Tag: Agile

Best of PMTimes: 5 Tactics To Successfully Handle Multiple Projects Simultaneously

Written by Jimmy Rodela on September 21, 2022. Posted in Articles.

Managing multiple projects at the same time can be an absolute n-i-g-h-t-m-a-r-e.

You need to keep track of your projects’ moving parts, ensure you’re using the right processes and strategies, stay within deadline, keep your employees motivated, and be mindful of your expenses.
Data even shows that on average, 88% of remote workers experience miscommunications and inconsistent leadership with team members, highlighting the importance of proper program and project management.

Sadly, we just scratched the surface. So much more goes into project management than the things we pointed out.

The good news is, there are tips and tricks to help you manage multiple projects simultaneously.

Continue reading to learn five proven tactics that will help you run your projects efficiently.

1. Stay On Top Of Your Work Schedules

Regardless of how carefully you planned your projects, everything can easily go off track if you don’t establish a schedule that includes your team’s work for the month, quarter, or year.

For instance, without a clear schedule, team members might fail to prioritize tasks, overlook critical jobs, and miss deadlines, which can seriously hinder your project’s completion and even impact the result’s quality.

Use reliable work scheduling software to ensure every project team member is on the same page, keep your workflows moving seamlessly, and keep everything on track.

For instance, Deputy lets you build work schedules in minutes by using its easy-to-use interface to schedule the right team members at the right time across various locations and roles.

You can easily create shifts, assign them to staff members, drag and drop to change them, copy schedules, modify them accordingly, and export them to a CSV file, spreadsheet, or print them.

You can also send the schedule directly to your team through mobile or desktop. If you change the schedule, the assigned person gets a notification, and they can accept the confirmation request.

A robust scheduling tool helps ensure your lines don’t get crossed, work gets done, and your project deadlines are met.

This helps keep your multiple projects on track and your team members more productive. Your project schedules will also be maximized for optimum efficiency, avoiding potential delays.

2. Prioritize Tasks

With so much on your plate, it can be tempting to tackle the easiest projects first, but you must resist, or you could kill your team’s productivity and efficiency.

Prioritize based on tasks that will have the most significant impact on your project and program goals. This helps you manage several priorities while working on multiple projects effectively.

Doing so allows your team to work strategically on both micro (i.e., organizing daily to-dos based on importance) and macro (i.e., moving low-impact projects to the following quarter) levels.

Let’s say your team is working on four product launches simultaneously with the overarching goal of increasing customer revenue.

While the four projects require about the same amount of time, effort, and resources to complete and roll out, assess which one has the potential to generate a bigger impact on your new customer revenue than the other three.

Prioritize the project (or projects) that have the most significant contribution to achieving your goals.

This helps you manage your resources and allocate your time better while ensuring your efforts align with your project goals and deliver your desired results.

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3. Establish Goals And Plans

Without establishing a standard project planning process or workflow, you’ll likely manage each of your projects differently.

This can lead to issues down the line, such as inconsistencies in your deliverables and precious time wasted on setting up new processes for each project.

That is why you need to have a solid plan, establish standard processes, and identify responsibilities from the get-go.

Outline everything from your goals, each step, and task necessary for project completion, schedules and deadlines, and the persons and teams responsible for specific jobs at the project level.

At the program level, develop plans, processes, and clarify responsibilities. Establish team-level goals and communicate the projects crucial to achieving those objectives.

You can start outlining your goals using a Specific, Measurable, Accurate, Realistic, and Timely (SMART) approach and this sample goal-setting template.

You can use other templates as references and build on those to develop your project and program objectives.

Optimize your project management processes by setting team-wide standards. For instance, you can require project team leads to submit a brief before outlining a project plan for big projects.

You can also create templates for projects your team often handles to ensure consistency across projects and save time and effort.

Clear goals, plans, and responsibilities help your teams avoid inconsistencies in processes and deliverables.

4. Conduct Systematic Progress Updates

Tracking status and progress updates in a multi-project environment are critical to keeping stakeholders and key project players in the loop.

After all, you wouldn’t want your clients, for instance, to be breathing down your neck because you didn’t give them any status reports, making it crucial to establish a systematic updating process.

Establish smart, systematic status updates so that you can manage stakeholder expectations efficiently.

Below are a few tips for doing strategic and systematic project status updates.

Define expectations. Layout the specific steps task owners or the team members in-charge of particular tasks are expected to follow. Identify a time frame for updating relevant stakeholders, whether every three days, weekly, monthly, etc.

Include a high-level overview of key areas in the project. Add several bullet points that provide an update on the accomplishments, progress, and upcoming work for each key area of your project’s status. This ensures essential points are covered, and stakeholders get all the necessary updates they need.

