Prioritization of work is key if you want to deliver anything. Have you ever been stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic, inching forward at a snail’s pace? It’s frustrating, right? Now, imagine if I told you that many organizations manage their work in a way that’s just as inefficient. Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? But stick with me, and I’ll show you why this analogy isn’t as far-fetched as you might think.
Many product teams fall into the trap of fixating on the work they need to do and forgetting about the impact their work is supposed to have. When that happens, the work often doesn’t produce the desired result. When you work as part of a product team, five questions can help you to avoid this trap by re-focusing on the customer problem you are trying to solve – and why.
No, I don’t hate agile project management software — it can serve a purpose. At issue is if there is an actual purpose and if it is misused. Often the software stalls progress or worse, move us backwards. For any readers who are not familiar with agile or don’t work in software — the idea here is that instead of using the monitor to display some type of software tracking tool, the new scrum master just used sticky-notes and stuck them on the monitor. What is the simplest thing that works in your world?
Fist of Five Voting is a deceivingly simple process you can use to check-in, learn, gain consensus, and/or vote to understand where people stand on an issue or idea. I say deceivingly, because there is so much more you can learn about what is really happening in a team if you are paying attention.
I find there are many tools I (and others) use without being entirely sure of the idea’s origin. As I work on other articles, I realize some people may not be familiar with concepts such as Fist of Five Voting. So I’m working on building these ideas out to fill in those gaps. The source of Fist of Five is sometimes attributed to American Youth Foundation, however I can’t find a reference on their website.
Read This If: You want to ensure you are basing your project’s value on input from a true subject matter expert (for any type of project).
A fake subject matter expert or SME can derail a project. Improvements to your business should be based on the best information you have access to, not outdated or incorrect information. The acronym “SME” seems to pop-up everywhere. I agree that saying “subject matter expert” does not flow as well as SME, but the phrase drives home that the person should be an expert (and in the right subject)!
Subject matter experts are used on projects from IT strategy, to business process improvement, to software development, to organizational change . . . to name a few. They are supposed to impart the wisdom of what is actually happening, and often, what is needed. But if they are NOT an expert, then what? Are you basing the success of your project on poor information?
So what exactly is a fake SME? The basic premise is that they are someone who appears or pretends to be a subject matter expert, but is not. There are many types, but let me outline some of the more common ones: