3 Key Topics: Digital Business, Enterprise Modernization, & EQengineered
Fireside Chat with EQengineered’s Principal Consultant, Project & Program Management & Project Management Practice Lead, Margo Rabchenuk.
1. As enterprise organizations continue to transform and become digital businesses, what are the key project management and Agile delivery areas on which they should focus to enable growth and the ability of the enterprise to compete and thrive?
There are three key areas that enterprises should ensure they are aligned on when undergoing digital transformations.
Key Performance Indicators
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are critical to measuring the progress and success of an agile transformation. Organizations need to critically review existing KPIs to determine if they should be maintained. The KPIs chosen should reflect the direction that the transformation is headed into, not stuck in the past. An example of this may be the focus on hours that a team has worked versus the quality of the output. in many ways, the agile Velocity metric can become a crutch for organizations to measure success when shifting from a traditional method of project management. Velocity on its own should be used as a data point to help determine when a team has hit stride, versus a gold standard to be adhered to in reference to the stories that were committed to against what was completed.
If an organization is refocusing efforts to provide value to customers, the value of the output each team produces should count greater towards the measurement of success compared to if the team closed a good number of bugs in a previous sprint. Out-of-the-box agile metrics are foundational tools to help achieve goals and success, but should not be the standard for a digital transformation effort. Is the team performing with high quality and intent to satisfy clients or customers? Are the outputs impactful and in line with stakeholder expectations? KPIs should be determined with insight gleaned from the teams involved, thereby giving the teams a tangible stake in how their work is measured and reported on. Just as an organization seeks to bring value in their market offerings, their team is also a reflection of those values and are a critical part of the measurement opportunity.
Talent Management
As noted previously, having team input into the KPI discussion will produce a welcoming environment for attracting and retaining talent. Team members who are properly compensated at market value and encouraged to contribute to strategy and the overall success of the organization will create a culture of collaboration and excitement that produces quality output. Team members want to be able to grow their skills and be considered an integral part of the organization's success. This will come into play with their benefits and compensation as mentioned, or through strategic inputs on product direction and technology. Management should be willing to understand the unique motivations of the employees, and meet them where they are. This may manifest in increased opportunity for remote work to attract diversity and cultivating unique skillsets aimed at providing learning opportunities for lateral growth. Multi-skilled individuals contribute highly to robust solutions within project teams that will have a higher rate of success. In agile, accepting that everyone on the team can act as a ScrumMaster is the first step in this direction. Increased diversity of talent and skills will enable teams to devise innovative solutions that increase output quality and keep the organization at the cutting edge of the market.
In respect to project management, Scrum Masters should be servant leaders, with the goal of unblocking the team and enabling them to product high quality work. Bogging down a Scrum Master (or other team member) with meaningless administrative tasks can hinder productivity and take away from what they need to be available for in the first place - helping the team succeed. In this fashion, while anyone can be a Scrum Master, for some organizations it may make sense for that role to also have functional knowledge in the subject matter that the team works with on a daily basis. A Scrum Master that is well aware of the risks to a team looking to make a technical architecture change can provide proactive insight into how a conflict or block to success could be avoided. It should also be acknowledged that there is a growing awareness for teams to implement agile outside of typical software teams. Giving any team the space to iterate on output will result in activities that resonate and are of higher value than only using agile delivery for software specific teams. This "agile everywhere" approach creates consistency in the communication and conversation throughout the organization and leads to more cohesive strategic implementations.
Communication Methodology
When organizations think about communication, it is usually in reference with how they may communicate with clients, customers, or shareholders. All too often the communication back to the employee is overlooked or relegated to simplistic topics controlled by human resource teams. Strategic direction needs to flow from the top executive team down to the individual contributor, as both have interest and responsibility for the overall success of the organization's goals. This is not to say that the organization needs to make the entire company aware of any and all strategic plans, however ensuring that there is a bi-directional method of communication between the teams is critical for growth. If a team member is unsure about the direction of an organization in the long-term, they may be reluctant to refer other talent in their network to their organization. This seemingly one-off or innocuous action can have critical impacts to the viability of the organization for the talent they are trying to attract.
Executive teams can work towards distilling a strategic vision into shareable moments that are discussed with the organization in town-hall style talks, or through presentations that give insight into future plans and roadmaps. Including teams in the planning process at the project and product level can help increase confidence in the transformation journey, as well as position the executive team as champions for the teams working with them. The feeling of connection to a goal can give much needed motivation to help teams learn new skills or create more robust solutions. Proactive and forward-thinking innovation will become foundational building blocks for future efforts.
2. There is a lot of enterprise discussion about modernization. What are the key project management and Agile delivery challenges being faced in today's environment and how can organizations overcome these obstacles?
The focuses on KPIs, talent management, and communication methodologies mentioned above need to move with the ever-changing technological landscape. Communication tools should be chosen for their ability to facilitate collaboration and ease-of-use across the organization as well as at the individual and team level. Choosing a tool because it is budget friendly is not going to provide the same level of success that a robust tool that integrates with other areas of the business might.
Project/Product reporting and measurement is always a technological challenge. One-off moment in time reporting through presentations may not provide enough context for long-term strategic decision-making. Our recommendation at EQengineered is to integrate project and product KPIs into data management and conduct analysis as often as possible. Many solutions for collaboration and task tracking have integrations with data analysis software, and those should be included in the assessments of the applications as much as possible. Being able to analyze past market trends against previous project outputs can give clarity into decisions around team needs and focus for future efforts. Organizations can prepare for this data analysis opportunity by standardizing around common process and verbiage for how teams talk about and use the tools already in place.
3. Who is EQengineered, what are EQengineered's core competencies, and what makes EQengineered unique in the marketplace?
EQengineered is a team of highly motivated individuals who care deeply about the clients they work with. EQengineered's core competencies center around cultivating a strategic partnership by providing repeatable and foundational methods that give organizations the space to grow and transform in the way that will impact their business the most. We listen and understand the needs, turning those learnings into action that can be expanded into other teams. EQengineered is uniquely positioned to not only provide solutions for an immediate concern, but to give clarity and focus into opportunities that we find along the way. We understand that change does not happen overnight, but we can help provide the steps towards a process that can be maintained and iterated on over time by learning and listening. We want to see your organization and team members succeed, and we will facilitate that through modeling and coaching towards positive outcomes.