Tag: Team

The Technical Support Project. Part 2.

Staffing is the most critical part of creating a winning technical support team. If you make mistakes with the steps discussed in my first article but excel at hiring and managing your people, you will succeed in the end. If, however, you do well with the mechanics and make mistakes with staffing, you will certainly fail.

Your Staff Today

Even if your current staff is doing a good job, you will still have to bring new people in to help you rise from the ashes. I know you don’t want to fire the people you have today – it doesn’t help morale – so give it some time and the problem will probably resolve itself for you. Your current staff will naturally turn over when they get tired of listening to complaining and blaming. Your task will then be to hire better than you have in the past.

The Hiring Process

Each employee comes with their own set of technical skills, personality quirks and attitudes, so give plenty of thought to what your hiring criteria will be before you even begin. The easiest way to approach this is to make a list of the minimum technical skills that your new team must have, and then narrow that list down to determine which skills each individual must have for their specific job.

Next, think about which character traits you want in your team. The following are some that I have found to be incredibly useful.

• Quick Learner – It is easy to test potential candidates for how quickly they learn new concepts. Find a few puzzles that build upon each other in complexity, then show the candidate the first. Afterwards, ask him/her to solve the second. Under the pressure of a job interview, can this person digest the information and apply it? If not, this candidate should be avoided.
• Responsible – You can ask specific questions to measure a person’s sense of responsibility. Can they tell you about a time when they made a mistake that hurt someone else? Someone who doesn’t have a strong emotional reaction to telling you such a story is not the right person for you.
• Empathetic – Empathy is very important because it guides communication with angry customers. During the interview process, I ask references if they think the candidate is an empathetic person. You can also ask candidates to take a Meyers-Briggs personality test. ‘F’ personality types tend to be more empathetic than others, so you can interpret their results accordingly.
• Curious – Technical support is nothing more than a long series of problems to be solved, and a person who is naturally curious is best suited for this type of work. In interviews, I ask about hobbies to find out if a person is curious. For example, one of my staff members was taking a welding class when I interviewed him. I asked him why and he answered, “I was curious about how it worked. Since I had some free time, I thought I would give it a try.” I have never been disappointed with his internal drive to figure out technical problems.
• Logical – A logical person will approach complex problems and say to themselves, “I can figure this out.” For this reason, I actually test for logic during interviews by getting a few logic puzzles together, making them multiple-choice and giving them to the candidate. One previous candidate was asked, “Which is more valuable, a trunk full of nickels or a trunk full of dimes?” The candidate chose nickels, and when I asked why, replied, “Well, I thought that since nickels are bigger, they must be worth more.” This person did not approach problems logically, so I did not hire them.
• Trustworthy – You must be able to trust the people on your team, so during the course of your interview, imagine that the person sitting before you is a friend of yours who has volunteered to take care of your personal business while you go on vacation. Ask yourself if you would trust them to collect your mail, feed your pets and take care of your house. If not, you shouldn’t hire them.

Managing the Team

While hiring is important, some portion of my success comes from my management style. I’m not perfect, but I have an intentional plan for how I manage and I stick to it as best I can.

1. Train your team well

Good training leads to capable support people. You are going to be hiring people to figure out problems, so clearly you can’t train them on precisely what they are going to be working on. The objective here is to do the best you can. Don’t, for example, put them into entirely unfamiliar systems and ask them to demonstrate proficiency right away. Your current staff is probably under-trained, so as you work on creating a winning team, get real product training scheduled for them. You should also make ongoing training a priority, especially when it comes to new product releases.

2. Set goals and boundaries

Setting goals for your staff is easy: simply make them SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-Based). Boundaries, however, are slightly more complicated. I usually explain them to my people like this: “That decision requires a context of information that you don’t have, for example, you are not tuned in to other department’s schedules. It’s not a matter of trust, but a matter of knowledge and responsibility. You don’t have time to know everything and shouldn’t have to be responsible for everything. Right up to the boundary, do what is right for the customer and the company. Talk to me when you are asked to cross a boundary or when you feel like it is the right thing to do. I’ll take the responsibility for making those decisions.”

3. Listen to and help them

Unfortunately, many managers treat their staff like servants while the goal of management is actually the opposite-to help people do their jobs better. I consider myself the “one-man technical support team enablement department.” Consequently, my team knows that my door is always open. They have my cell phone number and are not afraid to use it. Allow your team to do the same.

4. Review their performance

Everybody needs to know how they are doing, so give your staff their appropriate praise and correction. As a rule, praise should be public and correction should be private. You should also do regular performance reviews and have a job growth plan in place in order to keep the best people around.

Holding periodic meetings will promote communication and let your people know how they are doing as a team. If there is a problem, you can discuss it without assigning blame to anyone. Tell your team that you want to discuss the process they are having difficulty with in order to ensure that it is the best process for them. Take comments and suggestions on how to improve. This kind of input is priceless.

