New Team Project Execution

Assimilating a new team and committing to a project time line is extremely risky undertaking. However, we find it quite common in Startups.

I have taken one such undertaking at my company. I will discuss some of the strategies I am using to mitigate the risk.

1. Make sure that the project's goals are very clear for the team. This seems to be a very basic strategy, however many times this is exactly where the disconnect and derailment starts.
2. Have strong ownership and accountability for each person. Keep dependencies to a minimum. This is where choosing the right Technology & correct Application design can play a big role.
   
3. Empower the team to make decisions. This allows the team to take full accountability, and also promotes team building.
4. Force participation across the team.
5. Break the implementation phase into smaller deliverable that are easier to track.
6. Measurable way to track progress. For example, in a java web service - a service might be deemed complete only when the junit's code coverage report comes out to be 100%. No P1 bugs may be passed between project phases.
   
7. Plenty of code reviews - every phase needs to have every bit of code reviewed and signed off by the reviewer.
8. Keep a record of all activity - Check in Design Documents, Design Approvals, Junit report, Code Coverage report, Code review report
9. Strong project management to resolve dependencies and provide tracking
10. Celebrate achievement - build team morale along the way