Project Management In Transition – The Challenges of Complex Projects

Projects are becoming increasingly complex – this affects the industry in particular and many other areas. The reasons for this are primarily the following three:

• Product development is confronted with new customer requirements due to advances in software and technology.
• The product development times have to get shorter and shorter due to international competitive pressure.
• The project members have to work together across borders, coordinate tasks and coordinate in a targeted manner.

The last point, in particular, is an important key factor for the project’s success. If interdisciplinary cooperation does not function smoothly and unforeseen problems arise. As a result, this can lead to considerable delays in the project process and sometimes to major economic damage – as the airport in Berlin has shown, for example.

To make matters worse, the need for more skilled workers can also severely hamper the implementation of large-scale projects. In this case, the main reasons are:

• The necessary qualifications need to be included.

• The positions are often held for up to five years.

• Mental illnesses in the form of overwork or burnout are increasing.

Rigidity Was Yesterday – More Agility Instead of Strict Planning is Required.

The challenges mentioned inevitably mean that the path leads from classic, planning-oriented project management to agile approaches. Inertia and inflexibility due to rigid processes are the killer argument for many companies today.

With agile project management approaches like Scrum, companies can control their processes more dynamically and flexibly. This is because an agile approach entails less planning effort, less management pressure, and faster product cycles and requires it. This means that sudden changes and customer requests can be reacted to much more quickly.

Scrum In Practice – The Rugby Method In Agile Project Management

Among the many agile project management methods, one has emerged in recent years and has become the standard for managing complex products and projects – the so-called Scrum.
Scrum comes from rugby sport, which means “orderly scrum.” The term comes from the fact that at the beginning of each period of play, the rugby team rearranges, puts their heads together, and attacks together.
And that can be perfectly transferred to project management. Scrum also aims to tackle a complex project together, to play flexibly, and to master the challenge as a team. Teamwork mode instead of lone fighter mode is announced.
The agile method was originally designed for software development. However, Scrum has also gained importance in physical product development in recent years.

Goals And Advantages – That’s Behind The Scrum Method.

Scrum primarily relies on the self-organization of the project team. Values ​​such as openness, respect, and trust are emphasized. This fulfills two important requirements for Scrum: Direct communication with each other and short feedback loops on the status quo of the project.

The Primary Goals of Scrum Are, Therefore:

• The ability to react quickly to changing customer requirements

• The short time-to-market of the new product to be developed

• The higher quality and, thus also, customer satisfaction

• The optimized interfaces to specialist departments, such as purchasing or production

• Recognizing possible undesirable developments at an early stage and reducing costs

In short, this means: With Scrum, you develop something, analyze the errors in the product and process and then improve the specifications to iron out the errors found.

Also Read: Decision-Making Tools In Project Management

Knowing How – This Is How Scrum Works In Practice.

Successful project management requires flexible and agile work. There are defined rules, roles, and meetings for working according to the Scrum method to ensure maximum transparency and the most efficient work possible. The roles and tasks in a Scrum Team must be clearly defined, and processes must be adhered to. There are usually three important roles in a classic Scrum team, which we will explain in more detail below.

There Are Three Roles To Fill.

Product Owner

The Product Owner is a single person who defines and prioritizes the project’s technical requirements. Its primary purpose is to maximize the business value of the implemented software. He is in contact with the customer and, in regular exchanges, clarifies his requirements for the product. The product owner must have a good overview and decide where the greatest added value for his customer lies. He represents the customers’ interests and has a very clear vision of the final product. The product owner writes down the tasks to be completed and prioritizes them.

Scrum Master

The title “Scrum Master” may give the impression that he is at the top of the hierarchy. The Scrum Master acts more as a process manager who optimizes the Scrum process. As a servant leader, he coaches his team members and has to convince them that his ideas make sense. He clears away obstacles in a team to enable undisturbed work. The Scrum Master supports the product owner and acts as a moderator who controls the communication between the product owner and the development team.

