also help in reducing budgeting and help accurately forecasting project expenses. Without doing resource planning, it’s impossible to have a proper idea of what resources are needed when and how much they will cost. This is crucial because by resource planning, you can better your chances for success in your project or enterprise.

If you don’t optimize your plan for resources, your project will most likely fail. Resource planning is the bedrock for any project plan. It’s what makes or breaks a project because it deals with the people who are going to be working on your team and what they’ll be doing in terms of work hours, tasks, and the like.

If you have a solid resource planning strategy in place from the start, your chances for success greatly increase.

So what’s the benefit of resource planning?

Simply put, the greatest advantage is that you’ll avoid a lot of problems. Significant issues emerge when organizations try to do things without an adequate resource plan. Here are a few examples from our list of resources.

Human resources

What does it look like when human resources are mismanaged?

There are several possible scenarios. For example, when there are too many people assigned to a task, it can create a bottleneck that slows down the work and impacts deadlines. Overstaffing is a huge problem.

Another scenario is if you’re understaffed on a given task, then you run the risk of employee burnout, project delay, or even project cancellation.

In both of these cases, you run the risk for a decrease in your employee’s morale.

Financial resources

When things go wrong, the first place most people look, is their budget. So what happens when you don’t have one or it’s not properly planned out?

Let’s say you run your project without knowing the costs. If you don’t have any idea what things are going to cost, how do you know when you’re overspending?

Project managers who simply hand wave their resource planning don’t know if they’re staying on budget or not. This lack of knowledge can be a huge problem because it impacts the entire project.

Technology resources

Say you don’t have a plan for what software tools or equipment will be required to get the job done. Then a lot of time might get wasted trying to figure it out. Employees might spend their time and efforts trying out different tools or even performing unnecessary tasks, which wastes company resources.

Not having a plan for what technology is needed can also create issues with compatibility among your team members and system errors that slow down the workflow until they’re fixed.

Facilities

The resources that are available in the workplace, such as cubicles, furniture, etc. can have a big impact on your employees’ morale and productivity. Your company’s work environment is part of creating a productive and positive work experience for your employees.

Simply put…

Resource planning minimizes these problems by ensuring that everyone has what they need when they need it. Without a solid resource plan, you risk putting unnecessary strain on your employees and the negative effects that come with it. The result of not having a resource plan is missed deadlines, loss in productivity, lack of communication, burnout, increased costs, etc.

While there are many other benefits than what we’ve described here, they all boil down to one thing: When you have a proper resource plan in place, the chances of success greatly increase.

So what’s the process for creating a resource plan?

Resource planning should be done before you begin your project. Without a plan in place you won’t have a good idea of what tasks need to be done and when, so it will be difficult to navigate the process along with its contingencies. That’s why it’s important to do your resource planning during the planning stage of your project.

3 Key Components To a Rock Solid Plan

In order to have a solid resource plan, you need to know what your project is, who will be working on it, and your schedule.

The 3 key components are: What will be done, who will do it, and when?

With those pieces of information you’ll have what you need to create a rock solid plan.

1. The aim of the overall project along with a breakdown of all of the milestones, with the major tasks needed to complete each milestone.
2. The amount of resources required for each project task. Many resources in projects are used daily. So be prepared to create a detailed plan to determine how they are being used.
3. Scheduled dates for the tasks. It should include the amount of time required by the people working on the project, equipment rented, and project site rent.

Without these 3 key elements, your resource plan won’t be as solid as it should be. Remember, the more detailed you can get with these three components, the easier it will be to figure out what resources

5 Steps to creating a resource plan

Now that we’ve identified the 3 key components of a resource plan, let’s take a look at how you can go about creating a resource plan.

Step 1: Write down resource needs

Create a breakdown of all the resources needed for your project. Organize them by task and decide which ones you want to work on together, then define their responsibilities in detail so that when it’s time to get started, they’ll know exactly what to do.

Next list out any equipment needed like computers or machinery if there isn’t already an existing one.

Step 2: Forecast resource usage

Determine how much resources will be required throughout the project’s life cycle from the resource list. Try to be as detailed as possible. Remember you want to think about workers, budget, equipment/software, and work environment.

