If your Business is running multiple Agile projects and you are seriously in need to scale, you would have heard of the Scaled Agile Framework also known as SAFe. Read more as an introduction to this framework and how you can use it to your advantage.
What is SAFe?
While most business users have heard the term Scaled Agile Framework, many of you are not familiar with what it actually means. This framework is a combination of both lean and Agile principles designed to make collaboration and centralized decision-making easier. Some examples of the principles would be cross-functional teams, continuous code integration and systems thinking among others.
One of the biggest benefits that comes with using SAFe is the various configuration options it offers. The three basic levels used in SAFe are:
team,
program and
portfolio.
When using SAFe, companies are able to view the “big picture” of a particular project. This level of visualization is only possible when mapping out the roles of your team and assigning them particular responsibilities. Luckily, the Agile principles SAFe is based on, can be scaled to fit the needs of large corporations. Most businesses find that the centralized decision making promoted by this framework helps to speed the progression of a project up without mistakes being made in the process.
The Benefits of Adopting SAFe
The main benefit that comes with adopting SAFe is the efficiency it can bring to the software development process. Using this framework not only benefits the developers in the trenches writing code and developing new programs, but it is also helpful for software leaders.
Often times, these leaders are tasked with answering high-level strategy questions. Getting the answers to these questions is easy when everyone is on the same page and decision-making is centralised. Most large corporations have found that SAFe’s big picture view helps them to coordinate strategies even on large scale projects that are complex in nature.
Another advantage of using SAFe is that it helps business owners stay aligned with shareholders goals and wishes. In some instances, the bottom-up approach of Agile can lead to developers and testers losing sight of the big picture. With the top-down approach of SAFe, you can keep everyone moving towards a common goal with ease.
One more major benefit is the Inspect and Adapt principles which support a systematic view of outcomes and will lead to continuous improvement.
Challenges of Implementing Scaled Agile Frameworks
The first thing you need to do before starting to use this framework is to put the right tools in place.
For instance, if you use Microsoft IIS to host your websites, investing in software that acts as a strong Monitor for IIS performance is a must. Putting the right tools in the hands of your developers will make the transition to SAFe and the software development process as a whole more successful.
As mentioned before, SAFe uses a “big picture” model to keep all of your team members on the same page. This is why creating a detailed roadmap for the project at hand is so important.
Furthermore, Lean-Agile leadership is required that will help management to lead the transformation rather than follow it.
Another challenge is to dedicate enough time for innovation and planning, else you will incur technical debt, more overtime will be required and teams will fall victim to the ‘tyranny of the urgent’.
Adopting SAFe Takes Time
As with any other project management methodology or framework, the SAFe adoption process will take time and effort. Instead of getting impatient and making mistakes, you need to take your time to implement it slowly. Consulting with professional Agile Practitioners who have experience with Scaled Agile Frameworks can be very beneficial and is recommended.
Whether you work in a corporate organisation’s marketing department or in an Agency providing services to clients, you will know that successful content marketing projects are complex and involve the whole business.
It requires a good content marketing strategy and then a plan to create, publish and share your content in an authentic way.
This Infographic, with compliments from Wrike, will give you the 10 areas that need to be addressed as essential elements of your content engine.
Infographic brought to you by Wrike project task management software
Interview with Anika Nell, CEO of Stripform Packaging (Pty) Ltd, manufacturers of flexible, customized ziplock bags since 1975. The interview is exploring a remarkable new product, the development project of a truly biodegradable plastic.
Tell us about your Research and Development around biodegradable plastic?
Stripform Packaging has been manufacturing plastic packaging for more than 30 years. Due to the negative impact on the environment, I wanted to ensure that at least some of the products we produce, would be more environmentally friendly.
South Africa has relied on recycling for many years as the option for a better future. Although all products produced by Stripform Packaging are 100% recyclable, we all know that plastic is extremely durable, very slow to degrade and has a long staying power, in some cases longer than a human’s life-span! Recycling is certainly an important way of ensuring less pollution, but it is only part of the solution and it is time to explore other options.
Through my research it became clear that South Africa is not up to speed with environmental progress made on plastic. Internationally two main types of biodegradable plastics are possible.
The first, oxo-biodegradable plastic, is made of petrochemicals and requires a catalyst to break down the polymer chains through oxo-biodegradation. The second, bioplastics, are plant based and break down through hydo-biodegradation.
