3 Key Topics: Digital Business, Enterprise Modernization, & EQengineered
Fireside Chat with EQengineered’s Senior Technical Project Manager, Allen Fordham
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?
In my opinion, the two Agile domains that best demonstrate Agile's value are Adaptive Planning and Continuous Improvement.
Adaptive Planning encapsulates the idea that there are no hard and fast rules. Your organization's goals may be updated regularly, and this must be accounted for when planning and forecasting. New technologies, tools, and environments inject fresh challenges and opportunities into development cycles. Customer expectations and user requirements constantly evolve, like a rising tide, and organizations must adapt or be set adrift. Adaptive Planning is the power to react to a fluctuating environment and remain focused on outcomes.
Continuous Improvement goes hand-in-hand with adaptive planning. A healthy Agile ecosystem empowers stakeholders to evaluate and apply the lessons that the team has learned from all previous iterations of work on an ongoing basis, so that each sprint is a little smoother, each cycle a little cleaner, and each task a little more streamlined. If Adaptive Planning is a constant race against the changing environment, Continuous Improvement is about beating your own last lap. If the team encountered an obstacle in the last sprint, then the team learns together from that experience and sails past a similar obstacle the next time around.
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?
A frequently-overlooked aspect of modernization is how the workforce itself is changing. Gone are the days of a silver pocket watch signaling decades of service at the same company. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the median tenure at a job for baby boomers is almost ten years, and 40% of boomers have spent over 20 years at a single company. Yet the millennial generation only stays at their jobs for 2.8 years (source). There are plenty of strategies that leaders can employ to attract and retain quality team members, but the dynamic nature of our modern workforce requires organizations to adapt to ensure that their team members can contribute effectively regardless of tenure. Job-hopping may be becoming the norm, but there are ways to reduce its disruptiveness. Given this unique challenge of the modern era, organizations must keep three project management principles in mind:
Build stable processes
Agile has become the default strategy at workplaces around the world, and its wide adoption has provided an additional, hidden benefit to organizations that embrace it. An organization that adheres to Agile principles reduces the amount of ramp-up time that a new team member requires to begin contributing at full capacity. Team members can hit the ground running by participating in their first or second sprint, and the flexibility of Agile allows them to take on additional responsibility naturally as they feel comfortable.
Foster collaboration
We all remember what it feels like to be the new kid in class. Having a few people reach out and offer friendship and support will make a tremendous first impression on those joining up. This is a case where those in leadership positions must 'lead from the front' in demonstrating how to onboard new hires. Fostering relationships between team members will ensure that skills and experience are shared, and that every member of the team knows where to go for help with a particular problem. This can be especially difficult in remote-first teams, but it is vital in ensuring team cohesion and camaraderie.
Emphasize documentation
Onboarding new hires will always require attention from more experienced team members, and it is important for fresh employees to have the mentorship of those who 'know the ropes'. Having well-organized, readable, and accessible documentation will ease this process tremendously. As members of an organization come and go, having a well-maintained repository of knowledge will ensure that the organization doesn't suffer when a team member moves on. This emphasis on documentation must be comprehensive and consistent. Comprehensive, in that every process and tool used by the team should have documentation accessible so that someone can cover in the event of a personal day or surprise COVID exposure. And consistency is crucial, because if documentation isn't consistently maintained, then the modern demands will leave the documentation outdated and the team runs the risk of overlooking steps or forgetting new procedures.
3. Who is EQengineered, what are EQengineered's core competencies, and what makes EQengineered unique in the marketplace?
I am relatively new to the EQengineered team, but I was drawn to EQengineered because of the sincerity and professionalism of the team. As a consultancy that has helped many businesses to modernize their data and practices, the value that EQengineered brings to the table is in the experience that is shared among the team. EQengineered employs all the project management principles that are important to me. The team has built stable, repeatable processes for project management that are structured enough to build a lattice for any project, yet flexible enough to be adapted when needed. The collaboration among team members at EQengineered is likewise impressive; I know that more experienced members of the EQengineered team are available if I have questions, and the team is constantly building and refining a library of resources, templates, and tools that we can apply to solve the problems that our partners face.