You are frustrated with the progress of your project. You want more attention from your manager, hoping he can help your team, but he is overextended, working on several projects. He's just not accessible. What to do?

Johanna Rothman suggests that you start right where you are. While initiative from the top down may not work, technical leaders should strive to implement improvements locally.

Here are some of her tips:

• Start a Web page or a blog and post what the team does to improve their work.
• Open the page to colleagues and encourage them to contribute.
• Tell the manager when something is broken.

"Start where you are and grab those low-hanging process improvement fruits," Rothman says. "You'll be miles ahead of the managers who aren't paying attention to their group's process."

Are you in an organization where decisions are made from the bottom up or top down? How does it work for you? What do you do to improve the efficiency of your team?