Since my experience and knowledge is from petrochemical plastic, I wanted to ensure that the plastic products we produce would biodegrade in a relatively short period of time, would be non-toxic and affordable. Therefore, I opted to perform my R&D on oxo-biodegradable plastic.
You say that your existing products are 100% recyclable; how many times can a ziplock bag be recycled before it becomes too old or unuseable?
Since the standard plastic bags that we produce are made of virgin material, it can be recycled as many times as it ends back into the recycling stream. The problem is that we are not dedicated to recycling and re-using. The bags that we produce are made from Polyethylene which is the most recycled plastic in South Africa. but these only amount to about 42% of all Polyethylene manufactured. I am concerned about the 58% that lands up somewhere else….
How long does biodegradable plastic take to break down completely? Will this continue to happen at refuse dumps?
Oxo-biodegradable plastic breaks down through nature itself. UV light and heat starts the degradation. The polymer is made up of strong carbon bonds that are being broken by the catalyst that was added to the polymer mix during manufacturing. The carbon atoms then bind to oxygen to form biodegradable material.
Biodegradation depends on the material’s thickness, temperature, moisture and oxygen content as well as other environmental factors. This process will take between 15 – 24 months for the oxo-biodegradable products. If these products end up on the refuse dumps, they will continue to biodegrade until oxygen is no longer available.
Top of mind when I developed the biodegradable plastic, was the pollution I saw daily on my way to work. It is fantastic to know that these new plastic products could biodegrade within a very short time and that it is possible that the plastic bags that Stripform manufactures can biodegrade and “disappear” after the end up in the field.
What are some of the challenges you had with the research and prototype development?
Research and Development is exciting, but costly and time consuming. I am a business owner and the chemist developing the biodegradable plastic at work. It was tough taking on the additional responsibility while still keeping my focus on the core business. It was a real balancing act to manage the company while developing a new product of this kind.
The costs of the tests to ensure that the plastic will indeed biodegrade and not only break up in million pieces of plastic were high, but in the end worth every cent.
Another hindrance was finding other scientists to bounce off new ideas. Although the internet is a great source of information, it cannot replace brain storming with other scientists.
Are you already manufacturing biodegradable plastic?
Yes, Stripform Packaging started to manufacture for a growing list of clients already. The biodegradable ziplock bags are safe to use for any item from sandwiches, cheese, hardware items and agricultural products to dispensing of medicine.
Did your company treat it as a project, in order for it to become part of the standard products that you offer?
Yes, Stripform Packaging considered the project as a solution to plastic pollution and as part of the standard range of products that we offer. With time we will expand to include other biodegradable products.
Is there market interest to manufacture a biodegradable plastic?
The world is in desperate need to find solutions to climate change and global warming. Although South Africa is behind in terms of oxo biodegradable plastic, bioplastics and recycling, it is widely used in America, UK and at least 10 countries have legislated to make oxo biodegradable plastic mandatory. It is impossible to export to these countries a wide range of plastics or goods wrapped in plastic unless the plastic is oxo biodegradable. In April 2019 the SA government published the requirements for markings and identification of degradable plastics. It is the first step in acknowledging the entry of this technology into the South African market.
You are operating in the Pharmaceutical industry, how do you see this spreading to other industries which are heavily reliant on packaging?
I believe that South Africa should consider various options to tackle climate change and plastic pollution. We have wonderful organizations to assist with recycling, but it is time to open the door to new ideas and technology. All industries using plastic packaging should explore options that are sustainable and will contribute to the solution. I am not a believer of one size fits all. Every solution offers positive and negative aspects. With a holistic approach South Africa can reduce plastic pollution drastically.
Oxo-biodegradable plastic may not be the perfect solution to all plastic pollution, but the benefits of this technology is widely accepted internationally. Together with recycling, plant based plastics, biodegradable and several other innovations a cleaner planet is possible.
Do you think your break-through formulae will be adopted by other big packaging manufacturers?
Yes, I think that South Africa will embrace new ideas to slow down the pace at which we pollute this earth. Whether it is Stripform’s development or another creative solution, the time is right to implement alternatives.
The topic of biodegradable plastics is highly controversial and intensely debated. The more we debate these solutions, the more options will become available and the closer we are to a sustainable environment.
