An article discusses how an agile approach is enhancing the visitor experience for sports fans across Europe. It notes that new, more agile stadium designs are being adopted that feature high-density seating, WiFi connectivity throughout, and mobile-friendly services that allow fans to order food and drinks from their phones. This new type of "Agile stadium" is aimed at better engaging younger generations of fans accustomed to connectivity and is expected to help grow sports fan bases. The Amsterdam ArenA is cited as one of the first European stadiums to adopt this new agile approach.
In our quest to assist companies in creating a 'fail-fast, fail-forward' culture, we share this memoir which touches upon how capturing lessons learnt are part of the growth process and are valuable building blocks for companies who rely on innovation to stay competitive.In this article we share 13 key principles that we use at TOPP TI to help organisations put a structure in place to allow their 'Intrapreneurs' a safe place to experiment, brainstorm and cultivate that next big idea that will keep your company competitive and bring you to your next destination in innovation
In the decades to come, open innovation will play a key role in developed economies revolutionising how organisations deliver value to their customers, shareholders and employees.
This focus on IDEATION will allow companies to become or remain innovative, increasing the chances for new products, customer acquisition and increased financial performance.
PRESTO’s idea crowdsourcing functionality allows your leadership team to ‘throw challenges’ to the crowd accelerating the idea generation process to align your staff’s problem solving skills with the executive corporate growth strategy
FCB Partners Webinar: The Story of a Process Centered OrganizationFCBPartners
Join Butch Peterman, CEO at Abrasive Technology, and his colleague Tanya Patrella as they describe their 20-year journey to a Process-Centered Organization. They'll take us back to 1995, when they first met Michael Hammer and adopted his ideas about business process design.
Abrasive Technology is a midwestern success story, a U.S.-based global manufacturer of super-abrasive grinding wheels and tools that has continued to thrive while others lost ground to offshore competitors. Peterman and Patrella attribute the company's sucess to process management along with heart culture, a business philosophy that brings together the interests of associates, suppliers, customers, and community.
Detecon Strategy Accelerator with WorkboardMarc Wagner
“Without a strategy the organization is like a ship without a rudder - going around in circles.”
Our Detecon Strategy Accelerator enables you to radically change your strategy process within a very short time and thereby significantly increase the ambition level of your entire organization. The focus here is on the consistent introduction of OKRs and their technical mapping with the help of our partner "Workboard". In line with our #CompanyReBuilding organization, you will also succeed in creating the basis for an agile and dynamically robust organization. Interested? We are looking forward to your inquiry.
In our quest to assist companies in creating a 'fail-fast, fail-forward' culture, we share this memoir which touches upon how capturing lessons learnt are part of the growth process and are valuable building blocks for companies who rely on innovation to stay competitive.In this article we share 13 key principles that we use at TOPP TI to help organisations put a structure in place to allow their 'Intrapreneurs' a safe place to experiment, brainstorm and cultivate that next big idea that will keep your company competitive and bring you to your next destination in innovation
In the decades to come, open innovation will play a key role in developed economies revolutionising how organisations deliver value to their customers, shareholders and employees.
This focus on IDEATION will allow companies to become or remain innovative, increasing the chances for new products, customer acquisition and increased financial performance.
PRESTO’s idea crowdsourcing functionality allows your leadership team to ‘throw challenges’ to the crowd accelerating the idea generation process to align your staff’s problem solving skills with the executive corporate growth strategy
FCB Partners Webinar: The Story of a Process Centered OrganizationFCBPartners
Join Butch Peterman, CEO at Abrasive Technology, and his colleague Tanya Patrella as they describe their 20-year journey to a Process-Centered Organization. They'll take us back to 1995, when they first met Michael Hammer and adopted his ideas about business process design.
Abrasive Technology is a midwestern success story, a U.S.-based global manufacturer of super-abrasive grinding wheels and tools that has continued to thrive while others lost ground to offshore competitors. Peterman and Patrella attribute the company's sucess to process management along with heart culture, a business philosophy that brings together the interests of associates, suppliers, customers, and community.
Detecon Strategy Accelerator with WorkboardMarc Wagner
“Without a strategy the organization is like a ship without a rudder - going around in circles.”
Our Detecon Strategy Accelerator enables you to radically change your strategy process within a very short time and thereby significantly increase the ambition level of your entire organization. The focus here is on the consistent introduction of OKRs and their technical mapping with the help of our partner "Workboard". In line with our #CompanyReBuilding organization, you will also succeed in creating the basis for an agile and dynamically robust organization. Interested? We are looking forward to your inquiry.
One of the greatest challenges organisations face today is to continuously evolve their products and services and the processes that underpin them. The emergence of digital tools and methodologies for unlocking operational efficiency and elevating the customer experience has radically changed the steps we need to take to achieve operational excellence.