It is absolutely essential to calculate the total price tag for all your project’s resources by adding up their individual costs. Then determine what percentage of that will be needed over the course of the project to cover charges like staffing, equipment rental, project site rent, or software.

Step 3: Build a resource schedule

Create a schedule with resources required for each task, including the people/equipment needed, when the tasks will start within your project’s timetable, and when they’ll be completed. This way you can quickly identify what resources are being used on which days so you know who to call if there is an issue.

Step 4: Redistribute resources

After your resource schedule is built, you might need to redistribute the resources if their usage is uneven. This way they’ll be more evenly distributed throughout your project’s life cycle and spread out the workload accordingly.

So what about contingency plans?

Contingency plans are used in cases where it looks like there isn’t enough of a resource for what needs to be done. This plan allows you to have an idea of who will make up the difference in case something happens.

For example, say you need 4 people for your project but only 3 are available; one person will act as the backup if someone calls out sick or can’t work during a scheduled time. The key is to always have a plan B if something goes wrong so your project doesn’t suffer any setbacks.

Step 5: Review and Amend

Once you’ve finished your resource schedule, make sure to review it. You might notice that potential shortfalls in your allocation, which you need to balance out by either acquiring more equipment, hiring another person or increasing budget.

You might also notice that there are too many resources assigned to one part of your project while other parts are lagging behind which will require you to redistribute the resources accordingly.

Sometimes supply chain issues can create a scenario where you have to work with limited resources. But as long as your resource plan is in place, you’ll always have a contingency plan so that there are no surprises.

If that’s the case, contact your suppliers and renegotiate until you find a solution. Also allow time for workers to train on how to use equipment or learn new skills.

When it comes to project management, a project closure checklist is important to give guidance and protect the quality and caliber of your present and future projects. Some may believe that simply finishing the project is the final step of the process and the most important aspect of a project is the work put into it to make it successful. While that certainly is important, how a project is closed out can have a significant impact on how it performs, the satisfaction of your clients, and the overall success of your company altogether.

So, let’s define a project closure plan, and discuss why it can be a valuable addition to your project timeline.

What Is Project Closure?

Project closure can be defined as a system of steps designed by the management team aimed to support the final stages of a project. Simply put, it’s the closing phase of a well-planned project.

When you begin a project, it’s important to include project closure into your working timeline and schedule— especially when a project is being billed based on the total hours needed to complete it. Project closure takes time, so it’s vital that you account for it before you begin.

To help ensure a smooth transition through your project closure, include it in your project schedule. This will help you make sure it’s not forgotten as the project continues through its various stages. To make this even more effective include the closure checklist (or link the document of it) in the schedule notes. This will give your team access to the final steps before they begin, allowing them to use the checklist to guide their work, including task completion, testing, documentation, and organization.

Top 4 Benefits Of Having A Project Closure Plan

The benefits of including a project closure process in your organization can vary based on how intricate you want the process to be. While a more detailed project closure may seem like it would provide more benefits, this may not always be true. It’s important to consider your timeline and the most valuable aspects of your project. This will help you create a project closure process that is best suited for your project, and yield the best benefits.

Here are the benefits of including a project closure checklist and plan:

• Promotes Organization Throughout The Project Lifetime
  A well-designed project closure plan that is created and shared prior to the work beginning, will help your staff pre-plan essential steps they must take. This would include their organizational systems to keep all necessary documents stored properly, payments to be made within their scheduled bounds, and reports being generated to support the closure checklist.
• Enhanced Learning For Future Projects
  One of the main aspects of project closure is documenting issues the project faced, along with their solutions. These can be discussed following the completion of the project to help influence updated procedures for the betterment of future projects.
• Provides A Safety Net
  Project closures include final rounds of testing and allocate time for the team to go through the project to flush out any areas of concern. Implementing a strict review system during the final phase of the project helps you protect the integrity of the project before the deliverables are released to the client.
• Increases The Quality Of Your Projects
  Including a project closure process helps you consistently produce high-caliber work for your clients. This leads to better engagement, higher commitment, and better retention of clientele. In many cases, this can make your company an industry leader, creating a more valuable service that leads to an influx of new, more exclusive projects.

When Does The Project Closure Process Begin?