Internationally a wide variety of biodegradable products are already available. These include cups, plates, coatings of paper items, etc. Unfortunately plastic is not plastic is not plastic. Every application such as the container in which your take away sandwich is packed differs from the wrapping around your bread rolls or from the plastic of your shopper bag. Creative solutions for each of these items must be found.
Will recyclable plastic eventually be replaced by biodegradable plastic?
I am not sure if it is necessary to choose between the two. There is a place for both. Some biodegradable plastic can also be included in the recycling stream. It all depends on the level of sophistication of recycling and composting facilities available.
Are there alternative biodegradable products?
In fact there are several biodegradable plastic options available. These plastics derive from plants, petrochemicals and combinations thereof. For example: biodegradable thermo plastic also known as PLA; synthetic polymers such as PCL and combination of starch and PCL known as Mater-Bi and many, many more are known. New products and combinations of raw materials for specific applications are launched continuously to replace long lasting plastic products.
What can we look forward to for our and our children’s future in terms of green technology and sustainability?
Once you start reading about the exciting development of green technology and replacement of packing material as we know it, you realize that the entire world woke up to the fact that we are destroying our planet by continuous consumption and waste. Researches are actively pursuing different solutions and I am encouraged with the progress made.
For many years scientists worked on perfecting the best plastic packing to keep food fresh and to increase the shelf life. Marketing ensures that all products on shelf were packed in primary, secondary and tertiary packaging to enhance shelf appearance.
It is time to go back to basics and take cognizance of the cost of our actions. The impact of global warming and climate change has changed perceptions and research toward a greener future is happening NOW.
Initially it will be more costly to change to green technology such as biodegradable plastic. As technology improves and more solutions are found internationally, it will become affordable and more accessible.
I see a world where very little will end up in landfills. Products will either biodegrade, be reused or recycled. The alternative is too hard to bear.
As a wife, mother of twins and a doctor in Chemistry who is running as the CEO of Stripform Packaging, manufactures plastic ziplock bags for the pharmaceutical industry, Anika is resourceful, creative and passionate about what she believes in. With a background in the Wine and Cosmetic industries, she is now making in-roads in the Plastic manufacturing with her break-through Biodegradable plastic products and knowing that she’s making a positive contribution to society.
If you manage your construction & engineering projects with Oracle® Primavera P6, you may want to know about a software that goes hand in hand with P6, and how you can benefit by utilizing the features this simple to use viewer provides.
I’m writing about ScheduleReader™, which is a .xer viewer in its nature, able to perform a wide variety of project scheduling functions, beneficial for your team and organization.
ScheduleReader™ enables users to view Oracle® Primavera P6 Schedules in .xer or xls. format.
Project stakeholders like project managers, contractors, and subcontractors can take advantage of the software and gain greater visibility over the project progress by utilizing the following views:
Activities
WBS – Work Breakdown Structure
Projects which represents the Enterprise Project Structure (EPS)
Resource assignments
Detail view of selected item in current view
OBS – Organizational Breakdown Structure
Roles view
Benefits of ScheduleReader™
The benefits of using ScheduleReader™ are huge for project teams of any size. I’ll highlight some of the most important:
Save time and share plans in XER format without exporting to PDF.
Greater control over team members and reduce the risk of having unclear tasks.
Reduce manual workload and avoid mistakes when receiving progress updates.
Worry-free sharing of the project details without the risk of unwanted changes.
Why reader for .xer files instead of sharing .pdf files?
ScheduleReader™ as .xer file reader provides an interactive overview of the project with personalized view. Moreover, users can use custom and auto filters with flexibility when viewing a file as well as navigate through predecessors and successors with complete overview.
With .xer reader, you can also work with custom layouts imported from .plf files, and take advantage of visual baselines comparison on the activity updates from previous .xer file versions.
Cutting costs on software licensing
Nowadays, as a consequence of the global economic crisis and slow recovery from it, companies are trying to tighten up their spending and budgets on costly software technologies and services.
Moreover, if we consider a project where most of the people work on their assignments, while only project managers, executives, and coordinators make changes on the schedule, then a lightweight application to display project views could dramatically reduce costs for software licensing.
ОOne of the most eminent attributes of ScheduleReader™ is its speed. Anyone having issues with importing large .xer files knows how important is the speed. It takes minutes, and some managers even reported hours to open a large .xer files in P6.
But that’s not the case with ScheduleReader™, as it will open .xer files in a matter of seconds.
