Into The Deep End

Something I appreciated about working at AWS is that consultants were not thrown to the wolves without training, the most useful of which was a series of mock customer meetings that modeled likely real-world interactions with both business and IT stakeholders.

Proverbial soft skills are difficult to teach, but they’re critically important, and this kind of simulated experience does a decent job prepping new hires for the challenges they’ll face. And framing it around an actual project might just result in useful artifacts or marketable solutions. Win win!

I’m hoping to eventually replicate this practice at my new gig, and thus wanted to capture a rough online of how I’d structure such a training. Perhaps it makes a case for my prior post?

Participants

• Project Team (Builders)
• Customer Team (Customers) – Proxy for a real customer
• Coach (cannot be on either Project or Customer teams)
• Sponsor (can be same as coach, but usually will be manager / executive)

Planning Work

(drafted by Project Team, reviewed by Coach, and approved by Sponsor)

• Define relevance to company objectives
• Identify participants
• Capture project title and description
• Identify objectives
  • Skills to be learned
  • Artifacts to be built
• Identify dependencies / deadlines
• Scope guardrails for level of effort
• Template
  • Participants: (identify every role)
  • Title: (one liner)
  • Description: (should clearly connect to company objectives)
  • Expected Outcomes: (final artifacts should be listed here, but ends, not means)
  • Skills To Be Learned: (be as specific as practical, acknowledging some flexibility may be required)

Customer Meeting Guidelines

•  All are scheduled and led by the Builders
•  All are attended by the Builders & Customers
•  Customer team should “play the part” (within reason)
•  Coach and Sponsor are optional but active participation should be minimized
• Meetings are held synchronously and are recorded

Three Phases

1.  Discover

• Builders review pre-work document
• Builders develop agenda and questions for discovery session
• Coach reviews agenda and questions (can be async) and gives go-ahead for meeting
• Builders schedule and lead discovery meeting
• Builders capture notes and document requirements
• Builders follow up with Customers post-meeting to gather more info as needed
• Builders meet with coach to discuss meeting, review artifacts, and plan next steps (can be async)

2.  Design

• Builders design architecture/approach based on discovered requirements
• Builders capture design and a build plan in a scope document
• Coach reviews scope document (can be async) and gives go-ahead for meeting
• Builders schedule and lead design review meeting
• Customers give go-ahead to proceed (or iterate with Builders until ready)
• Builders meet with coach to discuss design meeting, review artifacts, and plan next steps (can be async)

3.  Demonstrate

• Builders execute on the build plan
• Builders engage Customers and Coach as needed to address blockers (can by async)
• Coach reviews completed artifacts (can be async) and gives go-ahead for meeting
• Builders schedule and lead demonstration meeting
• Customers give go-ahead that build is complete (or iterate with Builders until ready)
• Builders address feedback and deliver final artifacts to Customers
• Builders meet with coach to discuss demo meeting, review artifacts, and capture final thoughts / next steps