A new year is approaching fast, and the last remaining days of 2003 are hastily passing by, leaving time for family and for those involved in Siebel Projects, a well deserved chance to think about something else than Siebel Best Practices, Screens, Views, BusComps, user interface, Integration design, EIM processes and all the other what-have-you-nots of a typical Siebel Project. There are times when even the best running Siebel project is running shallow, and the resources that comprise the team are just on the verge of wearing thin. This is normal in all larger-scale projects and its not a foreign concept in a Siebel project. There are many ways to deal with this challenge in a project team – right this season the re-vitalization of the Christmas holidays is the obvious and easy one – simply ask team members to not think about the project for the holidays…. But there are other things you may want to look into too (after all Christmas is only once a year);
- Look at the team groups;
- Are they communicating on the same level.
- Do they combine efforts to make team progress.
- Are team member only concerned with progress on their own area of responsibility.
- Are team members actively discussing issues and solutions.
- Are all team members being involved in the discussions.
- Are the team members understanding the business reasons for the solution requirement.
- Do the team make forward-moving decisions – and stick with them.
- Is the team asking for help and input when facing challenges.
- When
you’ve looked at the above points, you probably have some notion if you
need to change anything to make the project run better. Here’s a list
of steps you could take to make your project teams run even smoother;
- Shuffle
members between teams in order to bring fresh thinking and new
perspective into a team, if you identified a weakness or deficit on a
team, look for a new member that excels in those areas. Don’t present
changes as demotions or promotions, but rater as adding catalysts in
order to help teams become even more successful. Their success is the
projects success.
- Encourage “eXtreme Programming” in the teams
when they are being challenged, even though extreme programming
methodology is developed for pure programming tasks, it is easily
adapted for Siebel Development. Encourage that extreme programming teams
are sought across all teams. If you want to know more about extreme
programming then read the book “eXtreme Programming eXplained” by Kent
Beck.
- Encourage discussions about solutions, but make sure that
everybody have the business reasons for the solution requirement clear
in memory. Try and provide the teams with simple clear cut business
reasons and requirements, just the headlines. This will allow teams to
develop a better solution, without discussions creating divergence
between customer requirements and resolution.
- Encourage taking
mental breaks from the project. both in the weekends, but also during
lunch breaks, and in the evening. Sometimes the distancing from the
challenges in the project will allow a fresh take on any challenges that
a team and it’s members may be facing.
In Manzana we live
on our customers’ success, and our ability to scope, develop, implement
and rollout solutions that cover the above points and more. And the
results speak for themselves. Our customers are satisfied, their
employees are satisfied, and resources have been freed for more
important tasks. Look at the Customer Success to see some quotes from
customer installations that Manzana have built.
Further we pride
ourselves in not just being an implementator of Siebel, we also use
Siebel actively in Manzana. So our experience also comes from our own
daily use of Siebel.
Thanks for your time!
Henrik Ohm Eriksen, CEO
Manzana
If
you are considering a CRM or Siebel solution or just want to ask a
question, then send us an email and we will get back to you asap. If you
would like to inquire on hiring Manzana Services please do not hesitate
to contact us, either by email or phone.
And also, we highly recommend you visit the Siebel Inc. homepage at www.siebel.com