Leveraging Working Groups to Divide and Conquer on a Time-Sensitive Effort
Recently, the CIDA team successfully led and coordinated efforts to establish operational processes to support a Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) at the University. This initiative required coordination across many departments, including the Provost’s office, Labor Relations, Payroll, Financial Aid, Accounts Payable, Transportation Services, IS&T, and more. We had tight timelines and critical deadlines to meet to ensure compliance with the contract.
An approach that proved to be successful was establishing working groups upfront. Each working group consisted of a Lead, Project Management Support, and Working Group members. This structure provided clear accountability and responsibility. Working group members met regularly to identify the scope of work, prioritize tasks, and assign work based on urgency and impact.
CIDA’s role was to complement the subject matter expertise and operational owners with project management and documentation support, leveraging best practices and existing processes from across BU. CIDA also facilitated status meetings where working group leads and team members provided updates, answered questions, and discussed open issues as a group.
Are you considering this approach for a project? Here are some tips:
- Group the work scope into manageable working groups, considering necessary departments or stakeholders. Too many groups can lead to repeated meetings.
- Assign roles based on availability and skills. A group lead should effectively communicate, convey ideas clearly, listen actively, and facilitate discussions.
- Schedule full group meetings according to decision criticality. Meet more frequently during peak times, less as activity subsides. Transparency reduces effort duplication and confusion.
- Communication is essential. Ensure clear messaging to stakeholders and community members when implementing organizational changes.
By sharing the versatility of this approach, we hope to inspire our colleagues across the University to embrace this method where it may be impactful on their work and partner with us if they’re interested in learning more or working on a project with us.
*Parts of this post were crafted with the assistance of AI.