Skip to main content

Author: Mallika Gunturu

Mallika is an IT professional with 24+ years of experience spanning several facets of delivering mission critical IT solutions - delivery management, project and program management, team management, managing operations of zero-down time services, product management and customer engagement. Mallika currently works as a Program Manager. Mallika is a certified Scrum Product Owner and Agile Scrum Master. Mallika has a Master in Business Administration and Bachelor in Electronics and Communications Engineering.
PMTimes_Aug06_2024

Towards AI Innovation Excellence

Written by Mallika Gunturu on . Posted in Articles.

Building an organizational culture that fosters AI innovation requires a multi-faceted approach incorporating elements from various dimensions – leadership to employee engagement to technology to infrastructure. Here are the key strategies to build such a culture to ensure that AI innovation becomes part of the organization’s DNA.

 

Leadership commitment and vision

Leadership must articulate a clear vision for AI that aligns with the organization’s strategy, goals, and objectives. This vision should be communicated consistently across all levels of the organization. Additionally, leaders should demonstrate their commitment to the AI strategy by continuously learning about AI technologies and trends, setting a strong example for the entire organization.

 

Build an AI-ready workforce

Organizations should invest in training programs to upskill employees in AI-related fields like data science, machine learning, and analytics. Offering access to online courses, workshops, and certifications can help employees stay abreast of AI advancements. Additionally, fostering collaboration between departments such as IT, R&D, marketing, and operations is essential. Forming cross-functional teams leverages diverse expertise and perspectives, which is crucial for developing innovative AI solutions.

 

Build a culture conducive for AI Innovation

Leadership must create an environment where employees feel safe and are empowered to experiment with AI technologies without the fear of failure. Employees should be encouraged to take calculated risks and view failures as valuable learning opportunities. The ‘fail fast’ approach promotes quick experimentation and iteration, allowing teams to rapidly test ideas and identify what works and what doesn’t. This leads to faster learning and more effective solutions, while ensuring that resources (time, money, and human resources) are not wasted on approaches that are unlikely to succeed.

 

Additionally, organizations should establish innovation labs or incubators dedicated to AI projects. These labs should provide the necessary resources, such as computational power, data, and expertise, to facilitate experimentation and prototyping of AI solutions.

 

Provide the right tools and infrastructure

Providing the right tools and infrastructure is crucial for AI innovation. This includes but is not limited to access to high-performance computing resources, scalable data storage and management systems, AI frameworks, collaboration and communication platforms to enhance teamwork, model experimentation and deployment tools to streamline the development process. Ensuring secure, compliant tools and environments is an important aspect that cannot be overlooked. Additionally, establishing prototyping environments and AI governance frameworks fosters ethical and effective AI development. These elements collectively create a strong foundation for developing, testing, and deploying innovative AI solutions.

 

Advertisement
[widget id=”custom_html-68″]

 

Promote a Data-Driven culture

AI systems rely on high-quality data to function effectively. Encourage data-driven decision-making at all levels of the organization. Provide training on how to interpret and leverage data insights for strategic decisions. Make data accessible to all employees, not just data scientists or IT professionals. This can be achieved through user-friendly data analytics tools that enable employees to explore and utilize data in their daily work. In all circumstances, ensure that data access controls are enforced to ensure that only authorized personnel can view or manipulate the data. Regular audits and monitoring processes should be in place to help detect and respond to any unauthorized access or anomalies.

 

Foster a collaborative ecosystem

Collaborate with external partners such as universities, research institutions, and AI startups. These partnerships can provide access to cutting-edge research, innovative ideas, and additional resources. Encourage employees to participate in AI communities, both within and outside the organization. Internal communities can be fostered through AI interest groups, hackathons, and regular meetups. External communities include attending industry conferences, joining professional AI associations, and contributing to open-source AI projects.

 

Embed AI in organizational processes

Integrate AI into core business processes to demonstrate its value. Start with pilot projects in areas like customer service or marketing analytics, and gradually expand to other functions. Implement a feedback loop to continuously monitor and improve AI systems. Use performance metrics and user feedback to refine AI models and processes, ensuring they evolve with changing business needs and technological advancements

 

Ethical AI practices

Develop and enforce ethical guidelines and governance framework for AI use within the organization. These governance frameworks should focus on mitigating risks like bias and privacy breaches, fostering transparency and accountability, aligning AI with regulatory requirements, and building trust among stakeholders.

 

Recognize and reward AI Innovation

Implement incentive programs that reward employees for successful AI innovations. This can include monetary rewards, recognition in company communications, or opportunities for career advancement. Celebrate AI successes within the organization. Highlight successful AI projects in company newsletters, intranets, or town hall meetings to showcase the value and impact of AI initiatives.

 

Structured Change Management

AI initiatives often require significant changes to existing processes and workflows. Implement a structured change management approach to help employees adapt to these changes. Provide support through training, communication, and resources to ease the transition. Address resistance to AI adoption by communicating the benefits and addressing employee concerns. Actively engage with employees to understand their apprehensions and provide reassurance through transparent communication and involvement in AI projects.

 

Fostering an AI innovation culture requires a holistic approach that combines leadership commitment, workforce development, and a supportive infrastructure. By encouraging experimentation, promoting a data-driven mindset, and integrating AI into core business processes, organizations can create an environment where AI innovation thrives. Ethical considerations and change management are also critical in ensuring that AI is adopted responsibly and sustainably. Recognizing and rewarding AI contributions further motivates employees to embrace and drive AI initiatives. By implementing these strategies, organizations can harness the full potential of AI, driving innovation and maintaining a competitive edge in the rapidly evolving technological landscape.