Schedule accountability. Have third-parties, such as staff in another department, the project sponsor, or other stakeholders, conduct reviews to ensure the resource person or task owner follows protocol and the specified updating time frame to a tee.

Implement a systematic status updating process to keep your project team motivated, ensure they understand the project plan, why it’s crucial to stay up to date, and clearly see the multiple demands your team must meet.

5. Delegate And Empower Team Members

Exercise effective delegation in your resource management by adopting clarity, authority, and accountability.

For instance, empowering your graphic designer to create a landing page for a new project means making sure he/she is absolutely clear about the task by providing a work breakdown structure.

This work breakdown structure of building a landing page campaign for a new product from Kanbanize is a good example.

A work breakdown structure outlines the phases of the project process clearly.

Additionally, to ensure the project process and phases are when delegating, be sure to:

Clearly communicate the work breakdown structure
Set a project deadline
Relay specific client expectations
List down the available resources the task owner has
Describe the workload
Provide him/her the authority to make and carry out decisions

Clarity ensures your team is clear on the direction. Team members avoid any guesswork and prioritize critical tasks and projects.

A clear work breakdown structure and project scope will also empower teamwork that boosts productivity while giving members a sense of fulfillment for meeting multiple demands.
Leverage a reliable project management tool that can streamline your work breakdown structure’s workflows and processes.

Data can back up the effectiveness of using the right project management tool with 77% of high-performing projects using project management software.

What’s Next?

Handling multiple projects at the same time is inevitable in project management and any efforts you take on.

While the tips in this guide are in no way guaranteed formulas for success, these are good building blocks to help develop your strategies for effective and strategic multiple project management.

Leverage the tactics we shared to stay on top of your projects’ moving pieces, meet your deadlines, and achieve your goals.

Save Project Time With the Kanban Method

Written by Giovanny Guillen on July 26, 2022. Posted in Articles.

Have you ever heard about the Kanban method? It is a method of work management that emerged in the Toyota Production System in the late 40s. At that time Toyota began to work with the “just in time” production system, so production was based on demand. This system started the foundations of Lean Manufacturing and lean production. What does this mean? That it is a production whose objective is to minimize waste, that is, create more value for customers but without generating more expenses.

What is Kanban?

Figure 1. The Kanban Method. Source: https://getnave.com/blog/what-is-the-kanban-method/. Author: Sonya Siderova

Currently using Kanban boards are excellent tools to organize the workflow. In addition, it is a very flexible method, which allows you to modify processes in the face of interruptions or unexpected and increase productivity. How? Through its 3 Kanban board states: To do, done and ready.

At the beginning of the day, or the beginning of a project, a list of objectives is drawn up, these are works that have to be carried out. The tasks that are on this list will be moved to the next as they are carried out, so they will first be in “to be done“, then “in progress” and, finally, in “done“. This is how the habit of computing tasks at work is worked, transparency is better since all team members know the state in which the project is and what each team member is dedicating their time to.

Thus, the Kanban method follows the philosophy “Stop Starting, start finishing“, this means that it focuses on prioritizing the work that is already started before starting any other. In this way, there are a maximum number of tasks that can be performed for each phase before starting with the next one.

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How does Kanban work?

There are several basic principles to get the most out of your workflow.

Visualize what you do (your workflow): A visualization of all your tasks and items in a table will help all members of your team to stay on top of your work.
Limit the amount of Work in Process (WIP): Set affordable goals. Maintain the balance of your workflow by limiting in-process jobs to prevent over-commitment in the number of tasks you will be unable to complete.
Track time: Time tracking converges with the Kanban methodology. Track your time continuously and evaluate your work accurately.
Easy reading of visual indicators: Know what’s happening at a glance. Use colored cards to distinguish Job Types, Priorities, Labels, Deadlines, and more.
Identify bottlenecks and eliminate what’s disposable: make the most of lead times and cycles, Cumulative Flow, and time reporting. These criteria will allow you to evaluate your performance, detect problems, and adjust the workflow accordingly.

Even the most basic Kanban method will produce an increase in performance. A simple distribution of tasks, coupled with monitoring your workflow and making appropriate adjustments throughout the process will increase your efficiency. A software development team can experience formidable improvements over 12 months, following the implementation of Kanban. Delivery time can be reduced by 37% and consistency in delivery can be rebounded by 47%.

Figure 2. Kanban Practices

Saving time with the Kanban method

Time is the central part of the Kanban philosophy, which is why most teams that bet on this method opt for time tracking. One of the great advantages of Kanban is the ability to point out bottlenecks in development processes by imposing a limit on the number of active tasks a team can have open at any given time. if the number of tasks in the process is too high the team must identify the problem and resolve it.

However, it is important to understand that bottlenecks do not have to be a symptom of an organizational problem, nor do they mean that developers are too slow. Rather, they indicate that an attempt has been made to cover more work than the team could manage, so it is time to either look for more staff or reduce the workload and extend the time of the project.

