Episode 211 – Upstream, Downstream, and Beyond: Transforming Management

Original Air Date

Run Time

35 Minutes
Home Manage This Podcast Episode 211 – Upstream, Downstream, and Beyond: Transforming Management

About This Episode

Dalmo Cirne


Ready to rethink leadership? In this episode, we explore a new perspective on leadership with Dalmo Cirne, author of Management Streams. Dalmo introduces his innovative framework built around four key management streams: downstream, upstream, sidestream, and the reservoir stream. These streams represent different aspects of managing oneself, managing teams, engaging with upper management, and collaborating with peers. Dalmo explains how his cross-disciplinary strategy can transform the way we lead and manage our projects.

Emphasizing self-awareness as the foundation of effective leadership, Dalmo also sheds light on guiding teams through challenges, cultivating productive relationships, and maintaining strong communication channels across all streams. Dalmo compares his framework with traditional management strategies, explaining how it helps leaders better engage stakeholders and maintain alignment with upper management.

Dalmo Cirne is the author of Management Streams with three decades of experience in computer science, mathematics, and leadership. He holds a degree in mathematics from SUNY and is passionate about building products and empowering the next generation of leaders. Dalmo believes that, in a fast-changing world, knowledge must evolve and adapt to new realities, going beyond teaching what is already known to shape the future.

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Favorite Quotes from Episode

"You have to ask yourself, is it the right incentive?  Is it why I wanted to become a manager?  … There is no correct answer to that question.  But you need to ask yourself, why did you become one?  Was it so you have the prestige?  Was it to feel important?  Those would not be the real good answers for that.  Because in management, perhaps you are not writing the code or implementing the product and doing those things.  But in management, you have access to levers where you become a multiplier."

Dalmo Cirne

"… along the way, you can constantly ask yourself questions like what problems are we trying to solve?  Does this feature even need to be built?  Because sometimes you build that because it’s on the backlog or it’s on the current sprint.  But perhaps it’s not applicable to be built; right?  Sometimes a lot of effort and energy goes into building something or optimizing something that shouldn’t be there to begin with."

Dalmo Cirne

Ready to rethink leadership? Hear about an innovative framework built around four key management streams: downstream, upstream, sidestream, and the reservoir stream. These streams represent different aspects of managing oneself, managing teams, engaging with upper management, and collaborating with peers. Dalmo Cirne explains how his cross-disciplinary strategy can transform the way we lead and manage our projects.

Chapters

00:00 … Intro
02:26 … Common Management Challenges
03:31 … Management Streams Overview
05:59 … Streams vs. Traditional Management
07:20 … Managing Multiple Streams
09:44 … The Management Stream Framework
12:38 … Don’t Get Overwhelmed
15:59 … The Reservoir Stream
18:23 … The Downstream
21:54 … Ren Love “Projects of the Past”
24:29 … Going Upstream
27:22 … The Sidestream
29:36 … Building Trust
31:40 … The Evolving Role of Project Managers
34:14 … Get in Touch
34:50 … Closing

Intro

DALMO CIRNE: You have to ask yourself, is it the right incentive?  Is it why I wanted to become a manager?  Or if I had an opportunity to continue on the technical side or on my individual contributor path, if that would have been more rewarding.  So, and that question can only be answered by the person themselves.  There is no correct answer to that question.  But you need to ask yourself, why did you become one?  Was it so you have the prestige?  Was it to feel important?  Those would not be the real good answers for that.  Because in management, perhaps you are not writing the code or implementing the product and doing those things.  But in management, you have access to levers where you become a multiplier.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Hello and welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  It’s good to have you back with us.  I’m Wendy Grounds, and in the studio with me is Bill Yates.

If you’re enjoying the show, we’d love to hear from you, whether it’s on our website Velociteach.com, on social media, or your favorite podcast app.  Your feedback helps us keep inspiring and supporting project managers like you.  And if you’ve got questions about our podcast or project management certifications, we’re here to help you.  Don’t forget you can also earn free professional development units from PMI just by listening to this episode.  Stick around until the end, and we’ll tell you how to claim those PDUs.