Progress Update
The Progress Update functionality at ScheduleReader™ allows team members to propose assignment progress and activity status in their respective views. The Project Scheduler then decides whether to accept or reject the updates proposed by the team members.
Project Baselines
Baselines functionality allows comparison of up to four updated versions of a project schedule. Users can view precise graphical presentation of what has been changed from the original schedule in the Gantt preview.
It’s an easy visual comparison utility, helping you to keep track on the project progress.
Search, Filters & Groups
Searching within the project data is also a feature to be highlighted and useful when you need to find a specific item from the current view.
With ScheduleReader™, users can also filter project data that meets certain criteria, such as milestones, completed activities, in progress or critical activities. User can pick between User Defined and Default Filters to be applied to the current view.
Groups can help users to arrange the activities’ order according the current needs. Users can create Custom Groups which is saved in a layout, meaning that groups, together with the layouts, are saved on application level.
User can open any project file and through the layout, ScheduleReader™ will apply the group.
Reports and Dashboard
In ScheduleReader™, users can choose between the option to use a predefined report or create a custom report. The set of predefined graphical reports will allow even less experienced users to create a graphical report and dashboards, to present the current status of the project in front of management.
Moreover, advanced users can create complex graphical reports with ScheduleReader™. This kind of graphical report can compare different project categories into a one page dashboard, which will contain key performance indicators (KPI) and key data points, which will give users a tool to monitor the health and status of a specific process.
ScheduleReader™PRO version comes with built-in Reports and Dashboard, a feature which allows users to create custom graphical reports, import/export the generated custom report and later share it with all project stakeholders.
Thanks to this powerful reader for Oracle® Primavera P6 files, you have an affordable, user friendly, and comprehensive addition to Primavera P6. If you want a tool that you can use to view .xer files, you’re very well advised to get ScheduleReader™.
About Seavus: Seavus is an international software development and consultancy company that enables organizations to achieve superior business performance by implementing high-quality, enterprise-ready software products, services and solutions.
The practice of Servant Leadership is not new, but it is embraced and adopted again with fervor, especially in the context of more organizations following an agile way of working.
What is Servant Leadership Again?
To refresh memory, I want to reiterate the Servant Leadership definition as per Wikipedia:
“Servant leadership is both a leadership philosophy and a set of leadership practices. Rather than exercising power at the top (traditional), the servant leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible”.
“Servant leadership is a philosophy and set of practices that enriches the lives of individuals, builds better organizations and ultimately creates a more just and caring world.”
The most important elements of servant leadership are:
Commitment to developing people
Empathy through trying to see a situation from the other person’s point of view; putting yourself in their shoes
Listening with the intent to understand, not respond
Authenticity through being yourself
Awareness of what is happening in the lives of your team members (including any conflicts and tensions between team members)
Servant Leadership is also known from a religious tradition where in the Bible Jesus is known as the ultimate example of a Servant Leader. In a business context, it can represent a decentralized structure that focuses on employee empowerment and encourages innovation.
Servant leadership is covered quite extensively in the Agile Practice Guide (PMI 2016). It’s because, once having practiced it, servant leaders can usually see how well servant leadership integrates into the agile mindset and values. When leaders develop their servant leadership or facilitative skills, they are more likely to become agile. As a result, servant leaders can help their teams collaborate to deliver value faster. Successful agile teams also embrace the growth mindset, where people believe they can learn new skills. When the team and the servant leaders believe they can all learn, everyone becomes more capable.
With this clarity of what servant leadership is, what are the responsibilities of Leaders in Agile organisations and what characteristics of servant leadership will enable project leaders to become more agile?
Servant Leader Responsibilities
Here are examples of the responsibilities a servant leader may have:
Educate stakeholders around why and how to be agile. Explain the benefits of business value based on prioritization, greater accountability and productivity of empowered teams, and improved quality from more frequent reviews, etc.
Support the team through mentoring, encouragement, and support. Advocate for team members training and career development. Through support, encouragement, and professional development, team members gain confidence, take on larger roles, and contribute at higher levels within their organizations. A key role of the servant leader is to nurture and grow team members through and beyond their current roles, even if that means losing them from the team.
Help the team with technical project management activities like quantitative risk analysis. Sometimes team members may not have knowledge or experience in roles or functions. Servant leaders who may have more exposure or training in techniques can support the team by providing training or undertaking these activities.
Celebrate team successes and support bridge building activities with external groups. Create upward spirals of appreciation and good will for increased collaboration.
