Raising Issues Early
Raising issues early
Any given project will have any number of issues pop up. It could be a resource will be on vacation, or a vendor is unavailable, or a dependency suddenly pops up. These events can be disruptive, but in many cases they can be predicted or planned out in advance. We can put together vacation calendars, ask vendors for their availability and investigate risk. Knowing (or even expecting) they’re going to crop up and letting everyone know about them are two different things though.
Many times we do all the work to figure out an issue exists, and then don’t take the next (critical) step of sharing that with the greater team. This misalignment causes numerous challenges, including (but certainly not limited to)
Lack of resourcing - Not knowing an issue exists raises the risk that no one will be available to take care of it when it comes up.
Damaged relationships - Not letting all the stakeholders know about an issue, and then bringing it up later, can negatively impact your relationship with them. You risk losing trust and making future work with them challenging.
Stress - Even if you avoid other issues, more work, especially unplanned problems, only increases stress on the team. This eats away at productivity and can amplify other problems (burnout, loss of trust, mistakes, etc).
The good news is it can be (relatively) straight forward to avoid these problems. The (easy to say, hard to do) step is to be very proactive about raising any issues you are aware of. The exact way this is done can differ based on your circumstances and group, but in general the following steps are very helpful.
Let your immediate team / manager know - The first thing to do is let your team and manager know what you’ve found and share as much info as you can. This lets your team get aligned on how they want to handle the issue.
Gather info - Once your immediate team is aware gather as much info on the issue. Things like expected impact, cost and possible solutions are all useful pieces of information to gather.
Plan communications - This can be done in tandem with gathering information, but you’ll want to think through how you’ll share what you’ve found with your stakeholders. How you do this depends on your stakeholder group (e.g. a formal meeting with specific wording, quick slack call, etc), but thinking through how you’ll share this information is critical.
Communicate - Once your team is aligned on how you’ll communicate you’ll need to communicate based on your plan. Depending on the severity of the issue this could range from a quick email to a formal meeting. Knowing who to include is also important as sometimes not everyone must be included.
Followup - After your communication is completed follow up. Ensure everyone is getting relevant information on the issue, including status updates, tracking, and timelines. Doing this will help ensure everyone feels like they’re in the loop and help prevent additional stress or other pain.