And in today’s episode we’re exploring a fresh perspective on leadership and management with our guest, Dalmo Cirne.  He is the author of “Management Streams.”  He’s a mathematician and software engineer, and he brings three decades of experience in computer science, mathematics, and leadership to the table.

BILL YATES:  Dalmo introduces a new framework that offers a cross-disciplinary strategy for management, and we’re going to get into that.  This framework is built around four key streams or core components which he defines as downstream, upstream, sidestream, and the reservoir stream.

WENDY GROUNDS:  We’re going to dive into his innovative approach to management and discover how his ideas can transform the way we lead and manage in today’s ever-changing world.  Dalmo, welcome to Manage This.  We’re so glad that you’re joining us today.

DALMO CIRNE:  I’m glad to be here.  Thank you for the invitation to join the show.

Common Management Challenges

WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah.  We want to talk to you about management streams, and it’s just a unique approach that we’ve appreciated learning a little bit about.  So just looking back, what management challenges have you observed, and how have you addressed those?

DALMO CIRNE:  That’s a great question to start.  Management is mostly focused on going downstream, and by that, I mean the teams that are directly underneath you, and the projects and the operation of those.  Basically, focusing only on managing that, it will pretty much compromise other areas that also need to be managed.  And at the end of the day, what is important are the results that the team and you are producing in alignment with the company and building products to release to the market.  So, over-focusing in just one of those areas, the end of the day it becomes less additive to the team and to the company than if you manage the four streams as I have been proposing.

Management Streams Overview

BILL YATES:  Yeah, so that’s such a good segue.  And I agree, Dalmo.  You know, of course, I’ve kind of got ahead of the listeners.  I’ve already looked at the four streams that you have, and I’m looking forward to diving into it.  But I’ve got to tell you upfront, the downstream is the most natural.  You and I have talked about this.  You could have tunnel vision in that area because I think it’s the most comfortable for us to manage those that are reporting to us or maybe contractors that are producing for our projects.  But you talk about four important streams, not just downstream.  So, give us a quick overview of those four streams.

DALMO CIRNE:  Yeah, glad to.  In the four streams, it begins with managing oneself.  Right?  You have to know your strengths, know your weaknesses so you know how to go get help or invest in your strengths and so on.  So, it all begins with self-awareness and why you became a manager and so on.  That’s what I call the “reservoir.”  That’s where all these streams will pretty much emanate from.

The second one is managing downstream.  As you said, it’s the most natural to us.  Usually or often, you get directives that are top-down when you become an operator, you’re executing that.  But again, it leads to tunnel vision.  So, reservoir downstream.

The third one would be upstream.  How do you manage your managers, people who are upstream from you?  And here you’re not telling them what to do.  You’re not saying, hey, here’s how you should manage me.  No, you are engaging in conversation and bringing to them more information.  You’re bringing to them a richer conversation of what is going on.  You’re educating them, and together you’re defining what products should be built.  Should we invest in this or that?  Should we stop investing and do something else; right?  There’s a lot that you’re doing managing upstream.

And last but not least, sidestream is you managing your peers, the people you’re collaborating with that include project managers, product managers, marketing people, salespeople and so on.  All of that is part of what builds a product, is part of what builds a company.  So being able to manage your peers is also incredibly important.  So that’s how I see the four streams coming together into the management streams concept.

Streams vs. Traditional Management

WENDY GROUNDS:  Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.  Looking at the management stream strategies and just traditional management strategies, what are some key differences that you’ve seen between these two strategies?

DALMO CIRNE:  That’s a great question.  At the same time, I see it coming naturally as a very valid question and also as a potential misunderstanding where the management stream is not the traditional versus the new.  It’s more about how to become effective as a manager.  Right?  Again, if you focus mostly downstream, you’re leaving something on the table. 

So, if you manage yourself, you manage upstream and you manage sidestream, now you’re bringing more to the table.  You’re increasing the chances of the project being successful.  You’re increasing the chances of communications being done effectively, even if the outcome is a project that needs to be stopped to invest on and redirect efforts to invest in something else that would have a better return.  So, the concept is being less about conflict between the old and the new, and more about here’s what it really means to be effective in being a manager and being a leader.