But what are the other advantages of the Kanban method?

With the Kanban method is very easy to detect bottlenecks, but this work system has many more benefits.

Prevention of unnecessary processes: through Kanban boards an effective transmission of information is carried out so that failures and delays caused by poor communication can be avoided. This translates into agile development and avoiding unnecessary additional processes.
Encourages teamwork: all the workers of the team have access to information, know the process and know what tasks have to be performed previously so that theirs can be performed, even those who may be waiting for their task to be finished to be able to start theirs. In this way, solidarity between the team is strengthened and the active participation of all staff is encouraged.
Production flexibility: this method allows you to respond quickly to changes and make the necessary adjustments to the strategy. In addition, as we have said before, only what is necessary is produced or carried out, so resources and time are saved.
Increase in the efficiency of the processes: it is clear that those processes that generate greater profits in the best conditions, with the highest quality, and in the least amount of time are the most effective for the company. Kanban allows performing the necessary tasks for the phases of the project within the necessary period.

That is why the Kanban method is ideal for companies that require a lot of flexibility, especially in terms of entry of new tasks, as well as during the monitoring of these. Using the Kanban boards you can perform supervision of the work team and the tasks in progress, as well as get a global vision.

Rise of the Agile PMO

Written by Mallika Gunturu on May 31, 2022. 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.

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.

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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.

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.
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.
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

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

Progressive PMOs are harnessing the power of Citizen Developers

Written by Paul Oppong on March 22, 2022. Posted in Articles.

A few of my colleagues raise eyebrows when I mention that I used to be a programmer back in the days, I am not talking about assembly language, but I could write a few things in Java and C++. Recently I picked up some new skills creating Power Apps, connecting data with Microsoft Dataverse, building Power BI Dashboards, automating processes with Power Automate, and building chatbots with Power Virtual Agents whilst preparing for Microsoft’s Power Platform Fundamentals certification. This is part of a growing trend of what has been termed Citizen Development.

Citizen development is an innovative approach to dealing with application development needs that a lot of Project Management Offices (PMOs) are now adopting. This innovative and inclusive approach to application development addresses the ever-increasing need for PMOs to keep abreast with technological change and the associated demand for user-friendly, hassle-free applications. Enterprise Technology departments are not always best to shoulder all the responsibilities related to digital transformation.

That’s where the inclusive idea of citizen development comes in as a broad-based and innovative solution. It enables project managers and implementers to develop applications on their own and in accordance with the most pressing PMO needs. Of course, they need to have advanced level of digital skills to use the low-code/no-code (LCNC) platforms, but with those skills taken for granted, almost any team member could take a stab at it.

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Citizen development has multiple benefits for the PMO and project management. By project management, I mean its agile and strategic version. Initially, this is far better for the current needs of success-oriented PMOs. Although traditional, waterfall types of project management would also gain. The benefits span many different sectors, whether it be public sector agencies, financial services, or non-governmental organizations. There is growing evidence that citizen development works, and that it works well for both organizations and individual employees. Let us examine what these benefits are and why they are important for the PMO and project management, irrespective of the field.

Cost-Effectiveness

This is an obvious one. With application development demands being extremely taxing on Enterprise Technology departments, LCNC platforms provide substantial cost-saving opportunities to PMOs. PMOs can thus channel the savings to other, under-resourced needs. Experts estimate that by using LCNC resources, applications can be developed 10 times faster when compared with traditional methods.

PMOs can also expect savings on the maintenance of the new applications. Maintenance and application support are normally separate line items in operational budgets. Higher-end products usually require significant inputs to avoid disruptions and breakdown. The maintenance and support cost are minimal for the applications developed by citizen developers. The overall cost to develop and maintain LCNC -based applications is estimated to be 74% lower than the cost of traditional development led by Enterprise Technology resources. In addition, LCNC platforms hosting present sizable cost reductions, as shown by the experience of Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance. The company was able to save $1.4 million because of creative use of LCNC tools.

Breaking Down Silos

As citizen developers engage in software or application development, coordination with other business units of an organization becomes an absolute must. LCNC platforms do not require expert digital skills to use, but they need citizen developers to ensure that the end products are relevant to the PMO’s needs. From the perspective of effective PMO role, this is a great way of breaking down silos, which exist in all organizations. Improved teamwork and camaraderie are the important by-products of citizen development, which have long-term benefits. Citizen developers cannot go it alone, and it always takes a team effort to ensure that the end-product meets the critical needs of an organization. Importantly, this includes coordination of Enterprise Technology and non- Enterprise Technology resources too.

Agility

Citizen development also has the potential to make the PMO more agile. It expects non- Enterprise Technology resources to demonstrate adaptability and willingness to learn – two key attributes of an agile organization. From the perspective of the PMO, citizen development becomes a new and unconventional way of spurring continuous learning as an iterative and inclusive process.