A project being finalized isn’t the end of a project timeline. In fact, this is the signal for your team to enter into their last phase. Often, a project team moves into its closure process when a project is presumed finished and is ready to be handed off. At this time, management will begin working their way down their project closure checklist, formally beginning the final tests, organizing reports, settling invoices, and releasing resources no longer needed.

What Happens If You Don’t Have A Project Closeout Plan?

Project closeout plans play a vital role in a company’s growth, workplace culture, and overall company success. Failing to include a closeout plan can put your team and final project at risk in a number of ways, such as:

• Decreasing Learning Opportunities
  A large part of any project closure is reviewing the issues the project experienced, along with the steps taken to mitigate them. These provide valuable learning opportunities for your team, helping them make more informed decisions in future projects.
• Higher Risk Of Errors
  During project closeout, the team puts the project through final testing to ensure they are handing off a quality product to their customer. If these tests are not properly completed or missed altogether, you run the risk of overlooking project errors you would have been able to mitigate prior to handoff.
• Reduced Employee Morale
  One of the final aspects of project closure is employee gratitude and recognition. This step is one of the most valuable ones to include in your plan and will have a huge effect on your workplace culture and team morale. If you skip this step or glaze over it, it can quickly deteriorate your team’s production, quality of work, and satisfaction within the workplace.
• Less Organization
  Organization in the workplace is a vital aspect of any strong workplace. Without strong organizational systems, you may miss collecting, reviewing, and closing out vital documents connected to the project. These documents are especially important when they are connected to any financial aspect of the project, and if not closed out appropriately, can leave you open to liabilities.
• Exceed Project Timeline
  When project closure is included in the timeline, it helps keep your project on schedule by ensuring all vital aspects are accounted for during the closing stage. If this is not done, you risk your project running over its expected timeline. This creates a scenario where you and your team are crunching to get the essential final tasks completed without the time allocated to do so. It may even be too late for fast-tracking.
• Increased Workplace Stress
  When your staff feel rushed to complete a project or are not allotted the appropriate time to complete a project to the expected caliber, it creates a more stressful work environment. High demands mixed with unrealistic timelines can be detrimental to the health of your team. Implementing a well-planned closure process mitigates that stress.

Now that you have a good understanding of why project closure plans are so important, let’s look at how you can set it up for your next project!

Project Closure Process – Stages & Steps

How you design your project closure checklist will reflect your management style and the processes you have in place throughout the lifetime of the project. Each step that is typically included in a project closure process will fall into one of three stages:

1. Technical Processes
2. Learning Processes
3. Team Morale Processes

When designing your project closure process, there are some vital aspects to include to help promote a highly successful, quality project. Let’s break them down into their individual stages.

Technical Processes

This stage includes processes that are aimed to complete and polish the final project, and relate directly to project items themselves. There are four main steps you should include in this stage:

1. Review The Project Outline And Expectations
   This signals the beginning of the project closure process. In this step, meet with your team and go through each aspect of the project, verifying that everything has been completed. Look at tasks individually and have the corresponding person verify they’ve been completed, and sign off on their work. This serves three distinct purposes. First, it ensures the project has met the set of expectations assigned to it during the planning phase. Secondly, it gives everyone an opportunity to make any final adjustments to the project or highlight any aspects that have gone unmet. Lastly, it solidifies accountability and professional responsibility throughout your team when they sign off on their individual tasks.
2. Run Final Product Tests
   Before you officially hand the project off to the client, you want to take the necessary steps to ensure it will perform as expected. Take time to test each individual aspect of the project as needed, and manage any issues that are flagged. After completing your final tests, complete detailed functionality reports to back the project up once it’s been handed off. This will help you feel confident that you’re providing a high-caliber project to your client.
3. Provide Deliverables
   Once you’ve completed all tests and are ready to hand the project off, gather all necessary deliverables to be reviewed by the client. Verify with the client that you’ve met the project expectations and have them sign off on the final product you’ve created for them.
4. Finalize All Project Documentation
   In this step, you’ll need to go through all the documents that are connected to the project. This may include things like budget approvals, contracts, issue and solution logs, invoices, and resource funding and allotment. Verify that all documentation has been signed by the required authorities and is ready to be closed out now that the project has been handed over to the client. Completing and closing all documents associated with the project, finalizes all contractual obligations, and serves as binding recognition of the completion and handoff of the project.