Managing Multiple Streams

BILL YATES:  Dalmo, one thing that you and I have talked about is, again, my natural tendency to think about these streams and look at the downstream approach and go, “Yeah, okay, I’m comfortable with that.  I can relate to that.  I know how to have good communication, delegate, make sure my stakeholders are engaged downstream.”  Can you illustrate the importance of managing those streams beyond just the one that’s most comfortable for me?

DALMO CIRNE:  Yeah, of course.  Let’s start with a pie.  From that pie, we’re going to start cutting slices.  Each one of those slices is going to represent one of the areas that are necessary to release a product.  Let’s say we build a great widget, and we’re going to release to the public, and everything is good.  How do we use the widget?  Someone is going to have to write the documentation.  How do we market that widget?  Someone is going to have to come up with a message that makes it a compelling product that makes people want to buy that.  Who is going to go out and sell that product?  Right?

So even in the conception of the widget, there will be project managers, and product managers will be defining what to build and when to build and so on.  There are even legal implications.  Are there some legal considerations that must be taken into account?  So, to release a product, building that, of course, is a very important part of it, but it is one slice on that pie.

When managing sidestream, your peers are going to be collaborating with people on marketing.  What is going to be the message?  Will people write in the documentation and say, “Hey, how do you use that?”  It could be super easy, but still, you need to provide some kind of guidance in using that.  Right?  Collaboration with the sales team.  What is the best way for you to go there and present the product to people and they start buying?

With the legal team, right, you’re going to have to bring to them as much information as you can so they have an education on the project.  Then you come up with a legal framework around that that protects you, protects the customers buying the product, protects the company; right?  So that’s where you create the legal framework around that.  If you manage downstream only, you’re neglecting all of those areas that are essential to releasing a product; right?

BILL YATES:  Yeah.

The Management Stream Framework

WENDY GROUNDS:  Can we narrow it down to specifically our project managers in the complex project environment that they have today?  How does the management stream framework help them compared to traditional frameworks?

DALMO CIRNE:  Yeah.  A plan is told that it never works.  Right?  So, you created this beautiful plan, only to be confronted by reality and realize that, “Oh, I need some changes over here.”  Yet the act of planning is incredibly important.  The combination of the act of planning is the plan, but the really important thing is the act of planning because it forces you to structure your thinking, to put discipline in, prioritization of what needs to be done, what not be done and so on.

Of course, that decision of what goes into the plan is based on the best of your knowledge at that moment in time.  We cannot predict the future.  We cannot predict circumstances changing.  But to that moment in time, hey, based on the conversations and to the best of my knowledge, here’s the plan.  But that was only the tip of the iceberg that came from planning.

So, you do the planning, prioritization.  You give some sense of guidance to the team, and everyone’s going to be aligned on what to do.  In addition to that, there are the follow-up things where your plan gets adjusted.  Right?  There is going to be grooming of the backlog.  The help of the project manager in working with you is incredibly important; right?  Prioritization of tasks.  Priorities may have changed.  You need to favor task A over B, bring back closer to the top of the backlog; or you put in an existing sprint, and you keep going.

When to schedule demos; right?  You want to show the product to work, at least features or parts of the product working to stakeholders, project managers, and into rallying the troops, getting people together.  Hey, here’s when the demo is scheduled, who needs to attend, who needs to verify that this is aligned with the planning or needs adjustments.

So, all of those elements are important to have the project manager together in the conversation, participate in the product.  So, when the final product gets released, or at least a beta version of the product gets released, that’s what you meant to build; right?  The worst possible scenario would be you end up building this beautiful widget, and at the end of the day they say, “But that’s not what was planned to be built.”  Right?  It’s like, hey, here’s this great car; and it’s like, oh, this is awesome.  This is a great car.  I say, wow, I meant to build a scooter.

BILL YATES:  Yeah.

DALMO CIRNE:  That would be a shame; right?