A fresh approach to improvement is needed. For many organisations the goal is the same: enabling agility, designing better and faster processes and uplifting the customer experience. However, legacy operating models, customary ways of working and siloed approaches to operational improvement often act as a barrier. Put simply, existing methods need to evolve.
As the business landscape shifts, it’s imperative that organisations adopt an enduring, integrated and future-proofed approach to operational improvement which becomes part of ‘the way we do things around here’.
Unintegrated approaches: It’s not uncommon to see a disconnect between teams that work across the same end-to-end value stream, with one group identifying automation processes using technologies such as Robotic Process Automation and Artificial Intelligence, others redesigning processes using lean tools and techniques to remove rework and waste, and separate teams using workflow tools to digitise manual work. Each of these examples presents a lever that can be pulled to uplift operational performance, but addressing them together provides the most powerful recipe for maximising customer value.
How SilkRoad’s integrated talent management solution helped remove the HR paperwork mountain generated by high staff turnover and robust training requirements at Lumo Energy
Read more here: http://bit.ly/1p6Iy9p
Stop scaling... Start growing an Agile Organization!Andrea Tomasini
Strategic advantage lies in being yourself and doing the right things the right way. Those who copy what their competitors are doing, place themselves behind the pack — a sure way of losing. This is why “scaling” agility is misleading at best, and disastrous at worst. When you take an existing model and fit your organization to that, you lose much of what makes you unique and different.
Companies small and large must instead learn to grow their own agility for their own advantage. This sounds simple — and it is, when you know what to look for.
In this keynote, Andrea Tomasini presents guidelines and heuristics for growing an agile organization. You will understand why the first step in any transition must be learning how to change. Small inexpensive experiments and empirical metrics will lead you towards your strategic goal, iteratively and incrementally.
The agile transition never ends — but you know it’s working when transitioning becomes a way of life. This not only lets you adapt to new market conditions: it also allows you to create change in the market, on your own terms.
The complexity of scaling agile in a large organization
Fundamental principles on “growing”
Concrete examples (Siemens, Ericsson…) from companies of all sizes (60-6000 employees)
The principles are simple, but they must apply to the organization, not the product or the system architecture.
The heartbeat of a growing organization.
Agile India 2018 Conference is Asia's Largest and Premier Conference on Business Agility, Design Innovation, Digital Transformation, Continuous Delivery, DevOps, Agile, Scrum, eXtreme Programming, Lean, Kanban, Enterprise Agile, Lean Startup, Research, and Patterns. Get to meet pioneers and expert practitioners from around the world on Agile Mindset, Scaling Agility, Lean Product Discovery, Continuous Delivery and DevOps. 4 - 11 March 2018 at Taj West End, Bangalore. More details: https://2018.agileindia.org
CGS serves as a trusted partner, enabling some of the world's largest global enterprises with their technology rollouts, process adoption and culture transformations. We help clients to Inspire, Collaborate, Empower and Deliver.
Employee First, Customer Second (EFCS) is a radical new philosophy of HCL Technologies.
Through this philosophy the aim was to create a unique employee organization, drive an inverted organizational structure, create transparency and accountability within the organization, and encourage a value driven culture.
For more information. please visit www.employeefirst.in
Future State Operational Transformation FrameworkFuture State
This framework stresses the importance of interdisciplinary capabilities across process excellence, innovation, change management, org effectiveness and portfolio management,
Out of the success of some pilot (experiments) more and more organizations are stumbling on how to scale those experiments throughout the rest of the company. What most organizations end up doing is to reuse over and over again the same structures and the same rules they have been using for years, missing entirely the point about Agile. If you want to make it work for your organization, start from looking within a Team and understand what makes them Agile... look deeper into principles and values, not so much in practices, as those will emerge out of experience from your teams. Also understand the major difference between becoming agile and adopting agile. The latter encourage the wrong behaviour of looking on the market at existing models to adopt, and roll-out within your organization. Look at those model as a confirmation that is possible to solve your problems - as someone else apparently already did - and as inspiration. Also be vary of models which are not stemming out of experience, but of a lot of thinking, as that doesn't fit well to the Agile and Lean paradigm. Finally there are many factor you can evaluate in your journey toward becoming more Agile, there are level of complexity growing at an organizational level which you might not find in teams. Finally look at identifying metrics for tracking your progress in a way that reflects the outcome your organization is delivering and not the "work" is doing. In fact learning to work in an Agile way means learning to deliver more, by doing less. In the presentation I use the metaphor of an organization being a "car" rather than an organism, because of pure esthetic reasons, it would get rather bloody with an organic metaphor. I am aware like all models, has its weaknesses, and one of those is that it is mechanic, and predictable, unless it is a transforming car :-)
Operations Excellence in Apparel Logistics: This presentation looks at what operational excellence is and the benefits of being excellent in all aspects of apparel logistics operations.
