In today's environment, it's critical to ramp up large teams quickly and efficiently to ensure your customers, whether internal or external, are pleased with the end deliverable.

WHAT IS RAMP UP IN PROJECT?

A sudden increase in resource requirement is known as ramp up. The resource manager identifies and allocates the appropriate resources to fulfill the resource requests. Ramp-up occurs during “execution” stage when additional resources are needed to complete different tasks.

"A properly ramped up team provides many benefits, least of which is a project being completed successfully, on time, on budget, and with great quality," says Innovative Learning Group Project Manager Gayle Holsworth. "This will allow the team to focus on creating solutions that truly improve performance and business results."

MYTHICAL MAN-MONTH - ADDING MANPOWER CAN SHORTEN RAMP-UP TIME?

These Brooks quotes, author of the Mythical man month are: 

Adding manpower to late software projects delays them further.

It takes some time for the people added to a project to become productive. Brooks calls this the “ramp up” time. Software projects are complex engineering endeavors, and new workers on the project must first become educated about the work that has preceded them; this education requires diverting resources already working on the project, temporarily diminishing their productivity while the new workers are not yet contributing meaningfully. Each new worker also needs to integrate with a team composed of several engineers who must educate the new worker in their area of expertise in the code base, day by day. In addition to reducing the contribution of experienced workers (because of the need to train), new workers may even make negative contributions, for example, if they introduce bugs that move the project further from completion.

The problems associated with adding new teams is ramping up, individuals need to learn/understand

• Business logic
• Project processes
• Best resources for situations
• Project politics
• Collaborate with others

A scrum team takes 2 sprints to get up to  speed, usually 50% efficiency for sprint 1 and 60/70% in Sprint 2.  When you add the added overhead of trying to collaborate with other teams this can slow new teams further and slow existing teams.  

TIPS ON HOW TO RAMP UP A LARGE TEAM

Staffing 

Select team members with the right skills and experience in the industry, subject, delivery method, and role they're playing on the project. Most important, choose a dedicated, qualified project manager.

Process 

Figure out the steps you want to follow, and map out the phases and milestones. Determining project steps is critical to creating an accurate schedule.

Be sure that ramping up a large team doesn't happen too fast which falls in the trap of Brook's law.  

Communication 

Decide, as a team, how and when to communicate. A project can rise and fall, be best in class, or be just average, based on communication.

Quality 

Ensure the team knows the project owner's and stakeholders' quality expectations. No one ever started a project by saying, "we need to strive for poor quality."

Schedule

Understand how the work is done and how long each step will take so you don't just add random dates to a plan.

Budget 

Ensure the team understands the budget for which it has responsibility. If you develop an awesome solution, but it costs double the original budget, it probably won't help the organization.

Templates 

Establish working and deliverable templates, which are built using the appropriate software and branded for the initiative, prior to starting the project.

Facilities 

Determine the physical space(s) and location(s) needed to complete the project. Do you need a dedicated "war room," storage space for materials, etc.?

Equipment 

Ensure the team has access to the equipment the training is being developed for, e.g., a medical device, software program, etc. If the team can't "work" with actual equipment, it's difficult to create practice that mirrors real-world application.

LAST, BUT NOT LEAST

Every client wants to get their offshore software team going quickly. In this video, Dave discusses ways to grow the team without chaos or killing morale.

Via Innovative Leading Group