Learning Processes

The steps you take after a project has been wrapped up will prove valuable to the updating of current processes and the growth of your team. Many projects will provide insights into its strongest and weakest areas. These provide critical learning opportunities for both you and your team. This learning is usually done by including two important steps:

1. Reflect On The Project
   When you’ve finalized the project, meet with your team to review its outcome and the processes involved in meeting its expectations. Consider things like:

   “Did the project go as planned?”
   “Did it turn out how you expected?”
   “How could you have made the process more efficient?”
   “What are some of the lessons you learned throughout the course of the project creation?”
   “How could these lessons influence your next project?”

   The answers to these questions will help you make a list of some of the important lessons this project taught you. Pose these questions to your team in an anonymous questionnaire to get their thoughts on it as well. Keeping it anonymous will help ensure the answers are honest and accurately reflect your employee’s experience throughout the project.

2. Document Essential Learning Points
   Once you’ve taken time to consider the learning opportunities experienced during this project, it’s important to make formal documentation of them. This will ensure they can be used to help improve policies and procedures for future projects.

   During this process, host a project closure meeting and include a Q&A section. Ensure strong meeting notes are taken and include them in the learning documentation. Encourage your team to openly discuss the learning opportunities that have been brought forward from the previous step. As a team, brainstorm how these lessons can influence future projects and if they can benefit certain types of project tasks commonly seen. During this meeting, set time aside to discuss the struggles the project faced, and how they were overcome.

   Documenting the important learning points discovered each time you complete this stage of a project will help you create more efficient systems for each future project. Additionally, you’ll be able to develop procedures that reflect the individual strengths of your team while planning for additional support systems for weaker areas.

Team Morale Processes

Team morale is the most influential aspect of any project. How well your team functions together, and how well they move through a project is a direct reflection of you as a project manager. This is why including team morale processes at the end of every project are essential.

To effectively maintain and boost positive team morale, you’ll need to include three valuable steps in your project closure process.

1. Recognize Strengths And Exceptional Work

   In this step, show your gratitude for your team’s role in making this project a success, and thank them for all of their work. Highlight the progress your team has made. This could be their inner workings, their increased project success, or their progress towards a shared goal. Recognizing the team as a whole helps reinforce that the successes found within are for everyone, which can aid in stronger bonds being formed throughout the team.

   Following this, it’s important to recognize the individual goals and growth of your team members. Provide affirmation to those members who completed exceptional work, and who demonstrated strong respect and support for their team members. This will encourage each member of your team to meet their individual goals, and recognize the range of talent within the team.

2. Hold Individual Accountability Meetings

   In these meetings, review each person’s deliverables, productivity, and discuss their individual experiences throughout the project. This step is more than just reviewing an employee’s output and holding them accountable for their ability to meet or exceed their expectations. These meetings go beyond that and should be used to connect with your staff and foster their individual success within the company.

   Use these meetings to highlight the strengths you’ve witnessed in that person. Take time to discuss long-term goals and work alongside them to create success plans for them. Brainstorm how you can help them achieve their goals, and the resources they would need to do so. Ask them how you could have supported them better during this project and how you can help them in the future. Use this information to help you grow as a manager, while also creating a more supportive atmosphere for your team altogether.

3. Celebrate The Closure Of The Project As A Team

   Celebrating with your team each time a project comes to an end is an essential aspect of building a strong rapport. This will let them share in the success their work brought, and reaffirm to your team that you recognize their hard work. By celebrating with them, you are also showing them that you view yourself as part of the team, and not just their manager, which creates higher levels of respect and team responsibility. Celebrating a successful project also helps build strong colleague relationships which benefits future projects and aids in future collaboration between members.

   This final act of closure will send the project off on a positive note, setting your team up for success in their next project.

Your Comprehensive Project Closeout Checklist

While the aspects of your project closure checklist may vary, we’ve compiled a comprehensive list of items to include in your next closure plan. These will help you create a strong set of processes to support your next project.