5. Trust your staff

If you have done everything else, the final step is to let your people do their jobs. Unless you are a micromanager, this should be the easy part. Give them the self-confidence they deserve through showing that you trust them.

Keeping Your Team Happy

It is always important to focus on boosting morale. Don’t wait for it to drop before you do something about it, or it will be too late. Small things such as buying lunch for your team more often than other department heads do will go a long way towards keeping them happy.

Long-Term Retention

Retention is much more important in a technical support team than anywhere else. Development, marketing, sales and accounting will all have an easier time training a new employee than you will in technical support. This means that you need to have a plan in place for retaining your best people. It will likely include the management style I just described, as well as giving raises, bonuses and promotions.

This is why hiring is so important in the first place. You will want to live with the consequences of your selections for a long time.

Randy Miller has 11 years of customer-focused experience in sales and services delivery. Prior to joining Journyx in 1999 as the first Timesheet-specific sales rep, Randy spent five years in the Corporate Sales and Retail Management divisions of leading electronics retailer CompUSA. Since then Randy has held many different positions at Journyx, including Sales Engineer, Trainer, Consultant, Product Manager, Support Team Manager, and Implementation Manager for Enterprise Accounts. Randy has personally managed development and implementation efforts for many of the company’s largest customers and is a co-holder of several Journyx patents. Randy was named Director of Services in 2005. Randy can be reached at [email protected]. 05/09

How’s that for a heading? Exaggerated? Cheap shot? Maybe, but probably also with a bit of truth. Opening the PMBOK 4th edition I saw that PMI has added “Collecting Requirements” to the core processes and this immediately made me very uncomfortable. I have been in the PM business for 20 plus years and in the requirements business even longer, and I have always talked about the importance of separating the ownership of the product definition from the ownership of the project execution. The ownership of the product definition lies with the customer, or the buyer. They are the ones that must define what they want, the capabilities and functions that they are looking for in a product. The project manager represents the seller, or the developer, and as such their interest is often in direct conflict with the buyer.

Now, this does not mean that the project manager does not need to be involved with driving the project and the requirements gathering and even, in many cases when you are working on internal projects, be the person actually documenting requirements. But it is noteworthy that when the project manager acts in this capacity, they do it representing the customer organization They should be aware that they are wearing two hats and may have to develop a split personality. So while in real life this often happens, it is preferable to split the job of requirements gathering between the business analyst (or whatever you call that function in your business) for all product related requirements, and the project manager for all project related requirements. These requirements should be documented in two different documents with different ownership. The product requirements goes into the BRD (Business Requirements Document) and the project requirements belongs in the project plan.

It is also clear that the process of collecting requirements in the PMBOK 4th edition could use some enhancements. The inputs are the charter and the stakeholder register. While this may be defendable by making assumptions about what goes into the charter, I think it is noteworthy that, without a solid understanding of the existing business architecture, goals and objectives, strengths and weaknesses and much more, the collection of requirements may focus too much on the project and not enough on the business. And after all, a project that does not help the business achieve its goals is not a very good project.

So… after all the complaining, can say nothing positive? It is clearly good to focus attention on requirements. Many projects fail because of poorly defined, continually changing, and misunderstood requirements. It is great that PMI recognizes and highlights this. And there is no doubt that the project manager must be a major player in this area. Just remember that the project manager is not necessarily the best person to capture and analyze what the customer wants. After all the expertise a good project manager brings to the table is how to implement those requirements.

Good luck and challenge everything!

With the uncertain economic environment, many organizations are challenged by having to align shrinking budgets with their training and development needs.  While professional development remains an essential part of organizational health, it can be costly, too. Despite the economic crisis, or perhaps because of it, chief learning officers (CLO) are looking for a better cost-savings approach to learning. The virtual classroom and other e-learning opportunities provide just the solution.

For five consecutive years, we have seen a significant upswing in online classroom enrollment as companies shift from in-person to online instruction. According to current research, virtual learning, whether in real-time or at the learner’s own pace, differs little from live classroom training. Given the range of e-learning vendors available, it can be confusing at best to select the right online training program. What should a savvy CLO look for when evaluating Web-based training? How can he or she be sure that the program will be effective? These are legitimate questions, which this article seeks to answer.

According to Work-Learning Research, there are eight principles to which an effective virtual learning program should adhere. When evaluating various vendors, CLOs would do well to consider the following points: learning contexts, practice and testing, level of feedback, repetition, learning over time, diversified material presentation, exclusively relevant information, and focus. Below are various questions you should ask as you go about the selection process.