Development team

The development team usually consists of 3-9 people with the same function. The team implements the requirements in the product backlog and works through tasks in weekly sprints. The team organizes itself and decides how they want to implement the requirements.

Keep In Mind – 8 Things You Should Remember About Scrum.

Nothing works without a good Scrum Master – because this one:

• Ensures that all project members follow the rules
• Does not tolerate any deviations from the plan during a project phase
• Makes sure that set deadlines are met
• He makes his team’s job easier by keeping problems away.
• He does not allow his team to be distracted or encouraged to multitask
• Acts as a protector for his team
• He is always the first point of contact for his project team.
• Obtain the required or missing resources.

The post Agile To Success – Why Scrum Is Not Only An Advantage In Rugby! appeared first on TechReviewsCorner.

That is very different. For many companies, there is still a large gap between the desirable best practice state and the current situation that I encounter on the ground. However, many companies or people responsible for maintenance are committed to improving their individual activities and work processes. I see the greatest challenge in the conflict between optimization efforts and the so-called “day-to-day business.” At the same time, we also find the coveted levers of greatest effectiveness.

Is Agile Maintenance The Future?

What are the megatrends in the world of work, and how do you think Agile maintenance will change?

That’s a very exciting question. First of all, structural change in the world of work is already underway, with the keyword “VUCA.” In short, this can be summarized as follows: The world of work is becoming faster and increasingly volatile. Of course, there have always been changes and the urge to accelerate, but the demands placed on the actors are taking on a new quality. This is not the least due to the increasing complexity. In the field of maintenance, I see four specific areas that require more intensive discussion:

• First of all, there are people with their skills. It will be a challenge to reconcile the requirements arising from the changed world of work with the interests and skills of future generations.
• Second, the implementation of Industry 4.0. Here the scenarios range from a refusal or ignorance of the digitization of the working world to an almost idolatrous admiration of every digital gimmick, no matter how trivial. For example, I would like to mention the call for paperless maintenance. “First the tablet, and then (maybe at some point) we’ll look at the processes.”
• The third topic area will be data as a strategic resource. This means, for example, the experience and knowledge of the maintenance department as well as the know-how of the machine manufacturers.
• The internal value of maintenance is a fourth and increasingly important topic. Will maintenance succeed in emerging from the shadowy existence of production? I see far more opportunities than risks in this.

Without Self-Organization, There Is No Agility.

Can you give us a few concrete examples from your practice of how an agile organization works?

First, I would like to explain the term “agility” in more detail. Agility means that an organization (e.g., the maintenance department) can adapt flexibly to changes and react quickly. A key element of this is self-organization. When work teams first submit a thousand applications and have to work their way through hierarchies, they cannot act and react quickly. “Acting,” in particular, will become increasingly important. Take a look at the situation of the maintenance departments in medium and large companies.

What happens if the company’s utilization rate skyrockets or drops just as rapidly? Or if, for example, a reorganization takes place? It is often enough for a manager to leave the company or for a new one to join. I often observe that departments need to improve their performance as a result. Some are even pushed to the limit of their willingness to perform. And then, look at organizations that have autonomous or at least semi-autonomous work teams. As long as there are no significant changes to their working framework, these teams work flexibly and are extremely resistant to environmental disturbances. A well-known organizational approach to establishing these competencies in maintenance is, among other things, the approach of a decentralized system and process responsibility. Or the TPM model that most readers are familiar with.

Finally, each company and each organizational unit must be considered individually. There are no one-size-fits-all solutions for applying agile maintenance. Before you start thinking about solutions, learn to understand the problem first! I talk about exactly how this works in my seminars.

Also Read: What Is The Financial Market, And What Are Its Segments?

The post The Way To Agile Maintenance appeared first on TechReviewsCorner.