• Review your project (in comparison to outline and expectations)
• Get individual signatures on team deliverables
• Run final tests to flush out any errors
• Create functionality reports from project testing
• Respond to any red flags discovered during testing
• Collect final deliverables
• Create client invoice
• Hand-off deliverables
• Get the client to verify the deliverables and their contents
• Have the client sign off on the project
• Closeout any project documentation

  • Project contracts
  • Resource allocation
  • Budget approvals
  • Contractor fees
  • Team salaries
  • Issue logs
  • etc.
• Hold project closure meeting
• Complete a Q&A including all team members
• Create learning documents
• Recognize exceptional work done by your team
• Set accountability reviews & meetings
• Celebrate as a team!

Don’t you love those movie montages where everyone’s working together toward a big goal? Like in The Three Amigos, when the entire town of San Poco prepares to defend themselves against the arrival of the murderous villain, El Guapo. Even the elderly women come out, sewing suits to disguise themselves as Lucky Day, Dusty Bottoms, and Ned Nederlander.

Swarming in agile is the same idea. It’s when a team swarms together like a group of bees around a difficult problem, and works together to bring it over the finish line. Agile teams, fundamentally, are collaborative, and so the practice of swarming is a sign of a high-functioning agile team.

Let’s look into the characteristics of swarming, how it benefits a team, and ways an agile coach or scrum master can create a team environment that embraces the practice of swarming.

FAQs on Swarming

Have you ever been stuck on something, and all you had to do was talk it over with someone else and you figured the problem out? Swarming helps to dislodge people from looking at problems through a binary lens. It unlocks the creative brain power of a team and helps them solve conundrums and get out of stuck places.

There’s no hierarchy in swarming. Brainstorming and discussion is integral to working through tricky issues, and so everyone’s perspective is equally valued.

Here are answers to several common questions about swarming.

Are swarms scheduled?

Swarms can either be planned or unplanned.

Some teams plan swarms at the beginning of a sprint, identifying a high-ticket item for everyone to focus on and get done. Other teams routinely swarm on the last day of a sprint, around any work items left in the sprint backlog. The daily standup is another time for bringing up concerning issues and planning a swarm.

At other times, swarms happen organically. Maybe a team member reaches out during the day to ask about something he or she is stuck on, or a client calls in with an urgent problem. Then the team drops everything and figures out a way to resolve the issue. For some teams, impromptu swarms become so habitual that just by putting a “bee” emoji into a message, everyone understands what’s being asked of them.

Do swarms need to be in-person?

The Agile Manifesto emphasizes in-person conversation over messaging. One of its principles is: “The most efficient and effective methods of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”

Ideally, then, a swarm would happen in-person. For remote teams, a video conference platform is an acceptable alternative method to use.

In order to pick up voice inflection and see body language, it’s necessary to hear and see a person’s face, and so swarms wouldn’t take place over email or messaging apps.

How long does a swarm last?

A swarm lasts as long as it takes to solve the problem. This may be thirty minutes or it can be as long as two hours.

Does the whole team participate in a swarm?

A swarm is always collaborative, so it would need to have three or more people. The whole team, however, needn’t necessarily join in. Depending on the nature of the problem, a few people may be designed to participate, while others can choose to join in. In other instances, a swarm is a whole-group effort.

Is swarming practiced in all agile methodologies?

Agile, universally, emphasizes teamwork and face-to-face conversation, and so swarming is always par for the course.

Swarming is especially common in kanban, which places work-in-process (WIP) limits at all work stages, in order to eliminate bottlenecks. When one stage reaches its WIP limit, a team swarms around it in order to maintain a fluid workflow.

The Benefits of Swarming

Swarming is all about unleashing the power of a team. It allows a team to achieve more together than each member could individually. Let’s discuss a few key benefits to swarming.

Fosters Innovative Solutions

Have you had a discussion that gave you a whole new perspective on an issue you previously thought you knew all about?

Usually, there are a myriad of ways to solve a single problem. When teams get together, they’re able to pool all their ideas, then carefully weigh and discuss each of them. Through collaborative brainstorming, they can determine the simplest solution that delivers the best value to the customer.

Creates a Fluid Workflow

For most agile teams, the “definition of done” includes a checklist of seven or more items. When these are done piecemeal, it can take quite some time to finally mark a task off as complete.

However, with swarming, everything is completed in one session. In software development, for example, the code, quality assurance, and tests all happen at the same time.

Limits Context Switching

Multi-tasking, the studies have shown, significantly reduces an individual’s work performance during the day. Swarming keeps the whole team focused on the same problem, so they’re not being drawn away from one task and having to focus on something else a few minutes later.

