Leading the conversation on digital connected work
By now, everyone knows that introducing agile methodologies into business operations usually translates into faster deliveries, greater productivity and increased adaptability and responsiveness to change. Everywhere you look, diverse teams in almost every industry are successfully leveraging agile practices to beat their deadlines and achieve their goals. Yet in the world of IT infrastructure and...
By 2027, according to research by Innosight, the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company is expected to be just 12 years, exactly half of what it was only a few years ago (24 years in 2016). This shrinking lifespan is caused by a number of factors—record private equity activity, a robust M&A market, and...
Project portfolio management is all about taking a broader view of the projects undertaken by your organization. While there are natural similarities and overlaps with project management, the core objectives of project portfolio management are to improve how projects are executed across the whole organization rather than focusing on delivering one single project. Project portfolio...
We’re hopping back over the pond today to meet Tina Dankwart, one of our Value Stream Architects! She discusses the importance of building relationships at work, how she annoys her kids with Metallica and how she would describe Tasktop in one sentence. How do you start your day before work? I really would love to...
As enterprises are becoming increasingly Agile, the role of HR in Lean-Agile organizations is being challenged to expand beyond process-oriented HR management, and into truly Lean-Agile people operations. In this series of posts, we’ll be discussing why HR goes Agile, and what happens when HR goes Agile—and how high-performing organizations should approach HR’s transition into...
Let’s start with this: agile marketing doesn’t mean conventional marketing with an agile flair — or worse, getting rid of plans and managers, and letting chaos reign until a combination of urgency, anxiety, dread, and sheer self-preservation forces people to agonizingly churn out deliverables and get stuff done (and then go on sick leave or...
One of the fields to benefit from the uncertainty that has characterized the UK economy since the Brexit vote in 2016 has been consultancy firms. PwC has announced its biggest profits in a decade, led by a huge increase in demand for consultancy services from firms worried about how Brexit will affect their business. The...
Communication in the workplace can be a minefield with the ability to either elevate or sink productivity, depending on how good it is. So, it’s quite understandable that it’s one of the most important project manager skills. Getting positive results from direct reports can often require a delicate mix of encouragement and pressure, the right...
Researchers at McKinsey&Company have found that in order to achieve organizational agility (in order to be agile)—which the firm defines as “…the ability to quickly reconfigure strategy, structure, processes, people, and technology toward value-creating and value-protecting opportunities”—organizations need to have an appropriate balance of dynamism and stability. Dynamic practices are those we often think of...
Having effective leadership skills means being able to get the best out of your team and guide them to deliver on your goals and objectives. For successful project managers, this most often doesn’t mean adopting one specific management style, but rather being adaptable and adjusting their approach depending on the team and context. Some organizations...