Don’t Get Overwhelmed

BILL YATES:  That’s true.  Dalmo, this lines right up with some of the basics of project management success in terms of figuring out the stakeholders that we have and engaging them effectively and communicating with them effectively.  And I think it raises my awareness, and it gets me to take a fresh look at that.  Okay, it’s not just downstream.  It’s also upper management, sponsors.  Those above me need to be brought into conversations. These are things that I need to be proactively communicating with them on or engaging them on. 

And peers, product managers, other project managers. So, you know, I get it.  Up, down, side, these different streams are important.  But I just want to do a reality check.  This could be overwhelming to a project manager.  So just talk about that aspect of it.  Reassure us that this can work, and you don’t have to be overwhelmed by it.

DALMO CIRNE:  Absolutely.  Now, you just hit the nail on the head because that could escalate into meeting hell, where you have to…

BILL YATES:  Yes.

DALMO CIRNE:  …spend your whole day talking with peer A, stakeholder B, and so on.  That becomes super unproductive.  With the help of a project manager and other folks, having the demos where you can, for example, have a pre-read of what the demo would be, share with folks.  Then you have a larger meeting where pretty much all the interested parties can join – stakeholders, peers, and so on.  You have that bigger meeting.  You can allocate more time to that and try to concentrate the conversations into one place.

The other thing is the synchronous aspect of a meeting.  It is important for people or teams to be comfortable to adopt asynchronous conversations because, when you schedule a meeting where everyone has to attend, either in person or via video conference, now everyone has to block that amount of time at the same time and being synchronously having communications.  Distributed teams can struggle with that, especially if you have different time zones.

So, some of those kinds of meetings are necessary, especially demo ones; but other communications, they can take place asynchronously.  For example, the pre-read document that I mentioned, you can say, “Here’s what we’re going to be talking about.  Here are some snippets.”  That can be done in an online collaboration tool where you put the documents over there.  Other folks come, write comments, ask questions.  Now you’re having this conversation asynchronously.  And by the time you have a synchronous meeting, a lot of the discussion has happened already.  And so, when you get to the synchronous part of the meeting, it becomes a productive meeting.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, that’s good.

DALMO CIRNE:  That’s one way to mitigate what you were describing and not to fall into this trap of, all right, now all my nine-to-fives and my five-to-nines are booked with meetings.

BILL YATES:  Yeah, to your point, no one likes meeting hell, and we’ve all been there.  So, if we can avoid it, that’s – that’s good, yeah.  This is good advice.

The Reservoir Stream

WENDY GROUNDS:  Dalmo, looking at the management streams.  Now, the first one is called the “reservoir,” and that is about managing yourself.  Could you just elaborate why is it necessary to focus on that?  Why must we manage ourselves, and why self-awareness is so important?

DALMO CIRNE:  Absolutely.  One way to begin is why do you become a manager?  Why do you become a people leader?  It is common to see some people transitioning from being a great engineer or a great individual contributor, and later moving to management because they say, oh, I hit the ceiling in my profession.  I’m looking for professional growth.  I’m going to switch to management because I see a lot of progression over there.

You have to ask yourself, is it the right incentive?  Is it why I wanted to become a manager?  Or if I had an opportunity to continue on the technical side or on my individual contributor path, if that would have been more rewarding.  So, and that question can only be answered by the person themselves.  There is no correct answer to that question.  But you need to ask yourself, why did you become one?  Was it so you have the prestige?  Was it to feel important?  Those would not be the real good answers for that.  Because in management, perhaps you are not writing the code or implementing the product and doing those things.  But in management, you have access to levers where you become a multiplier.

Right now, you attend meetings.  Instead of writing code, you are pulling those levers that you are directing the project to go in a certain way, or the widget, or whatever needs to be done.  You are influencing that.  So, it becomes this multiplying effect, and you start having access to levers that you can pull, and having the effects that you are looking for.  Knowing yourself will allow you to pull the right levers.  Sometimes you make a mistake, pull the wrong levers.  But as you become self-aware, you know that, hey, next time I can do better.  But those are more of the reasons of, I became a manager because there are things now that I can’t do just myself.  I can lead a team, and together we can deliver that.

The Downstream

BILL YATES:  That’s good.  And it leads us right into the next stream, which is downstream.  Related to that, what should team leaders look for when they’re putting a team together in terms of skills, talents, maybe preferences or what motivates people?  What should those team leaders look for?