This concentrated focus is a more efficient way to get things done, and it increases the value of the increment the team creates.

Develops Strong Rapport

When a team routinely swarms together and helps one another out, they come to appreciate everyone’s skill set and point of view. It removes a hero mentality from the team dynamic, and instead people feel like everyone has their back.

As you can see, swarming benefits a team in so many ways. It’s no surprise that some agile teams make them a routine part of iteration planning.

The Swarm Mentality

A swarming mindset doesn’t come naturally to all team members. For some, asking for help feels like admitting you don’t know how to do your job. Others have a “ball hog” mentality, and they’re more concerned about their individual performance than the team’s performance.

But taking problems to the team is the agile way. Here are a few ideas for how a scrum master or an agile coach creates a team that’s ready and willing to swarm.

Create Psychological Safety

Some team members, particularly anyone new to a team, feel an immense pressure to perform at 100% all the time. In an agile setting, however, admitting that you’re stuck and taking something to the team is really a strength.

A coach creates an atmosphere of vulnerability and trust by routinely asking people if they need help and then acknowledging and rewarding team members who bring concerns to the team.

Cross-Train

Oftentimes team members become siloed into their individual skills and tasks. It’s hard to learn new things, and so many prefer to just keep on doing what they already know. However, swarming only works when everyone has a strong skill base and understands multiple facets of a problem.

A coach increases individual team member’s skill-sets by introducing the practice of pairing. This is when team members work together on the same task and learn from one another.

Use Team Metrics, Rather Than Individual

It’s easy for team members to pit themselves against each other, and evaluate each person’s performance against their own. However, this individualist mindset precludes the collaborative spirit that’s required of swarming.

By only presenting the team’s sprint velocity, and not individual sprint velocities, an agile coach or scrum master communicates that the team’s performance is more valuable than an individual’s performance.

In sum, swarming is a practice that won’t happen right away on many agile teams. First, it’s necessary to create an atmosphere of trust and camaraderie and train each member in a variety of skills.

Have you ever started something that should have taken thirty minutes and it ended up taking forever? Maybe you went into the kitchen to make dinner, and it was three and a half hours later before you finally sat down to eat.

When we don’t take time to plan a project, it may well end up having all sorts of inefficiencies.

Lean project management, in part, is about identifying and reducing these inefficiencies. Although lean cannot be distilled into one simple definition, a central concept is value. Lean processes are oriented around adding value to the customer, or the project’s end goal. Anything that doesn’t do this is considered waste.

Another key concept is workflow management. A lean system carefully analyzes and improves workflow to make processes fluid. This entails eliminating bottlenecks by creating a pull, as opposed to a push, system.

Without a lean approach, projects take longer and expenses increase. Plus, workloads become really uneven–one person is overworked at the same time that another stands around looking for something to do. In more instances than one, a poor manufacturing system can even lead to business failure.

And so projects certainly benefit from applying lean principles. Lean isn’t exactly a methodology, like scrum or waterfall. It’s more of a set of principles to apply to a system. It can be integrated into manufacturing, software development, and start-ups. So whether you’re using scrum, waterfall, agile, or something else entirely, you can incorporate lean into project management.

In order to understand more about lean, let’s look into its origins and fundamental characteristics. Then we’ll look at how to implement lean project management into your organization, and how it benefits the team.

Origin and Characteristics of Lean

Way back in the 1930s, Eiji Toyoda, a mechanical engineer, came to work at his cousin’s newly established automobile plant in Nagoya, Japan. As the company grew, Toyoda visited the Ford Complex in Dearborn, Michigan, to see how the big boys ran the show. At this point, his plant had made about 2,500 cars, while Ford made 8,000 cars each day.

Although Toyoda learned a lot about mass production from this visit, he also witnessed a lot of waste in Ford’s manufacturing processes. And so he didn’t seek to emulate Ford’s methods, but rather to improve upon them.

He then partnered with machinist Taiichi Ohno to develop what became known as the “Toyota Way,” a production system that emphasized the elimination of waste and continual improvement.