Estimate Value to Deliver Value: Effectively Estimate the Value of Requiremen...Dave Sharrock
Agile organizations move work to dedicated teams, rather than move people to projects. In order to succeed, the Business Analyst needs to continually compare the value of different projects or work requirements to make sure that the teams are working on the most valuable items at any one time. But how can you compare new features that increase your profitability with platform migrations that increase your system stability or administrative features that reduce operational overhead? Where do BAs spend their time and how do stakeholders get their critical projects done?
The Experience Canvas provides a one-page requirement definition that allows stakeholders to effectively discuss and estimate the value of each requirement.
Using the Experience Canvas, we show how:
Stakeholders can compare and contrast the value of very different requirements with very different objectives,
Business Analysts can estimate return-on-investment using effort estimates from the team (investment) and value estimates from the stakeholders (return).
EFQM Sustainable Excellence -Primer and Good PracticesChris Hakes
Primer on the 2010 EFQM Excellence Model.
Examples of International good practices for Leadership, Strategy, People, Process and Resource Management.
Examples of sound of measurement practices for People, Customer, Societal and Business results.
One of the greatest challenges organisations face today is to continuously evolve their products and services and the processes that underpin them. The emergence of digital tools and methodologies for unlocking operational efficiency and elevating the customer experience has radically changed the steps we need to take to achieve operational excellence.
A fresh approach to improvement is needed. For many organisations the goal is the same: enabling agility, designing better and faster processes and uplifting the customer experience. However, legacy operating models, customary ways of working and siloed approaches to operational improvement often act as a barrier. Put simply, existing methods need to evolve.
As the business landscape shifts, it’s imperative that organisations adopt an enduring, integrated and future-proofed approach to operational improvement which becomes part of ‘the way we do things around here’.
Unintegrated approaches: It’s not uncommon to see a disconnect between teams that work across the same end-to-end value stream, with one group identifying automation processes using technologies such as Robotic Process Automation and Artificial Intelligence, others redesigning processes using lean tools and techniques to remove rework and waste, and separate teams using workflow tools to digitise manual work. Each of these examples presents a lever that can be pulled to uplift operational performance, but addressing them together provides the most powerful recipe for maximising customer value.
How SilkRoad’s integrated talent management solution helped remove the HR paperwork mountain generated by high staff turnover and robust training requirements at Lumo Energy
Read more here: http://bit.ly/1p6Iy9p
Stop scaling... Start growing an Agile Organization!Andrea Tomasini
Strategic advantage lies in being yourself and doing the right things the right way. Those who copy what their competitors are doing, place themselves behind the pack — a sure way of losing. This is why “scaling” agility is misleading at best, and disastrous at worst. When you take an existing model and fit your organization to that, you lose much of what makes you unique and different.
Companies small and large must instead learn to grow their own agility for their own advantage. This sounds simple — and it is, when you know what to look for.
In this keynote, Andrea Tomasini presents guidelines and heuristics for growing an agile organization. You will understand why the first step in any transition must be learning how to change. Small inexpensive experiments and empirical metrics will lead you towards your strategic goal, iteratively and incrementally.
The agile transition never ends — but you know it’s working when transitioning becomes a way of life. This not only lets you adapt to new market conditions: it also allows you to create change in the market, on your own terms.
The complexity of scaling agile in a large organization
Fundamental principles on “growing”
Concrete examples (Siemens, Ericsson…) from companies of all sizes (60-6000 employees)
The principles are simple, but they must apply to the organization, not the product or the system architecture.
The heartbeat of a growing organization.
Agile India 2018 Conference is Asia's Largest and Premier Conference on Business Agility, Design Innovation, Digital Transformation, Continuous Delivery, DevOps, Agile, Scrum, eXtreme Programming, Lean, Kanban, Enterprise Agile, Lean Startup, Research, and Patterns. Get to meet pioneers and expert practitioners from around the world on Agile Mindset, Scaling Agility, Lean Product Discovery, Continuous Delivery and DevOps. 4 - 11 March 2018 at Taj West End, Bangalore. More details: https://2018.agileindia.org
CGS serves as a trusted partner, enabling some of the world's largest global enterprises with their technology rollouts, process adoption and culture transformations. We help clients to Inspire, Collaborate, Empower and Deliver.
Employee First, Customer Second (EFCS) is a radical new philosophy of HCL Technologies.
Through this philosophy the aim was to create a unique employee organization, drive an inverted organizational structure, create transparency and accountability within the organization, and encourage a value driven culture.