PMTimes_May31_2022

Rise of the Agile PMO

Written by Mallika Gunturu on . Posted in Articles.

The PMI PMBOK defines Project Management Office (PMO) as “a management structure that standardizes the project-related governance processes and facilitates the sharing of resources, methodologies, tools, and techniques”.

In practice PMOs are rolled out in any number of flavors across organizations and industries. There is no standardization, and the level of authority and autonomy varies across organizations and industries. The primary charter of a PMO should be to provide a framework that augments the organization’s ability to consistently deliver business value in alignment with strategic objectives.  As organizations undergo agile transformation, there is a pertinent need to reflect on how PMO adapts itself to become agile and continue to stay relevant in the new way of working.

PMI’s 2021 Pulse of the Profession® survey reveals the emergence of gymnastic enterprise. These organizations and their project teams combine structure, form, and governance with the ability to flex and pivot—wherever and whenever needed. Their research indicates that gymnastic enterprises achieve greater success by developing a range of value delivery capabilities—and that unless traditional enterprises can emulate this approach, they risk becoming obsolete in an increasingly digitized and unpredictable world.

It is in this context the need for emergence of an agile PMO promoting organizational agility becomes obvious. By agile, we don’t mean usage of agile methodologies, rather a department that truly embraces an agile mindset.

Before looking at what it takes to have an agile PMO, let us quickly note some of the negative perceptions about PMOs:

  • Heavily process oriented and considered burdensome by other parts of the organization
  • Project prioritization not aligned with strategy
  • Focusses just on meeting senior management expectations and lacks focus on delivering any real value to the project teams.
  • Lacking visibility on Return on Investment (ROI) of project and program initiatives. Focus is primarily on getting the projects closed.

PMI Agile Practice guide proposes that an agile PMO should be a value driven, innovation driven and multi-disciplinary department. Let us look at the success factors for such an agile PMO.

  1. Alignment with organization strategy. Portfolios, Programs and Projects are vehicles through which organizations invest valuable resources like staff, infrastructure, finances etc to achieve tangible and intangible outcomes creating a certain value or benefit. As these resources are never available in plenty and the expectations on time to market are becoming more stringent, it is crucial that these resources are invested in initiatives that matter the most to the organization’s aspirations and ambitions.

 

A typical organization at any point of time has a need to execute a large number of projects and programs.  Further different business units and departments have their own preferences on delivery priorities. It is in this context a PMO has a great role to play to ensure that by means of prioritization of portfolio, programs and projects, resources are invested in initiatives that lead to the maximum realization of the organization objectives.

The true value of agile PMO becomes evident when this prioritization exercise is not aimed at merely pushing the senior leadership’s vision on to the delivery teams but rather focuses to converge the organization’s aspirations and the current execution capability and bring in an alignment between the two that leads to the overall benefit of the organization.

Advertisement
[widget id=”custom_html-68″]

An example here is that traditionally, resource managers are forced to assign their resources to multiple high priority initiatives. While on paper the sum of the hours a resource is allocated to different projects and programs adds up to 100%, in reality it is not so. Valuable time is lost in context switching. Also, having to do this for long periods of time ultimately impacts the quality of work and can lead to burn-out.

 

Another example could be when a new technology has to be introduced to achieve an organization goal. A pragmatic review of whether the necessary skills and knowledge are available in the organization and if not, what it takes to build those is important to be considered. It is in this context that by acting as a glue between the various departments and teams and aligning all teams to march towards well balanced goals that a PMO can prove its true value.

  1. Light weight processes and governance – Delivery and governance processes are essential to ensure a consistent approach for achieving outcomes. Equally important is to have clear escalation protocols for taking corrective actions when needed. In the current times where agile delivery practices are becoming the norm, it is important to realize and appreciate that one size fits all approach does not always work. Different delivery methodologies suit better for different kinds of projects and outcomes. It could be that traditional waterfall, or a hybrid combination of waterfall and agile practices suit certain projects and teams. An agile PMO should acknowledge this and be able to guide the project teams on the most suitable delivery methodology along with a light and effective set of processes and governance models. PMO should not be an enforcer but be a partner fully invested in the successful realization of the project outcomes.
  2. Contributing to delivery excellence – An agile PMO can deliver value to the rest of the organization by providing necessary tools, processes and metrics to monitor, track and report on how the teams are delivering the project and program outcomes. Tools and processes should include means to track and report progress of team deliveries, track and report inter team delivery dependencies, to roll up and map team priorities to the organization priorities. Teams should also have access to processes and tools to raise and monitor impediments and track risks. In addition, PMO should lay out a set of metrics that effectively measure business delivery excellence, operational and technical excellence of the teams and consequently that of the organization. These metrics should provide the necessary information needed for the organization to make better decisions.
  3. Multi-disciplinary team – Organizations across industries are going through transformation and radical changes. It is a given that rapid advancements in technology like proliferation of AI/ML across industries, newer ways of working like remote, hybrid, citizen development etc. have a profound impact on how organizations function. PMO is one unit that, by the nature of its charter, is in a unique position to truly act as a change agent and enable the project teams to perform to their best.  To be able to do so, PMO staff should be experts not only in project and program management methodologies, but they also need acumen in business and technology.

 

Conclusion

In these exciting times where businesses across the spectrum are undergoing transformations, re-inventing and optimizing product offerings, the agility of PMO is an important contributor towards the organization’s business agility.

References

  1. https://www2.deloitte.com/content/dam/Deloitte/de/Documents/technology/pmo-excellence.pdf
  2. Agile Practice Guide (2017).
  3. PMBOK® Guide (2021).
  4. Pulse of the Profession 2021 (2021).