In the 1980s, James Womack and Daniel Jones, automobile researchers at MIT, visited the Toyota plant. In 1990, they wrote a book about their observations, called The Machine that Changed the World. Here are some key takeaways from their observations:

• A Lean System

  Womack and Jones described the processes they witnessed as “lean” because Toyota used so much less than mass production plants. They used half the space, half the tools, half the inventory and half the time. It’s the diet shake of production systems.

• Craft Production and Mass Production Combined

  Craft production is small batch and high quality, with close attention to detail. Oftentimes, it’s about creating one of a kind items. Whereas mass production is large-scale systematized manufacturing of goods. Toyota combined elements of these two systems at its plant.

• Zero Defects

  The Toyota Way had systems and processes in place to constantly review and upgrade its current way of doing things, with the ultimate objective of achieving the “perfect system.”

• Everyone is Responsible

  Toyota manufacturing plants didn’t have a traditional top-down approach, where the team follows orders from its manager. Rather, the responsibility was pushed as far down the chain of command as possible. Each employee had a lot of freedom about how they went about doing his or her work. This was a benefit for sure, but it also made the position more stressful, as they were accountable for any defects in production.

• Employees With Multiple Skills

  At Toyota, employees continually expanded and honed their skill sets, developing expertise in many areas over time. This created a knowledgeable and skilled staff without a lot of hierarchy.

In sum, Womack and Jones saw something different and revolutionary at this Toyota plant in respect to how products were made, and in the dynamics and responsibilities of team members. They eventually codified their research into five principles, which they outlined in their 1996 book, Lean Thinking. Let’s look at those next.

The Five Principles of Lean

As we discussed, the principles of lean really were developed by Eiji Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno. Womack and Jones are the researchers who studied these methods, coined the term “lean” and distilled them into these five principles.

1. Identify Value

The first principle of lean is to identify what adds value to the final product or the end goal. This is in contrast to a team working to complete a project. It entails really knowing the customers and then looking to solve their problems and needs.

A task of building a car isn’t to simply put it all together, but rather to provide the customer with safety, comfort, convenience and anything else they might need.

And so a lean system looks at its processes and asks: Is this action adding to the value we’re seeking to create?

2. Map Value Stream

After clarifying the project’s value or end goal, the next step is to identify the steps to create it. First of all, this entails looking at what is really going on within the organization right now, not what you plan to have happen or what you think should be happening.

At Toyota, this concept is known as “Genchi Genbutsu.” Literally translated, this means “real location, real thing” or “go and see.” Engineers at the Toyota plant would spend hours on the production floor, observing cars being assembled in real time.

A second step entails examining these steps, and putting them into distinct categories:

• A Process that Adds Value:

  These are steps integral to achieving the project’s ultimate objective.

• A Necessary Process that Adds No Value:

  This includes things like clerical or administrative work that may not directly impact the end goal, but cannot be taken away.

• An Unnecessary Process that Adds No Value:

  These are things like excessive documentation and long meetings; things that don’t impact the project and could be “cut away” from the process without anyone missing a beat.

As you may have guessed, the final step of mapping a value stream is to eliminate anything in this final category.

3. Create Flow

Workflow is part and parcel to lean. When you’ve looked at what really is going on, and identified what adds value and what doesn’t, the next step is about putting processes into place.

Some organizations already have an established system in place, such as scrum. In this instance, incorporating lean means adding or modifying the system. Scrumban, for example, is a modified scrum that utilizes principles of lean and kanban.

The Toyota Way creates this flow using three principles known as muri, mura and muda:

• Muri (overburden)

  Find places in the workflow with bottlenecks, and examine them closely to fix them, perhaps by adding additional labor, purchasing additional equipment or creating a more efficient process.

• Mura (inconsistency)

  Identify places where defects or inconsistencies occur and reduce them.

• Muda (waste)

  Eliminate pointless or time consuming things; tasks that don’t add any value to the customer or the product goal.

4. Establish Pull

A pull system means that you make things as they’re needed. Cory Ladas summarized this concept in his book, Scrumban: Essays on Kanban Systems for Lean Software Development: “Don’t build features that nobody needs right now. Don’t write more specs that you can code. Don’t write more code than you can test. Don’t test more code than you can deploy.”

Have you ever seen coffee cups stack up next to an espresso machine during a morning rush? This is an example of a bottleneck along a push system. A pull system only produces as things are needed further up the production chain.
It’s closely related to the theory of constraints, which means you organize work processes around whatever step is the slowest.