Characteristics of Servant Leadership
According to the Agile Practice Guide (PMI 2016) the following characteristics of servant leadership enable project leaders to become more agile and facilitate the team’s success:
Promoting self-awareness;
Listening;
Serving those on the team;
Helping people grow;
Coaching vs. controlling;
Promoting safety, respect, and trust;
Promoting the energy and intelligence of others.
Servant Leaders on Agile Projects
Project managers acting as servant leaders will move from “managing coordination” to “facilitating collaboration.” Facilitators encourage the team’s participation, understanding, and shared responsibility for the team’s output. Facilitators help the team create acceptable solutions.
Servant leaders promote collaboration and conversation within the team and between teams. For example, a servant leader helps to expose and communicate bottlenecks inside and between teams. Then the teams resolve those bottlenecks.
Additionally, a facilitator encourages collaboration through interactive meetings, informal dialog, and knowledge sharing. Servant leaders do this by becoming impartial bridge-builders and coaches.
Honouring the first value of the Agile Manifesto: ‘individuals and interactions over processes and tools’, a servant leader can help to remove organisational impediments. On a practical level you can look at processes that are lengthy, causing bottlenecks and impeding a team’s or organization’s agility. It could be a process established by change control boards, or audits where you can partner and work with others to challenge them to review their processes to support agile teams and leaders. For example, what good is it for the team to deliver working product every 2 weeks only to have the product fall into a queue or process that could take 4 or more weeks to release due to lengthy release processes.
Servant leaders work to fulfil the needs of the teams, projects, and organization. Servant leaders may work with facilities for a team space, work with management to enable the team to focus on one project at a time, or work with the product owner to develop stories with the team. Some servant leaders work with auditors to refine the processes needed in regulatory environments, and some servant leaders work with the finance department to transition the organization to incremental budgeting.
The servant leader focuses on paving the way for the team to do its best work. The servant leader influences projects and encourages the organization to think differently.Because servant leaders understand agile and practice a specific approach to agile, they can assist in fulfilling the team’s needs.
A Mental Shift
Agile project managers need to shift from being the centre to serving the team and the management. In an agile environment, project managers are servant leaders, changing their emphasis to coaching people who want help, fostering greater collaboration on the team, and aligning stakeholder needs.
As a servant leader, project managers encourage the distribution of responsibility to the team: to those people who have the knowledge to get work done. Therefore, control of the detailed product planning and delivery is delegated to the team.
Ultimately, the project manager’s focus is on building a collaborative decision-making environment and ensuring the team has the ability to respond to changes.
Many project managers land in the project management profession due to being technical specialists with great success in their field of expertise. However, they are not always fully prepared for the important skills, knowledge and competencies that are critical for success.
Often there is a high expectation to succeed, especially if they come from a background of subject matter expertise or a general management. This begs the question: Is project management for everyone?
Career Path
Their career path does not typically begin with the goal of becoming a project manager, but rather evolves over time as experience builds. There is little to no clarity on the typical career options that project managers have in many organisations. When employees progress into project management positions, they are left to their own devices with perhaps only their line managers providing guidance and support.
According to a report published by Sage (2015), ’Is project management still an accidental profession? A Study of Career Trajectory‘, the study found there is no single project management career path. Rather, the project management role seems to emerge from employee experiences in different roles within the company over a period of years. The more knowledge and experience gained, the more likely it appears the employee will be assigned an integrative role such as project management that touches all functional groups.
Work Management Practices
Below is an Infographic from Wrike based on a Work Management Practice Survey. It was found that many people are expected to do project management at work, even though less than half had “Project Manager” in their title or description. To make it worse, it found that only a third of companies use standard project management approaches. Too much time is spend in meetings and much stress is caused by the use of various tools and platforms to track progress and to do reports, coupled with unrealistic project goals and not being able to find important information.
Without an organisational culture supporting programme management, a strong training program, strategic staffing and team autonomy, it will continue to be very difficult for project managers to succeed in their roles. This will lead to a profession in dire need for mature, professional project managers, to lose potentially good candidates who could have helped to deliver successful projects and programmes.
Which qualities do we need to be successful in life? Above average cognitive intelligence (IQ) and academic achievement are traditional measures of success in life. In fact, companies often focus on technical skills during recruitment and project staffing and ignore the human aspects. IQ, technical skills, academic qualifications and certifications alone however are not enough for success anymore. We are measured against a new yardstick. How we behave, get along with others and work together as a team, have become critical for success.
