As enterprises strive to apply business agile principles onto the work landscape and project management, they’re gearing up for a new world of speed, speed and more speed.
However, before they fire up the booster rockets, these enterprises would be wise to call a time out and ensure that they fully understand and confirm that their PPM infrastructure properly supports the notion that business agile isn’t just a matter of working faster. Rather, it’s fundamentally about working smarter by finding efficiencies in six core areas:
- Portfolio Management: prioritization, investment decisions, trend analysis, standardization, and portfolio health monitoring
- Project Management: planning, sizing, scoping, estimating, executing, reporting, change management, and closeout
- Resource Utilization: project staffing, on-the-fly adjustments, and deploying cross-functional teams to solve specific problems
- Collaboration: in-context communication between internal teams and external stakeholders; using the right mix of tools (e.g. designated workspaces, video/phone conferencing, IM chat, face-to-face, etc.) to keep teams informed at every stage of the PLC
- Employee Engagement: using visibility to help individuals see and map their contribution; rewarding and recognizing top performers; proactively identifying coaching/training opportunities (one-on-one and team-based)
- Work Management: using automation to run repeatable, standardized tasks in order to free up team members to focus on high value activities
Ultimately, when enterprises find efficiencies in these key areas, they naturally experience faster execution, and significantly reduce the time it takes to achieve strategic goals. So yes, speed, speed and more speed characterizes the work landscape. But not because people are frenetically and chaotically racing around. Rather, it’s because they’re doing things more efficiently AND more intelligently. That’s the gateway to business agile, and it’s the only way to reap the rewards.
