Learn How a Predictable Process Drives Inclusive Collaboration
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe the importance of a predictable process.
- Explain the role of transparency in a predictable process.
- Learn how to create transparency in teams.
Create and Make Choices Predictably
No matter what process you use to problem solve—scrum, agile, design thinking, lean, or others—every project is about creating and making choices. When you strive for predictability in your process, it enables calmness amidst ambiguity. You’re better prepared for how to respond in moments when natural tensions arise, and you know where you’re going and why.
Teams create and make choices predictably when they:
- Create choices through research and experimentation when the work is more exploratory, such as solving a project challenge.
- Make choices using feedback, reviews, and decision-making to determine the next steps.
- Use predictability to create a shared understanding of when and how they develop and make choices on a project and prepare for how they’ll respond.
Transparency Equalizes the Opportunity to Succeed
For a predictable process to work, transparency is necessary. It ensures all team members are equally prepared with the same information and expectations to succeed. When a project is transparent, teams don’t base individual team members’ success on how well other members like them or if they share common perspectives, expertise, and life experiences.
Instead, success is grounded in the ability to accomplish the task at hand, meet project milestones, and how individual or collective efforts help make the entire team successful. If teams run a project based purely on friendships without a predictable process, it can exclude team members and perpetuate imposter syndrome, anxiety created by doubting yourself.
Transparency helps make the predictable process fair. Here are some pro tips for how to strengthen transparency on your team.
- Be transparent about definitions of team and project success.
- Open up a conversation about unconscious bias.
- Keep a look out for team anxiousness and root causes.
- Set clear objectives, dates, and milestones as a team.
Cloud Kicks and Transparency
Team lead Mary Evans, developer Vijay Lahiri, and community manager Erica Douglass—the core project team at the sneaker company Cloud Kicks—openly share a sense of anxiousness about the questions arising in the project during their weekly online collaboration meeting.
The feedback they have from users is:
- A desire for clarity in the shipping/delivery process
- Enthusiasm around the idea of co-designing their sneakers
- A strong need for a better customer service experience
Still, they’re worried about how this feedback aligns with key stakeholder needs/interests. But Mary reminds them that they can use the guidance they set in their team agreement to help them navigate this important moment.
Next, learn key practices to develop a predictable process, harness team tension, and create a plan to move forward.
Resources
- Forbes: Why Process Matters From Day One
- IDEO: Design Thinking
- Fast Company: No one is talking about what it’s really going to take to get a happier more equitable Workforce