DALMO CIRNE:  That’s a great question.  I like to look and make an analogy between the teams you have in building products and sports teams.  Right?  Because if we’re talking about American football, and there is the figure of the quarterback is perhaps the most known position in football.  If you assemble a team, and everyone is a quarterback on the field, you’re not going to go anywhere.  Everyone’s going to want to throw the ball.  And, yeah, it’s not going to end up right.

BILL YATES:  Nobody’s going to block.

DALMO CIRNE:  Exactly.  The same way you need to fill the positions, or I see you fill the positions of your own team when you are assembling the team.  And I see three critical positions.  I call them the visionary, the problem solver, and the forwarder.  Let’s break them down into more details.

The visionary, you can have that person who sees a business requirement or grasps an idea and they figure out, oh, here’s how we apply that to the line of products that we do.  Here’s how we can make this into a product that in turn helps people or solves a problem and so on.  You don’t need many visionaries on a team because usually they see that bigger picture, that more abstract.  They tend not to take everything to the end across the finish line.  So, you don’t need many visionaries.

The problem solvers or the implementers, that’s where you get those people who say, oh, I know how to build this.  We’re going to use tools X, Y, and Z.  We’re going to program with language X.  And we’re going to use infrastructure that has components A, B, and C.  Those are the people who can glue everything together and come up with a product.  However, those people, they tend to be distracted right there when you are about to cross the finish line.

Imagine that you’re running a marathon, and you really love ice cream; right?  Two hundred yards before the finish line, there’s this ice cream truck.  And you say, hey, I ran most of the marathon.  I’m pretty much done.  I’m going to stop here for the ice cream; right?  That doesn’t count.  You have to cross the finish line.  That’s why the forwarder, the person who finishes the job has to be there because they are the ones who are only satisfied when you really cross the finish line.  Those are the ones who say, no, I’m not going to stop for this ice cream truck.  I know there’s another one after the finish line.  I’m going to go to that one.

And you also play to the personalities and to the skills and the way the team operates.  If you ask a visionary to complete and push it across the finish line, they may do that, but could be begrudging.  And so, you also want to have a team where you can build multiple products, iterate, rinse, repeat, and keep going; right?  So, playing to the strengths of your team is also very important, having those three fundamentals in the composition of your team.

Ren Love “Projects of the Past”

REN LOVE: Ren Love here with a glimpse into Projects of the Past; where we take a look at historical projects through the modern lens.

 Today’s project focuses on one of the most iconic buildings in the United States, and arguably, the world: the Empire State Building in New York City. The late 1880’s brought with it the era of the skyscraper – especially in cities like Chicago & New York where modern manufacturing methods made it possible for buildings to be taller than they had ever been before. In the late 1920s, John J. Raskob and Empire State Inc., bought the location of the famed Waldorf-Astoria Hotel with the intention of building a building that would be the tallest in the city, kicking off a famed competition between the future Empire State & Chrysler Buildings.

 Construction began in 1930 and was completed in roughly 18 months – which was incredibly fast, even by modern standards. There were lots of factors that led to the work being completed so quickly – including utilization of what would later be formally known as ‘just in time’ manufacturing. Every day, truckloads of material would arrive at the site and then be delivered using a temporary internal rail line that was built on each floor of the building.

 The Empire State Building, like other skyscrapers at the time, was built using a steel ‘skeleton’ of sorts making it fast to not only construct the ‘bones’ of the building, but also efficient to install pre-fabricated pieces of façade. The steel was manufactured in Pittsburg where each girder was given a unique Index number with its delivery date & the location where it should be installed. All that logistical planning wasn’t just for the materials. Planning for the team of 3,500 construction workers included access to water, cafes, & concession stands on various floors so the teams didn’t have to spend time descending all the way to the ground just to have lunch.

So, was this project a success? Without a doubt. In the end, the Empire State Building project came in 41 days ahead of schedule and under budget – at 9 million less than was planned, for a total cost of 41 million. It was the first building with over 100 floors in the world, and, at 1,454 ft tall was the tallest building in the world for about 40 years. It remains one of the most iconic buildings in the world, with millions of visitors each year.

