Successful collaboration is essential for driving projects forward and meeting business objectives in today's business environment. However, many organisations face significant challenges that make effective collaboration difficult. At quenable, we’ve experienced these challenges firsthand and designed solutions that offer a better way to collaborate—leading to more effective resourcing, happier staff, and greater visibility across teams.
The Challenges
It’s common to hear the following frustrations in organisations struggling with collaboration. These challenges create roadblocks that impede progress and prevent teams from delivering value effectively:
Accountability to Deliver
"As soon as something goes wrong, the fingers start pointing along with the cries of 'but that’s not what we decided.'
Accountability can become a major issue when project teams lack clarity on decisions and commitments. Miscommunication or misunderstandings about who’s responsible for what can result in finger-pointing and a culture of blame when issues arise. This lack of clear accountability undermines team morale and slows progress.
Internal Project Resourcing
"As a project or business, we cannot easily share resources between departments and line managers."
Another major hurdle is resource sharing. In many organisations, resources are tied to specific departments or line managers, making it difficult to mobilise talent across projects when and where they are needed most. This siloed approach to resourcing often leads to inefficiencies and frustration as teams scramble to find the right people.
Siloed Thinking
"Whether locked into their technical or business area, we struggle with having our team members truly understand the 'bigger picture.’”
Team members are often too focused on their individual roles or departments and lose sight of the broader project goals. This siloed thinking prevents teams from collaborating effectively and understanding how their contributions impact the project's overall success. Teams struggle to align and deliver results without a clear, shared vision.
Solutions
At quenable, we’ve developed a better way to collaborate, improving accountability, resourcing, and team cohesion. Here are just a few solutions that we weave into our offerings and believe support better collaboration:
Introduce and Enforce Capacity Planning
Capacity planning is key to ensuring that resources are allocated effectively and that teams can commit to delivering on their responsibilities. By implementing capacity planning sessions, organisations can quickly forecast the availability of resources based on current workloads. Apart from good management, this creates a clear personal commitment from each team member that can be measured and tracked, ensuring everyone knows what they’re responsible for.
With capacity planning in place, teams can avoid overcommitting and ensure that the right resources are in place at the right time, reducing the risk of delays and miscommunication.
Implement Shared Resourcing
One of the most effective ways to break down silos and improve collaboration is by adopting a shared resource model. Instead of resources being tightly controlled by individual departments or line managers, they can be triaged on a priority basis by the organisation as a whole. This model allows resources to be deployed where they’re most needed, based on the overall priorities of the business rather than departmental agendas.
While this shift requires a broader rethinking of your operating model, the benefits are significant: you can move resources quickly and flexibly to meet project demands, leading to more efficient use of talent and faster delivery times.
Daily Standups
Communication is essential for effective collaboration, and daily standups are a powerful tool for keeping teams aligned. By holding mandatory daily standups, you can ensure that everyone is on the same page. These brief meetings provide a forum for status updates, issue identification, and, most importantly, a chance for team members to understand how their work fits into the bigger picture.
Daily standups also promote accountability, as team members regularly report on their progress and any challenges they face. This increased visibility helps prevent surprises down the line and ensures that teams can pivot quickly when necessary.
How quenable Can Help You Collaborate Better
At quenable, we understand the complexities of project delivery and collaboration. We’ve helped numerous organisations implement strategies that lead to more effective resourcing, happier staff, and greater visibility. Our solutions are designed to improve accountability, resource sharing, and communication, ensuring your teams can work seamlessly.
Here’s how we can help your business:
Tailored Capacity Planning: We’ll work with your teams to implement capacity planning processes that create clear accountability and help you manage resources more effectively.
Shared Resource Models: Our experts will help you adopt a shared resource model that allows for flexible and efficient resource allocation across departments.
Agile Training and Daily Standup Facilitation: We’ll support your teams in adopting daily standups and other Agile practices that improve communication and collaboration, helping your team members stay connected and aligned.
Contact us today to learn how we can help you implement the strategies you need to collaborate better and deliver more successful projects. To find out more about our offerings, connect here
Comments