Parth Vora
Product, Program and Engineering Leader

Articles

How would a Technical Program Manager approach addressing COVID-19?

Type COVID-19 in your favorite search engine and you will be exposed to ample amount of information on COVID-19 - How, why, when, what, who, where etc but the problem is that there are multiple plans to address this but there is no set confidence in the entire plan. It is causing people to comprehend the severity of this situation at different rates. My family and I am doing our best we can to protect ourselves from the virus and also from spreading the virus to others.

The uber goal is to minimize the spread of COVID-19. But lets take a step back and try to understand few things before we dive deep in addressing this problem. First thing a TPM would do before kicking off a program is to understand what is the program all about?, what are we trying to address? why were addressing this? and how will it impact the customers? Then a TPM would lay out a plan of action like this:

Uber Goal - To minimize the spread of COVID-19.

  1. Objective of Scrum A - Create Awareness

  2. Objective of Scrum B - Identify people who have this virus.

  3. Objective of Scrum C - Treat people who have this virus.

  4. Objective of Scrum D - Mitigate the spread of disease.

  5. Objective of Scrum E - Mitigate Social and Economic effects.

  6. Objective of Scrum F - How to either avoid this or be better prepared in the future?

Scrum A -

  • Create a single central repository for all information and keep updating it as new information keeps emerging.

  • Advertise the repository to everyone.

Scrum B

  • Develop Testing Kits and Train people on how to use them?

  • Develop Testing Centers.

  • Ensure availability of testing and convenience of testing.

  • Train people to to test this virus.

Scrum C

  • Isolate infected individuals.

  • Create infrastructure to treat these individuals.

  • Develop and implement treatment.

Scrum D

  • Create public guidance.

  • Enforce social distancing.

  • Cease public gatherings.

Scrum E

  • Provide stipend to individuals based on their house hold income.

  • Provide financial stimulus to small businesses to support paid emergency leave.

  • Stop trading for 3 weeks (Market fluctuations might fuel panic).

Scrum F

  • Develop and implement a vaccine to fight this virus.

  • Partner with private sector to develop, manufacture, distribute these vaccines.

  • Encourage financial support to make vaccine available at no/less cost.

Strategies of individual scrum teams should align with their objective which in turn should align with the uber goal. Each of these scrum team will deliver their part every two weeks and collect data on impact once delivered. Use that data to improvise in the next sprint cycle and deliver better outcome. In short, Inspect and Adapt. Also, a TPM should focus on the main goal, objectives and high-level strategy. Goal is at an organization level, Objectives and strategy is at department level. TPM should ensure that individual scrum teams are self organized to come up with their own task list to achieve their strategy which aligns with their objective. The above Plan focuses on :

  1. Clear communication of the goal.

  2. Breaking things down into smaller parts.

  3. Individual Scrum team ownership.

  4. Alignment at an Org-level, Department level and Team level.

  5. Co-ordinated efforts across disparate groups.

In summary, I feel that a TPM should bring a clear goal to the table and communicate path to green for achieving that goal. This is important to instill confidence in whole mission and trust in the teams to execute this successfully. It is equally important to monitor the progress and verify that the strategy is working through data.

(The opinions expressed in this article are those of mine and they do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of my employer or past employers) 

Parth Vora