Much has been written about Emotional Intelligence (EI) the past two decades since the publication of Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book by that title. Research linking EI to performance at work has proliferated. Emotional competence is linked to performance in a variety of jobs, organisations and cultures [1].
The world of work is emotional. Most of us have experienced moments in our lives where we are caught up in daily challenges which distracts us from achieving our goals. Our energy is often drained by peak hour traffic, a difficult client or colleague in a project meeting. We start the day with best intentions but soon we find ourselves in the opposite direction we had in mind. Our emotions have surpassed all sense of reality, leaving us in denial and regretful about our behaviour.
The behaviour of others can influence our emotions and our emotions can influence our performance. Emotions can either help us to achieve our goals or contribute to us not being successful at all. Increasing research evidence suggests that learning to become more aware of our emotions and becoming better at managing our emotions can have a significant positive influence on how effective we are at getting things done. [2,1,4]. Research has shown that EI exceeds IQ when it comes to success. EI has become one of the biggest predictors of success at home, at the office and life in general. [3].
Emotions and the structure of the brain
Understanding the concept of emotion will add more clarity. An emotion is a physical reaction or change in our body based on what we experience in our environment, e.g. something we see, hear or think. An emotion is a trigger for our body to act. The basic emotions are anger, sadness, fear, enjoyment, love, surprise, disgust and shame. Each emotion is accompanied by a biological signature. With anger heart rate increase, fear leads to sweaty hands and enlarged pupils, surprise causes the eyebrows to lift and with shame, blood often rushes to the face.
Emotions are often referred to as matters of the heart. The human brain however is central to our emotional and rational life specifically two of its components, the limbic (emotional) brain and the rational brain. The limbic brain records everything that happens in our lives. It serves as our emotional memory and controls all emotional related matters and biological signals such as tears of sadness. It is the centre of our fight or flight responses and stores a repertoire of possible reactions when triggered. As we grow older, with life experience this repertoire of responses, is extended. Our response to each emotion is also influenced by our experiences, upbringing and culture. The limbic brain is key to our survival as humans. Our rational brain on the other hand is responsible for problem-solving and decision making.
Emotional hijacking
When faced with danger, the rational brain will start the problem solving process evaluating all relevant factors to devise a plan of action. While this is happening, the emotional brain will consult its repertoire of stored responses and send out the necessary fight or flight instructions to the body. The emotional brain reacts much faster than the rational brain and in effect hijacks the rational brain and simply takes over. Before we can rationally think what to do, our emotional brain decided and our body reacted. This is often where afterwards we struggle to understand why we acted in a particular way since “…this is not me, I am not like that…”.
Intelligently managing our emotions
EI in essence is the ability to manage the above emotional hijacking that happens in our brain. In layman’s terms it translates to acting appropriately in any given situation. From an academic perspective, EI is a “set of skills relevant to how we perceive, understand, reason with and manage our own and others’ feelings” [5].
If we recognise and understand what we are feeling and why, we can intelligently manage our emotions and use it to our advantage in decision making. Without this ability, our emotions can often be a source of great misery in our lives. The good news therefor is that EI can be improved, if we have the desire to do so. Self-awareness can help us to understand how our emotions influence our behaviour. This insight can assist in rewiring our limbic brain to ensure that our behaviour is more in line with our intentions and values.
This is the first instalment in a series on emotional intelligence. Further articles will unpack the business case for EI, how EI is measured as well as the difference between EI and IQ. Each of the emotional competencies that combine to make up emotional intelligence will be discussed in further detail. South African research on the role of emotional intelligence in project management will also be shared.
Please subscribe to Virtual Project Consulting not to miss any future updates!
References
Sala, F. 2006. The international business case: emotional intelligence competencies and important business outcomes. In Druskat, V.U., Sala, F & Mount, G. (eds). Linking emotional intelligence and performance at work: current research evidence with individuals and groups. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum: 125-144.
Bar-On, R., Handley, R. & Fund, S. 2006. The impact of emotional intelligence on performance. In Druskat, V.U., Sala, F. & Mount, G. (eds). Linking emotional intelligence and performance at work: current research evidence with individuals and groups. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum: 3-19.
Goleman, D. 1995. Emotional intelligence. New York, NY: Bantam Books.