 Thanks for joining me for a look into Projects of the Past – I’m Ren Love. See ya next time.

Going Upstream

WENDY GROUNDS:  Looking at managing upstream, the stakeholders, upper management, the relationships that we have with those people when we’re managing a project.  How can alignment with the stakeholders and the upper management be maintained?

DALMO CIRNE:  I don’t know if you guys had the chance to watch a recent movie called “Boys in the Boat.”

BILL YATES:  Yes.

WENDY GROUNDS:  Yes.  And I read the book.

BILL YATES:  Yes, same.

DALMO CIRNE:  It’s a great story.

BILL YATES:  It’s fantastic.

WENDY GROUNDS:  It’s so good.

DALMO CIRNE:  From the I think 1936 Olympic Games.  And they were all concerned about each other rowing at the same cadence, the same direction.  And that applies, that metaphor applies to business and building products and managing teams, as well.  You can see upstream from you folks who want the boat to go in a certain direction, but they may not have all the feedback that they need to help in decisions.  Sometimes saying no to managers is not for the sake of saying no, but you have to explain to them why say no.  Oh, can we have this and that?  And you can say no, at least not at the same time.  We can have A, then B, but not A and B at the same time.  We would not have resources.  So, we come up with the explanation, here’s why.

That in turn helps them see things that they were not able to see before and reconsider their decisions, reconsider the way that they were thinking or considering a problem or the execution of something.  So that has a lot to do with managing upstream.  People who are in the line of management above you, they are also based on some assumptions that could be incomplete, assumptions that could be even incorrect.  And as they come down and talk to you and say, hey, how about this?  Is this a product that we’re going to build?  Is this the correct thing for us to do? 

If you don’t give that critical feedback to them, they will just assume that everything they say is correct.  And all humans are fallible.  Right?  What they’re saying is based on their assumptions.  But if the assumptions are flawed, it’s your job to give that feedback so they can adjust their assumptions and go from there.

So, managing upstream has a lot to do with that.  It is your job sometimes to push back.  It is your job to say no, not for the sake of doing so, but for the sake of building better products, educating people upstream because, again, they may be disconnected from you even by one, two, or three levels, sometimes even more.  And that abstraction removes detail, fidelity of the information from their assumptions.

The Sidestream

BILL YATES:  That’s a great example, Dalmo.  One of the streams we want to look at is the sidestream.  Give us advice for the project manager that needs to cultivate a productive, healthy relationship with other project managers and with maybe product managers or the maintenance team.  We have a sense that it’s important, but many times that kind of falls off to the side.  Make a compelling case why we need to take care of those relationships.

DALMO CIRNE:  Yeah.  I like to make the analogy that we usually have only two knobs to play with.  One is scope, and the other one is time.  And sometimes the time knob is locked in place, and there’s nothing we can do about that.  We were talking about American football.  So, the NFL season begins at a certain day.  You have to be ready by then.  There is no adjustment to the timeline over there; right?  It is set for you.  We just had the Olympic Games.  The Olympic Games has a day it begins.  So, it’s less flexible to play with time.

But then we have the scope knob.  If the incentive of a project manager is just to deliver things on time, then there’s going to be the perverse incentive of people saying, “In order to deliver this on time, we’re going to do whatever is necessary.”  Which means taking shortcuts, avoiding tests.  Quality suffers.  “Oh, I’m just going to do this temporary hack,” which becomes permanent.  So perhaps tweaking the scope knob, it’s a better approach.  And say, if we need to meet this deadline, is it better to go with the defective product or a product that perhaps has fewer features but works better?

So, it’s a struggle to maintain; right?  It’s a constant walk on a tightrope.  But along the way, you can constantly ask yourself questions like what problems are we trying to solve?  Does this feature even need to be built?  Because sometimes you build that because it’s on the backlog or it’s on the current sprint.  But perhaps it’s not applicable to be built; right?  Sometimes a lot of effort and energy goes into building something or optimizing something that shouldn’t be there to begin with.