5. Continuous Improvement

In Toyota, this idea is known as “Kaizan,” which is a combination of the words “change” and “good.” A lean system looks at its current processes and strives for continuous improvements. Nothing is ever deemed “best,” but rather “better.” Improving means looking at the root cause of problems, so that you can keep them from happening over and over again.

In sum, these are the five principles that Womack and Jones identified after studying manufacturing plants at Toyota. They work together to create a system that’s not only efficient, but high quality as well.

Five Ways to Implement Lean

Do you ever write a report and wonder if it’s even read by anyone else on the team? And have you ever had an inbox so full of “must read” emails that it’d take you half the day to read through them all?

There’s all sorts of inefficiencies in the workplace, and these are some telltale ways that projects can incorporate lean principles. Let’s look at a few ideas here.

1. Eliminate Waste

Looking closely at all aspects of an organization usually reveals all sorts of time and energy put into needless tasks.

One of the most common is over-communication: emails that are unnecessarily copied to everyone in the office, or long meetings that discuss issues that don’t pertain to many of the attendees.

One solution here is to have meetings organized so that people know which portion they must attend, and to have a limit of just one or two weekly all-office emails, that includes everything the office needs to be briefed on for the week.

Other common areas of waste include creating duplicate reports for different stakeholders, writing documents that won’t be read, and waiting for approvals in order to get “green lit” for a project.

Identifying areas of waste is key. Bringing management on board, and cooperatively working to refine processes is an integral second step.

2. Cross Train

One of the characteristics Womack and Jones witnessed at Toyota was highly skilled employees and teams. People weren’t simply assigned to attach one widget onto another widget, day in and day out, but were trained in all areas of manufacturing.

Cross-training teams creates a strong foundation for an organization. It’s a type of succession plan of its own: if someone leaves, you’re not scrambling to replace them, because other people already know how to do the job.

One way to cross train is with the idea of pairing, which comes from extreme programming. This is when two programmers work together on the same task. This may seem wasteful, but what actually happens is they help each other with what the other doesn’t know, and then each one learns from the other. Each employee, as a result, becomes more proficient and skilled.

3. Give Teams Autonomy

Another characteristic of the Toyota Way is responsibility pushed down the chain of command. Individuals are highly responsible for their own work.

In order to create this autonomy, allow teams to select work for themselves, and decide when they’ll do the work. With freedom comes responsibility, and you’ll probably see an increase in initiative from the team.

4. Reflect on Processes

The kaizen concept of continual improvement is very similar to the agile retrospective.

Even if you’re not working in a scrum framework, schedule time periodically throughout the project to solicit feedback on the process and the team dynamic. Make sure these sessions are egalitarian and everyone feels free to share. When everyone’s said their piece, carefully consider what you’re hearing, and together look for ways to improve.

This process of continual improvement is how a team becomes strong over time.

5. Establish a Pull Workflow

A pull workflow only produces work when the next step in the process is ready for it. For example, in a coffee shop, the cashier would only take an order when the barista was ready to make another coffee.

Establishing a pull workflow requires identifying “push” systems that create bottlenecks, and then replacing them with methods that trigger a process to take place instead.

One way to establish a pull workflow is to no longer assign work to specific team members, but rather allow people to select work from a backlog.

Visualizing workflow with a kanban board and establishing work-in-process limits is a quick and easy way to identify bottlenecks.

In sum, these are a few ways to incorporate lean into your project management. But these are just ideas. Lean isn’t a process or methodology like scrum. And it doesn’t seem to have specific tools, like kanban. And so lean principles can be applied in a variety of ways.

Benefits of Lean

Now let’s look at three ways a team and organization benefits from lean.

• Delivers Value to Client

  Lean isn’t about cranking something out, but it’s about identifying how a product provides value to the customer or client. When all the processes are aligned around delivering value, then it solves the client’s problem, and they’re more likely to be satisfied.

• Motivates the Team

  A lean system gives individuals more responsibility, which in turn gives them more pride in their work.

• Reduces Costs

  Finally, when inefficiencies and waste are identified, it dramatically reduces cost for a team.

All in all, lean really benefits the individual, the client and the organization. It’s a win overall.