Van Blerk, W.E. 2013. The role of emotional intelligence in implementing information technology strategies. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Cape Peninsula University of Technology, Cape Town.
Palmer, B.R., Gignac, G.E., Ekermans, G. & Stough, C. 2008. A comprehensive framework for emotional intelligence. In Emmerling, R.J., Shanwal, V.K. & Mandal, M.K. (eds). Emotional intelligence: theoretical and cultural perspectives. Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science: 17-38.
About the Author:
Eben van Blerk is a Manager and Senior Business Analyst with more than 25 years’ corporate experience in information systems. Eben holds a Doctor of Technology degree in the role of emotional intelligence in information systems work. He has a keen interest in the role of emotional intelligence in performance at work and a passion for assisting individuals, through coaching and mentoring, to become more emotionally intelligent. In addition to presenting industry talks and facilitating emotional intelligence workshops, Eben has co-authored articles and book chapters on leadership and emotional intelligence in local and international publications.
We have seen how Project Management as a profession has matured over the past few decades. There were numerous shifts concerning tools, approaches and training, to emphasis on new skills and pursuing certifications.
Enjoy the summary in the Then & Now Infographic brought to you by Wrike project task management software
With the rise in Agile adoption, the need for a streamlined process around the software development life cycle, through development and testing to production is paramount. The capabilities that make up DevOps are provided by people, defined practices and automation tools, according to the DevOps for Dummies. (Source: DevOps for Dummies by Sanjeev Sharma, Bernie Coyne)
DevOps Reference Architecture Source: DevOps for Dummies
While shifting to a DevOps approach is ideal for agile team to deliver value to customer faster, it can cause problems within a project development team. In fact, it’s been known to cause a few problems during the production implementation.
Here are some of the challenges faced by DevOps teams today.
Clearly Defined Roles and Permissions
Not having clearly defined roles and permissions for a DevOps teams can cause many problems.
When it comes down to it, developers and operations teams have different roles that sometimes overlap. It’s important to address these overlaps so that everyone knows not only what they’re responsible for, but what they aren’t permitted to do. For example, developers shouldn’t be able to access the same logs as sysadmins (source: https://papertrailapp.com/log-management).
Roles will allow DevOps teams to utilize applications that will encourage access rights management that promote effectiveness and compliance.
Choosing the Right Projects
While starting to implement DevOps, it’s important to take a gradual, strategic approach. Rather than trying to transfer all new projects to the new management system, choosing a few projects and analyzing the benefits and challenges is key. From there, refining the implementation process and expanding will help make DevOps successful.
That being said, not all projects are meant for a DevOps approach. Many businesses are faced with challenges when it comes to change management. While one of those challenges is letting go of the old way, another is often identifying when the old approach works better for a specific project.
Attention to Detail and Testing
One of the main benefits of DevOps is the ability to finish projects quicker through a continuous feedback loop. However, quicker isn’t always better, especially during the early days. When aiming to move more efficiently, it’s critical that DevOps teams don’t neglect the testing process. Quality assurance testing to ensure that everything is bug-free is one of the most important steps in development, and the DevOps approach doesn’t always put this task in the limelight.
When releasing an app with bugs, it can cause a bad user experience. This can cause a blame game with the development and operations teams, creating a negative team dynamic that will impact future projects.
Legacy Infrastructure and Tools
Focusing too much on the tools and not enough on the team dynamic is a unique challenge that many organizations face when switching to a DevOps culture. However, not putting enough attention into the infrastructure and tools can also be detrimental.
Using legacy infrastructure while trying to modernize standard operating procedures can be a significant limiting factor, even if the current infrastructure has been useful for years. The businesses that have the most success with DevOps are those that switch to a micro-services approach, implementing automation and innovating their old applications.
Of course, making these changes can be a monumental task, and can often lead to a “chicken or the egg” conundrum when trying to determine which practices versus which infrastructure should be changed first. Managing all of these changes without getting distracted by the wide array of tools meant to assist with DevOps can be time-consuming and costly.
Successful DevOps
Creating a successful DevOps culture isn’t an overnight process. It can take months of creating a culture of positive communication and cohesion between teams, and even longer to take a sustainable approach to scaling.
However, by focusing on the team itself, having the right foundation in place, and testing rigorously, DevOps can change the face of a business for the better.