The Right Level of Agility

The right balance between planning and flexibility depends on several factors. The decisive factor here is the personal attitude of those involved in the project: the more agile they are, the greater the elegant share in the project work. Other indicators are the size of the project, its importance, the dynamics of the environment, the corporate culture, and the industry know-how of the development team. Finding the optimal balance of planning and agility can be time-consuming. Various concepts can help here: In addition to DevOps and continuous integration or continuous delivery, the interaction room is a suitable concept here.

A Space With Limitless Possibilities

The interaction room is a medium that allows business and IT experts to communicate better with each other. This is made possible by the open, non-IT-fixed presentation of processes. It also will enable representatives from the specialist departments to get involved in discussions. This Interaction Room is an actual walk-in room with four walls. The project team members visualize processes on these walls. Together with the IT experts, they determine solutions for a project’s central topics and questions in coordination rounds. This is visualized by assigning symbols to individual aspects of the project. The Interaction Room is a method that draws interest in the progress of the project and contributes to the vision of the software to be continuously developed further by all those involved. One wall is labeled with the models of the business processes, the second wall is used to write down technical object models, and the team uses the third to write down the backlog and log the project progress. On the fourth wall, they depict the integration map. This map provides information about which existing software systems have to be integrated with the system to be created.

Agile Right Down To IT Operations

Agile development means producing software at short, regular intervals. The right processes and framework conditions must be created for this. Those responsible can only decide on a case-by-case basis which organizational form or mixture of organizational structures is suitable for a company. But some indicators show whether the trends are more towards DevOps or classic CIO organizations:

Systems that change slowly and are hardly exposed to structural adjustments are not a trigger for the introduction of DevOps structure.

DevOps lend themselves to structures with clear dividing lines in the form of loosely coupled, asynchronous integrated services. These prerequisites are often given in younger systems, which applies to surface-intensive and customer-visible systems at the beginning of their life cycle. It is in such an environment that DevOps can work best.

By their very nature, mobile applications are suitable candidates for a DevOps organizational form, if only because they change quickly and must always be available.

Continuous Integration And Continuous Delivery: Giving Agility A System

For companies to be able to put software developed in an agile manner into operation at the frequency with which the developer publishes it, those responsible not only have to adapt the organization but also the systems. The whole thing aims to automatically produce and provide both the software and the development, test, and productive environments. Since updates can come relatively quickly, installation routines are now required that constantly check whether modified software can be implemented.

This idea underlies continuous integration and continuous delivery. In contrast to automation approaches, which have a limited range of functions, there are now many different options: from addressing heterogeneous infrastructures to the automated provision of environments and their integration into the existing IT infrastructure. This also includes tools for implementing monitoring and logging mechanisms, automated testing, managing software components, and orchestrating the entire process. Automation not only speeds up IT processes it also makes troubleshooting easier. It avoids problems arising from the different development, test, and production environment configurations, managing software components, and orchestrating the entire process. Automation not only speeds up IT processes it also makes troubleshooting easier. It avoids problems arising from the different development, test, and production environment configurations, managing software components, and orchestrating the entire process. Automation not only speeds up IT processes but also makes troubleshooting more accessible, and it avoids problems arising from the different configurations of development, test, and production environments.

Budgets In Agile Projects: Squaring The Circle?

Agile thinking extends not only beyond departmental boundaries but also company boundaries. If companies rely on external capacities for software development, it is essential that they are equally interested in the agile development of lean software. But how should something be budgeted that is not precisely specified? A calculation according to expenditure is highly problematic for the client since the costs can theoretically increase indefinitely. Therefore, real agile software projects rarely occur in practice.

IT Is Now At The Table.

The way companies develop, operate, and use software is changing fundamentally at the moment. Ideas reserved for start-ups a few years ago are now finding their way into established large companies. This will show in the future whether the interaction between IT and other departments will be successful.

Also Read: Why Introduce The Agile Methodology In Your Company

The post Agility In Large Companies appeared first on TechReviewsCorner.