Building Trust

BILL YATES:  Yeah.  You know, Dalmo, what you’re encouraging here with this sidestream relationship is, okay, the project manager needs to take off their blinders, get out of their office, talk with fellow project managers who also have to look at how do I control those two knobs?  They’ve been in similar situations.  What tradeoffs did they make, and how did it work for them?

And also with those product managers, those that are going to inherit the output of our project, that new service or product offering, and have those honest conversations with them.  And some of them we’re having problems with.  Others are going fine.  But let’s just have a transparent conversation about tradeoffs we can make.  So yeah, if there’s a healthy relationship there with those sidestream parties, those other stakeholders, then it just sets you up for better success at the end of the project.

DALMO CIRNE:  Yeah.  And as you said, any point of interface between different roles is an opportunity for conflict.  There’s friction over there.  And without that transparency, without that communication, what happens in the long run is that the relationship between those people, they suffer.  And we have been talking about management and project managers and product managers, but those are just titles.  Forget about the titles. Underneath there are people; right?  And people have to have good relationships.  Because of the roles and the natural tendency for friction and conflict that happens over there, if you don’t have that transparency, you don’t have those conversations, now you are not helping the situation.

Talking openly and transparently and say, hey, here’s how things really are and what we need to do, I think that fosters a long-term relationship where you end up building trust in each other.  And as you finish one project, you can rinse, you can repeat and do it again because it’s not a one-time thing; right?  You were hoping to build many things together.

The Evolving Role of Project Managers

WENDY GROUNDS:  Dalmo, how do you see the role of project managers evolving?

DALMO CIRNE:  Perhaps I would go back to some of the points we touched already, review them and just to solidify them.  As a side-stream collaboration, it would not be just that manager and the project manager; right?  It would also be the project manager and the person on the legal team, and the person on the legal team with the person on the sales team.  And this is a cross-disciplinary collaboration.  So sidestream doesn’t apply just to one, but applies to many, applies to all.  Investing the time that is needed to define or to answer the question, are we building the right things?  If we just want to meet the deadline, but we are building the wrong thing, or something that can be built later, then we are also not being effective with our time or the effort and respect for the rest of the team.

Then the energy that you put on planning and doing a retrospective, which is also important because we discussed about the plan, sometimes it doesn’t go, or most times it doesn’t go according to what was planned; right?  But the act of planning, doing the plan, you need criticism at the end, you need that feedback so you can try to do better next time.  So, hosting a retrospective, it doesn’t have to be a long one, it doesn’t have to be super formal, but it’s just that signal you need to know to say how much of the planning and the final result, how much of that overlaps?  It’s never going to be 100%, but you’re going to try over time to make them overlap more and more; right?  Every cycle of planning and retrospective.

So, this way you have the opportunity of having the team to gel together, and not just the team of engineers and individual contributors, but the team of leaders, the team of sidestream and so on.  It’s important that everyone gel together.  Assuming that everything aligns, now you’re maximizing the chances that what you built was actually what was meant to be built, and you release the product, and you have better chances of that being successful.

BILL YATES:  Yeah.  Well, it’s a great perspective, and it’s helpful for us as those who are trying to create something new or trying to make something better.  It’s really helpful for us to look through this lens that you provided and through the conversation we’ve had today.  So, thank you for providing that for us, Dalmo.

DALMO CIRNE:  Absolutely.  I had great fun chatting with you guys.

Get in Touch

WENDY GROUNDS:  Thank you.  Yeah, we really appreciate it.  If our audience wants to get in touch with you, they want to find out more about what you do where should they go?

DALMO CIRNE:  The best place to go would be my website is DalmoCirne.com, D-A-L-M-O-C-I-R-N-E dot com.  I’m also on X and LinkedIn.  With a common name like this, it will not be difficult to find me over there.

BILL YATES:  Not too many of you around there; right?  With those names.  Yeah, that’s excellent.

DALMO CIRNE:  Indeed.

Closing

WENDY GROUNDS:  Thank you, Dalmo.  That’s it for us here on Manage This.  Thank you for joining us.  You can visit us at Velociteach.com, where you can subscribe to this podcast and see a complete transcript of the show.

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