Appropriate planning of a project is the hallmark of a professional project manager—good planning is what sets apart great projects from failed initiatives. It is what ensures that the executive actions undertaken remain connected to the goals and outcomes expected by the stakeholders. A project plan is a framework for decision making throughout the life of the project. It is hardly surprising then that the significance of planning in projects is much greater than in any other management discipline.
Is planning still an important skill?
Today if you ask a project manager what the most important skill they require for their job is, they are likely to refer to areas such as stakeholder management, communications, leadership, or behavioral competencies. Is this because it is assumed that planning is obviously important and does not need to be mentioned or is it that project managers believe that with the right leadership style, communications and engagement they don’t need planning? Do approaches such as Agile, which expound people over process, deliberately or inadvertently promote the obsolescence of planning?
After more than 70 years of experience in project management, and working with hundreds of professional, high-performance project managers, we know planning in projects is essential, but have also found the planning discipline to be both underused and misunderstood. Three factors we believe are responsible:
Planning is tricky to teach and to learn. Methods and frameworks such as PMI and PRINCE2 discuss processes involved in planning, but neither gives real insights into what a good plan is and what proper planning feels like. The purpose of the planning process is to structure the controllable factors to make the project achievable within the set of success conditions (constraints and critical success factors).
Planning is confused with scheduling. We do sometimes wonder if this is deliberate! We note the frequent and common substituting of the one word for the other, and the way sponsors accept Gantt charts when they ask for the project plan. Microsoft Project may or may not be a useful scheduling tool. What it most certainly is not, is a planning tool. What is so saddening is that while every project benefits from having a plan, it is less evident that all need a schedule, and many that have one don’t follow it.
Templates are introduced to standardize and simplify planning. Possibly, in a well-intentioned effort to ease the learning curve for junior project managers and inexperienced sponsors, project management offices provide, promulgate, and sometimes mandate the use of a planning template. While without a doubt there is a single idea behind the need for a project plan, the impact of the differing contexts of projects frustrates the ambition for a single ‘silver bullet’ template.
There is no single approach to planning
In our research into what makes project managers successful, planning, along with monitoring and control, are the two areas where high-performance project managers spend most of their time. What is also clear from the findings is that the most distinctive characteristic is their ability to use their experience and know-how to adapt their planning approach to meet the specific challenges of the project they were managing.
There is no single approach to planning a project, but neither is project planning a free-for-all. One consistent finding is that the context— the environment within which planning takes place—determines the approach that is most appropriate to use; which techniques and tools are most suitable; and what factors to consider.
About the Author:
Louise Worsley, with her husband, Christopher Worsley, are the authors of Adaptive Project Planning, published in February 2019. This book prepares you for many of the common project planning situations you will meet. It addresses how planning and planning decisions alter, depending on the constraint hierarchy: how resource-constrained planning differs from end-date schedule planning, what is different between cost-constrained plans and time-boxing. It also discusses the challenges of integrating different product development life cycles, for example, Agile and waterfall, into a coherent and appropriate plan.
Readers of Virtual Project Consulting who buy the book now, will receive a discount of 15% – use buying code WOR2019. Click on the image!
You all know how challenging it is to stay productive at work all day long. There is so much time wasted on inefficient work like:
Scouring through email looking for documents
Accidentally using outdated information, causing necessary rework
Waiting for someone to send you the information you need
Answering “Can I ask you a quick question?” desk interruptions
There are productivity techniques to help combat some time wasters like multi-tasking. For example, a time-management method called the Pomodoro Technique (first developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s) that works on the principle that you focus on a task for 25 minutes and then take a break for five minutes. This technique forces you to focus on a single task, eradicating the negative effects of attempted multitasking. This focus has an immediate positive impact on your productivity and will enhance your work speed.
However, it’s estimated that 25% of the average worker’s day is wasted on inefficient work. That’s huge. If you work an 8-hour day, that’s 2 hours wasted every day. …10 hours per week. …520 hours per year. Do the math and you’re paying the average worker for 65 days (over three months of work!) of “info gathering” every year. For every employee in your company!
Another way to increase your team’s productivity, is to use work management tools which help teams cut out these inefficiencies, so we can stop spending so much time on “info gathering” and start putting our time into actually getting work done.
Read more on the challenges teams and managers are facing in today’s workforce in the Infographic below, sponsored by Wrike. Try Wrike’s work management tool free for the next two weeks, and challenge your team to get more done every day.
Virtual Project Consulting 10 year Blog Celebration from Virtual Project Consulting
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