Vizzuality playbook in progress
This project is maintained by Vizzuality
Following a group consent decision-making process, the guideline below passed with no objections on December 15th 2022.
(*) Original Blogpost Proposal
To establish a baseline of behaviors and mutual expectations for a project team (or group working together), in order to distribute accountability and leadership across the organization, strengthen our culture (One Team, SMO), improve our performance, and develop a spirit of excellence in everything we do.
What does accountability mean in the context of Vizz?
Are people on the same page regarding what they are accountable for?
How might we improve our accountability as a team?
These agreements represent a shared language that everyone can understand and refer to around accountability, what we owe to each other, and what teamwork looks like.
Ideas are organized into two main categories, what accountability is in terms of mindset and the behaviors that contribute to it.
2.1. Mindset “Accountability is … ”
2.2. Behaviors “I am accountable for…”
a. Defining and sharing my commitments: I will define my commitments when starting a new project/initiative and share them with the team to provide clear expectations from the beginning. I will be realistic and not overpromise. If I consider we don’t have clear commitments, I will share it with the team.
b. Delivering what I committed to: I will fulfil in the best possible way my commitments to the team (ie. pledges, Jira tasks, deadlines, roles, etc.), managing my tasks and time effectively
c. Sharing information and expectations: I will provide ongoing updates to the team regarding my progress, share information that could be relevant to others, and promptly let the team know if something initially agreed upon changes. If in doubt, I will share it.
d. Speaking up and raising issues: I will communicate quickly to the team if something outside of my control risks my commitments, and ask for help if anything related to my commitments is ambiguous or confusing to the point that the way forward is unclear. I will flag up as soon as possible if I have too many things on my plate or competing priorities.
e. Asking for feedback and using it to improve: I will explicitly ask others for feedback about my work (i.e. “what’s one thing I could improve next time?”), and take ownership to improve based on that feedback (and my own self-reflection process). Throughout the project life cycle I will help the team identify gaps/breaks in our collective accountability.
f. Giving feedback and holding others accountable: I will make feedback a priority and dedicate time to prepare for it, with the intent of helping the team succeed. I will provide feedback to someone on the team who doesn’t keep their commitments with the intention of addressing the impact of their behavior, suggesting changes, and helping the person grow. If the behavior continues, I will call the team together to discuss solutions. I will recognize others for keeping their commitments to the team.
The proposal includes actions at 3 levels (Project, Growth, Resources) . The intention is to keep the conversation about accountability always open and use these agreements to continue doing great work.
a) Project (Collective): We will use our new agreements during key moments of the project life cycle.
Project managers will make sure we have “formal and periodic” spaces to talk about accountability throughout the project (ie. Project Kick-Off, Sprint reviews, Dailies, One to One conversations, and Retrospectives).
Project team members will make sure to actively participate in these spaces and conversations, as well as to uphold these agreements in more “informal” spaces throughout the project which are not led by a PM. (ie. share the outcomes of conversations with partners and internal meetings, communicate updates from FA if relevant to the project, etc.)
b) Growth (Individual): You can use the agreements individually to assess how you are being accountable at any given time, and also to identify areas to improve your accountability.
We believe everyone can demonstrate individual leadership and accountability. As you can see, these agreements are written to be personal accountabilities first and foremost so you can use them to self reflect about your performance and added value to the team:
c) Resources: We will also add these agreements to project documentation for easy access and reference.
(*) Timelines. We will start embedding and implementing these new agreements in January 2023, and will do a retrospective after 3 months to see what needs to be improved.