Innovation and Creativity

By encouraging non-Enterprise Technology department resources to become software and application developers, PMOs can create a workspace conducive to creativity and innovation. As it happens, when people are given space and opportunity to punch above their weight, they usually outdo themselves by coming up with something extraordinary. Citizen development consequently becomes a great approach to egging people on to think outside the box. Agile organizations need to be innovative and creative. Equally, they need to be adaptive and committed to continuous learning.

Digitisation and Organizational Culture

The more employees get involved in citizen development, the better for the PMO and digital transformation. As PMOs take steps to adapt to the needs of digital transformation, citizen development becomes a timely and cost-effective method. It nurtures an organizational culture favourable for project resources and other non-Enterprise Technology resources to embrace change and make it work for themselves and the organization. It is this type of culture that becomes pivotal in weathering the storm of imminent changes and making the most of new opportunities for development.

Relevance and Flexibility

The involvement of PMO resources as citizen developers warrants the relevance of newly developed software and applications. No one could be more intrinsically motivated to ensure that they serve the purpose than the end-users themselves. I’m sure you can recall cases when even very expensive IT products turned out to be missing the mark. When developed in isolation from an organization’s core strategic goals and needs, they become underutilized. With less stringent requirements imposed; citizen developers have more flexibility to adjust as they go. As application development becomes faster, citizen development makes it easier to maintain the end products.

Summary

Citizen development has been winning over an increasing number of progressive PMOs and organizations. There is growing evidence that it leads to substantial cost-savings, encourages innovation, and makes organizations more agile. PMOs use it effectively to ease the workload of Enterprise Technology resources. Such departments are often understaffed or incapable of dealing with an ever-increasing list of requests and demands.

Citizen development makes a valuable contribution to an organizational culture that promotes creativity and initiative. In the current era of digital transformation, it is critical for agile organizations to create opportunities for their employees. This is to test and improve their digital skills. The experience of organizations that have embraced LCNC platforms for their non-Enterprise Technology resources to develop new applications shows that citizen development is definitely worth the effort.

Choosing Scrum over Kanban – Why we Switched

Written by Dovile Miseviciute on February 23, 2022. Posted in Articles.

As we set out on the Agile journey, picking Kanban seemed like a no-brainer. It is visual, easy to use, and a perfect fit for the PM tool we have been developing. However, after a short few months, we realized Scrum was indeed a better fit and switched.

Here is our story, hopefully, it will give you some insights.

Why did we choose Kanban?

As a small engineering team with a new product (we develop a project management tool called Teamhood) we had no strict timeliness or process to follow. Thus, Kanban seemed like a perfect fit. It allowed us to visualize what is happening, prioritize the most important items and track their progress.

The team would meet for a daily standup to discuss progress and monthly retrospectives would be held to see what could be improved. All of this was great up until the product beta went live and the focus of the engineering team had to shift.

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Why did it not work?

With the launch of our beta version, we got the first paying customers. Yay! But with that came customer expectation management and a need to provide reliable forecasts for the new features.

With the engineering team working in Kanban, the sales and marketing teams had issues in knowing when to expect new features. In result of that, they were not able to plan timely marketing and sales actions to promote the new features that were coming out.

Moreover, the clients needed to know when specific features would be live, and the engineering team was not able to provide those answers. As such, we knew it was time to change.

How Scrum improved our process

Thus, instead of Kanban, we switched over to Scrum and introduced new practices to improve the process.

First, we have chosen 2-week iterations to ease estimation and feature predictability. Now we had to think about which features can be delivered in two weeks’ time and commit to them. This was especially useful for the sales and marketing teams that were communicating with existing and potential customers.

We have also divided the work into several boards to better separate different processes. Design, Roadmap planning, Backlog, UI/UK, and Development are all done on different boards, thus better categorizing all of the work items.

We have introduced various new ceremonies to make sure all the processes are under control. Roadmap planning and prioritizations, Backlog review, Backlog planning, Backlog refinement, Backlog planning, and others were added to make sure we are delivering value to our customers and working on the most important features.

Lastly, we have started using T-shirt sizes to estimate the features. This helps us ensure each feature we commit to can be delivered during one iteration. Otherwise, we rework the feature to make sure it can fit the iteration or push it back to the drawing board.

What’s next?

We have successfully moved away from Kanban and into Scrum territory. However, this Scrum application is far from the textbook. In fact, some could argue that it is far more resembling Scrumban. I don’t disagree.

Will we move towards full Scrum in the future? No one knows. However, we will not do it just for the name. Instead of applying any of the practices blindly, we tend to look and see what works best for the process and our needs now.

Have you changed Agile practices with your team? I would love to hear your comments.