It's All About the People: Resolving Agile Delivery Uncertainties Through People Interactions by Ruxandra Dariescu

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Improving Tech Project Delivery: A Focus on People Interaction

Hello there. I'm Roxana Drici, a business agility coach, consultant, mentor, speaker, and author with over 25 years of experience in the tech industry. I'm delighted to share with you my insights on improving project delivery, an area I've come to be very passionate about.

Agile Teams: An Answer To Tech Project Failures

About 35% of projects in the tech world fail. In my work, I've detected common failure reasons, including disconnected individual objectives, executive failure in supporting people, talent gaps, and failed people collaboration. All these point conclusively to one key element - people interaction.

Why People Interaction Is Key

People interaction, which is facilitated by language, significantly impacts your ability to deliver on projects successfully. It's not that the technical skills don't count, they do. However, optimizing how your people work together can bring a massive improvement in your project delivery success rates.

Transforming The Language Of Project Delivery

I strongly propose that we focus on shifting the way we talk about project delivery. It's time we started focusing more on people - their contribution as individuals, rather than just capacity or resources. Rather than having predefined objectives, let's talk about adaptive people who collaborate to find solutions and effectively share information. I believe the current language of project delivery belongs in the past.

Language Is Key In Project Delivery

When we look at business operations from the standard, linear perspective, we objectify people and restrict their creative problem-solving capacities. However, if we see business from a more integrated, circular perspective, where people, operations, and business objectives are interconnected, we allow for more fluid, efficient project delivery. It all starts with the words we use.

The Power Of Purpose

To achieve this level of efficiency in project delivery, the focus should be on defining a common purpose. This purpose should answer the question, "Why are we doing this?" This alignment to a common purpose is the glue that binds us together towards a common objective despite uncertainty.

Emotive Attached To Language

Interaction within project teams usually revolves around specific keywords - keywords such as commitment, value, culture, strategy etc. Each person on the team usually has a different understanding of these terms informed by their individual experiences. This unique understanding of words by each team player contributes largely to the success or failure of how teams work together towards project delivery.

Improving People Interaction

Ultimately, if we want to bring down the high failure rates in project delivery, we have to reconsider how we engage people. We must ensure clarity of objectives, sync between plans and processes, and recognition of people's competencies rather than just considering them as resources.

We also have to start measuring the quality of people interactions. Remember, it's all about creating that sync, harmony or 'sweet spot' which allows a team to work smoothly towards project delivery. Achieve this, and you begin to turn project losses into wins.

Next Steps

You're welcome to connect with me for further insights on this topic. My latest book on Sustainable Project Deliverability for Agile Teams can also provide more detailed insights. It is available online at bookbond.com. Be sure also to contact me on Linkedin; I would love to share more ideas with you. Let's transform our project delivery strategies together!


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