Fallen prey to the question – “how is my role linked to the overall organisations goal?” – either someone has asked you or you have asked yourself! 

At HCL in all teams we needed to have 2 key roles – Defect Prevention Analyst (DPA) & Project Quality Assurer (PQA) – from within the existing project team members. In our team these roles were rotated within members to distribute the load (not to go the usual route of making these feel as a burden), but such was primarily done to have people understand the importance and benefits of the roles. By performing the roles more members understood the pains in the project and were exposed to what a Project Lead/Manager does and have to deal with during project execution.

In our team we did more – created new roles:

The youngest were made the ISMS Officers, the custodians of BS7799 Information Security Policy, ensuring compliance discipline in the team. The youngest were given the “disciplining job” to buttress the mindset change that was being engendered in the team – Listening to the Youngest, having respect, not for the years of experience, but for the role and, that the ones at the bottom of the hierarchy also have a role, the environment need to facilitate their role and being. These youngsters were rather enthused by the visibility and role they got!

A need arose from the HCL Quality Group for having Knowledge Management in the Project, we appointed a Knowledge Manager who would ensure that all the data is backed up and is available to the team (though I now know that we were only managing Information and not Knowledge). Then we needed someone to take care of birthday parties, outings and Employee Engagement – here came the Team People Representative (TPR) – the HR role in the team. The Team Training In-charge kept track of people development. And, then these roles were rotated!

This way we created a microcosm of certain different departments in an organisation – Knowledge, HR, Quality, Information Security, Learning & Development.

Benefits: Maturity in the team by appreciation of newer aspects of running a project, Respect for the role, being in each other’s shoes, get a bigger picture of “stuff” that happens around them – helps aligning people to the many initiatives that the organisation might be taking. A Leader’s role is to constantly make people see the interconnectedness…