Aligning Learning and Performance Contexts

• Does the program contain integrated case studies that bring elements of the job into the online classroom?
• Does it contain a realistic scenario that provides context for each lesson?
• Does the lesson evaluate understanding by posing a problem or challenge similar to one the learner may encounter on the job? Is there an opportunity to discuss, with an instructor/SME and with other students, how concepts apply to actual situations on the job?

Providing Retrieval Practice and Testing

• Does the program offer a pre-course assessment to establish the learner’s knowledge baseline?
• Does each lesson contain a problem that tests the learner’s understanding and ability to apply the lesson concepts?
• Are assignments, with feedback, a requirement?
• Is there a final exam at the end of the course? Note: Research shows that the very act of taking a test increases retention, even if the learner didn’t study at all!

Providing Feedback on Practice and Testing

• Is there a feedback system in place in the event the student answers a lesson problem or final exam question incorrectly?
• Do all practice exercises within the online courses also provide the correct answer and a complete explanation?
• Do the students receive personalized feedback from an expert instructor/subject matter expert within 24 hours after submitting an assignment?
• Do the instructors participate actively, on a daily basis, in online discussions, providing personalized feedback to the users’ postings?

Providing Repetition of Learning and Practice

• Does every lesson reinforce the challenges the learner would experience on the job?
• Are the assignments hands-on? For instance, do they just learn about the work breakdown structure, estimating methods, network diagrams, and earned value-or do they actually build a WBS, estimate a project, construct a network diagram and calculate earned value?
• Do the exercises and instructional games, as well as the final exam, provide additional practice?

Spacing Learning and Practice over Time

• Are the students given a timeframe within which they must complete the course?
• Is the content “chunked” into a series of lessons, making it easy for the learner to complete a lesson at a time?
• Is it a self-paced program that provides a guideline schedule is provided to help them to plan and budget their time nonetheless?

Presenting Learning Material in a Variety of Ways

• Is the course material diversified in terms of its delivery format, avoiding the dreaded “next, next, next” sequence of a slide show?
• Is the presentation of the content interactive and student-centered, allowing students to access content at will and to control at least some of the sequencing?

• Is the interactive content supported with additional online text in printable, PDF format?
• Does the course offer engaging and often interactive graphics to help learners visualize processes and relationships?
• Do the courses also offer practice exercises, problems, assignments, and online discussions-all with feedback-to reinforce the content?

 Utilizing Relevant Information Only

• Is all content relevant to the course content-or are there gratuitous animations and gimmicky flash?
• When there are comics and games, are they clearly instructional and tied to specific learning objectives?

Helping Learners Focus on the Most Important Information

• Does the course supply a syllabus that summarizes the major topics covered in each unit and identifies the specific learning objectives for each unit?
• Do scenarios and problems emphasize the key focus of the lesson?
• Are there opportunities to complete exercises that strengthen the emphasis?
• Do the individual content resources incorporate sound design principles in order to clarify and emphasize important points, including screen layout, font size and type, and graphic design?
• Are all the questions on the final exam tied to a specific learning objective, ensuring that the test itself continues the focus on core content?

If you answer ‘yes’ to every question, you can be confident that the program is instructionally sound and that users will retain and be able to apply their newly acquired knowledge and skills. But, if you see gaps in the program’s offering, move on until you find the most appropriate online course to match your needs. The selection process will be less arduous if you know what you are looking for. Evaluating the course offerings beforehand will improve your chances of success, strengthen your return on investment, and ensure a vibrant organization long-term.

Carolyn Pyrek is director of curriculum development at ESI International. A global training and development organization, ESI offers more than 80 courses delivered in 18 languages at more than 85 locations worldwide. For more information, visit www.esi-intl.com.  

Reprinted with permission from ESI International

In Part1 of this two-part article in the last Project Times, we learned that about 10% of the typical workforce is classified as falling into the Difficult People category. Some people are surprised it’s so little. Sometimes it feels like they are everywhere! What is a difficult person? Perhaps the better question is: what is a difficult person for you and what can you do about those people?

Let’s just take a quick look at the difficult types we identified in the first article, and consider the havoc they might play with your project team. As we said before, there are many types, but in general, they can be rolled into these main groups, the first three of which we dealt with in the earlier article:

• The Steamroller
  This is the bully of the group – always interrupting, insulting, and yelling. We all know those types.
• The Sniper
  These are the folks who hide in the back of room, always sniping – taking shots at everyone, constantly nit-picking back at you, sending out comments, etc. They always want to do this from “under cover.” If you call them on it they say, “Oh, I’m just kidding,” or, “Can’t ya take a joke?,” or, “I didn’t say anything!” They always have a comment.
• The “Can’t Say No” person
  They won’t say “no” to work. The problem is they won’t say no, they won’t say no, they won’t say no . . . and then they finally just collapse!
• The Know-It-All:
  Do I have to say anything else? Need I say more? They know it all!
• The Complainer:
  Chronic complainers! Chronic whiners! To them, life is one big complaint!
• The Staller:
  The Indecisive Staller. This is the person who just will not make a decision. They will not commit to anything; they are always stalling.

Time to take Action!

In our previous article we discussed in detail how to deal with The Steamroller, The Sniper and The “Can’t Say No” person. Now let’s deal with the three final types we identified.

Dealing with the Know-It-All

In dealing with the Know-It-All, here are some bottom-line items to be aware of:

Typically, they have been around a long time, and they do know a lot. So, make sure you know your stuff, because if you don’t, they will point it out very quickly. Recognize it, and respect it, but show them that maybe their ideas aren’t always the right answer or the right way. The typical Know-It-All tends to be a bit of a bully as well. They have their idea, and they just won’t let it go. You can try saying things like, “That’s a really good point, but have you thought of this? What if this or that happens?” Basically, you need help them see the alternatives. Will they ever admit they are wrong? Typically, not. It’s like trying to catch a greased pig. Most of the time, it’s not going to happen.

If you find yourself dealing with a Know-It-All in a meeting, ignore the temptation to make them look bad. Do not alienate them. Throw an idea out there and let it sit for a minute. Sometimes they may actually come around to it, but quite often, they will want to spin it so that it will seem as if it were their idea. And you know what? That is okay sometimes. Occasionally, selling an idea someone else wants to take credit for, once in a while, is okay. Your job is done, and the elimination of conflict will be better in the long run.

Dealing with the Complainer

Understand that to them, life is one big complaint. Complainers typically come in one of two delicious flavors. The first type of Complainer really doesn’t care about solutions; they just want someone to listen to them. They will come into your office in the morning, and they will talk and talk and talk until you finally chase them out! Here’s what you can do. Listen for a while, and then move them to a problem-solving alliance. Acknowledge their feelings, deal with the emotions if necessary, but try to push them toward finding a problem-solving solution. You can say something like this, “Okay, I hear your dilemma. Let’s see if we can solve it.” The secret is.when you move into problem-solving, they will typically leave. Very quickly. They really don’t want to solve anything. They just want to complain!

With the second type of complainer, it’s a little bit different. These are the folks who complain because they are paralyzed – they really don’t know what to do. When you move to problem-solving, you really will help them. One thing to be careful of though: don’t facilitate their dependence on you, otherwise they will come back again and again for the very same issue or problem. As the saying goes, you can feed someone, or you can teach them to fish for themselves. If you fail to do that, it is now you who has an additional problem, one of time management. Learn to be upfront. Say, “Okay, I will show you this one time. Here’s a pen and a sheet of paper; I’m going to talk and you will take notes. I will show you this one time. I will stay here all day if necessary, but when we leave, I expect that you will really have ‘gotten it’. I expect that you will be able to do this for yourself after this conversation, so make sure to pay attention and ask as many questions as you need to understand.”

Use a tone that is gentle, yet firm at the same time. By having this conversation, you will actually have helped two people, you and them.

Dealing with the Staller

Aahh, the Indecisive Staller. They don’t want to upset anyone, which really means that they want to please everyone. In their mind, the way to accomplish this is to never make a decision, which ends up upsetting everyone! They don’t want to take a stand. Instead, they take the attitude that if they just leave the issue alone, it will go away. Yes, quite often it will go away, but only because someone else will have done the work, and now they’re mad too!

One way of helping them is to discuss the benefits of deciding. Talk about all the good that comes through getting off the fence and making a decision: work actually is accomplished, people are happy, morale will go up, projects will be able to move forward, and they get to continue drawing a paycheck! Another thing you can do is discuss a few options with them. This is basically the old salesman trek. Instead of saying, “Would you like to buy the vacuum cleaner today?,” you say, “Which of the vacuum cleaners will you be buying today, the red one or the blue one?” What you are doing is narrowing down their options, and forcing them to make a decision.

The Lesson: Take Action and Be Firm

From our short analysis of difficult people, one definite conclusion can be drawn. If you don’t do something about the difficult people in your life, you will simply continue to get more of their problematic behavior. Whether it is the Steamroller, the Sniper, they Can’t Say No person, the Know-It-All, the Complainer, or the Staller, you must take action. Be firm, but be gentle, and remember they are human, just like you. But after all, it’s a place of business, and work needs to be accomplished. And in the accomplishment of that work, sometimes the more difficult conversations need to take place.

delivers comprehensive hands-on project management, business analysis, ITIL, and professional skills training. 3/09

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Tim McClintock is an instructor with Global Knowledge Training LLC.This article was originally published in Global Knowledge’s Management in Motion e-newsletter. Global Knowledge (www.globalknowledge.com)