Project Management Approaches for Increase in Individual Output and Efficiency

I have listed below different ways to increase productivity in a team. These are from my experience  and have used them and continue to use them at appropriate times in my project management career. 

Note that there is no one size fits all solution and the solution needs to be calibrated based on the team's capability and requirement of the stakeholders that we work with. I have also given links to blogposts i wrote on the topic, wherever relevant. These apply irrespective of the software methodology followed.

Since there is no particular order in which these are to be followed, I haven't numbered them, but just kept to bullet points.

• Provide a sense of Clear Direction.  Clear sense of direction and purpose helps the team keep focused. Ambiguity will exist and it is best managed by ensuring that the day to day operations are not disturbed.
• Adapt to the Situation. PDCA Yourself! Plan, do, check, act. PDCA (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PDCA )  applies to your transformation effort as to any process improvement endeavour. Your situation, your goals, and your team are unique, so any advice or plan is probably only partially correct and hence has to be continuously revisited till the goal is met.
• Build, Buy, or Partner.  Always ask this question and make use of vendors when ever possible
• Go Lean. If it doesn’t add value to what we do, get rid of it .Or to put it otheoway, do only those things that add both short term and long term value.
• Automate. Automate wherever and whenever possible. Invest in the right tools after due diligence. Define the key metrics and automate its collection and associated metrics and reports. Ensure your team acts on the reports and not on collating data for reports.
• Define the Right Process for your team: Processes that elevate the teams performance are mandatory and this has to be kept dynamic to help the team perform better. Ensure team has a clear idea on their Hygiene Process
• Manage exceptions and not Norms: It takes time, but is a continuous process and helps tremendously in empowering the team and freeing up time
• Continuous Feedback: Focus on shortening feedback cycles and fix issues closer to their occurrence in the cycle 
• Minimise Technical Debt. Keep an eye on Technical debt, play smart and keep it to a minimum. Ensure that the team understands Technical Debt and the Managers in the team also have their own perspective
• Keep learning: Average expertise in the team should be on the increase, always 
• Keep making new mistakes. Give the team a certain space to experiment and learn. Get the lesson into the system. Ensure that old mistakes are not repeated. Plan to make new mistakes should be the motto of the team. This helps the team morale and has a direct impact on performance.
• Don't go in search of the Silver Bullet to increase Productivity because there is none. Be aware of the false hopes of software management
• Become better at managing Tacit Knowledge: Understand what Tacit and Explicit Knowledge are and manage them accordingly

If one or more than one of the above mentioned things happen in a team, the team will be motivated  and productivity  increase will be a natural byproduct of the same.

Happy Managing :-)