For more information. please visit www.employeefirst.in
Future State Operational Transformation FrameworkFuture State
This framework stresses the importance of interdisciplinary capabilities across process excellence, innovation, change management, org effectiveness and portfolio management,
Out of the success of some pilot (experiments) more and more organizations are stumbling on how to scale those experiments throughout the rest of the company. What most organizations end up doing is to reuse over and over again the same structures and the same rules they have been using for years, missing entirely the point about Agile. If you want to make it work for your organization, start from looking within a Team and understand what makes them Agile... look deeper into principles and values, not so much in practices, as those will emerge out of experience from your teams. Also understand the major difference between becoming agile and adopting agile. The latter encourage the wrong behaviour of looking on the market at existing models to adopt, and roll-out within your organization. Look at those model as a confirmation that is possible to solve your problems - as someone else apparently already did - and as inspiration. Also be vary of models which are not stemming out of experience, but of a lot of thinking, as that doesn't fit well to the Agile and Lean paradigm. Finally there are many factor you can evaluate in your journey toward becoming more Agile, there are level of complexity growing at an organizational level which you might not find in teams. Finally look at identifying metrics for tracking your progress in a way that reflects the outcome your organization is delivering and not the "work" is doing. In fact learning to work in an Agile way means learning to deliver more, by doing less. In the presentation I use the metaphor of an organization being a "car" rather than an organism, because of pure esthetic reasons, it would get rather bloody with an organic metaphor. I am aware like all models, has its weaknesses, and one of those is that it is mechanic, and predictable, unless it is a transforming car :-)
Operations Excellence in Apparel Logistics: This presentation looks at what operational excellence is and the benefits of being excellent in all aspects of apparel logistics operations.
Estimate Value to Deliver Value: Effectively Estimate the Value of Requiremen...Dave Sharrock
Agile organizations move work to dedicated teams, rather than move people to projects. In order to succeed, the Business Analyst needs to continually compare the value of different projects or work requirements to make sure that the teams are working on the most valuable items at any one time. But how can you compare new features that increase your profitability with platform migrations that increase your system stability or administrative features that reduce operational overhead? Where do BAs spend their time and how do stakeholders get their critical projects done?
The Experience Canvas provides a one-page requirement definition that allows stakeholders to effectively discuss and estimate the value of each requirement.
Using the Experience Canvas, we show how:
Stakeholders can compare and contrast the value of very different requirements with very different objectives,
Business Analysts can estimate return-on-investment using effort estimates from the team (investment) and value estimates from the stakeholders (return).
EFQM Sustainable Excellence -Primer and Good PracticesChris Hakes
Primer on the 2010 EFQM Excellence Model.
Examples of International good practices for Leadership, Strategy, People, Process and Resource Management.
Examples of sound of measurement practices for People, Customer, Societal and Business results.
Being a freelancer is great. Self-employment is one of the most rewarding opportunities available. It's a foot-step for becoming a business owner.
It's not always easy. Finding clients, especially when starting out, can be the most difficult challenge. The tactics detailed in this presentation are designed to help your business when the future seems uncertain.
AgileBA is one of the fastest growing certifications in the Agile and BA world, and this presentation looks at an overview of the subject and exam process
Business Transformation Best Practices Summit in ParisRafael Lemaitre
A 3 days workshop and best practice exchange.
Benchmarking tour 20 to 22 September 2016, Paris.
Day 1: Digital Transformation
Day 2: Digital Innovation
Day 3: Strategy Execution
Time to join the revolution: Agile change in financial servicesAccenture Insurance
Agile change has always been a priority for financial services organizations. However, in today’s rapidly evolving digital world, it is now clear that they must make it a critical capability to survive and thrive. Applying agile end-to-end business change increases the speed to benefit, and impacts every aspect of a business from customers and employees to organization and processes. Making change their core competence will help FS firms find new ways of serving customers and creating value. This report spells out what is needed to succeed with agile, and proposes five culture-related steps FS firms can take to improve their organization agility
A high level conversation with the CIOMajlis in Dubai on how Agile Transformation (Real & Fake) are an opportunity for CIOs to build collaboration within the CEO Office and drive transformation in a post-industrial age.
As VUCA becomes the norm, the smart leaders are able to realise the power of collaboration across functions and set their eyes fully on delighting the customer. the core customer.
CIOs can drive the transformation from industrial aged thinking and executing to the digital agile era by introducing to their peers pure play Agile Tools such as Scrum & Kanban Boards to drive OKRs of the C-suite; applying Agile rituals into the C-Suite to drive faster smarter decisions and collaborations, and by systematically applying Alex Osterwalder's Value Proposition Canvas & Business Model Canvas within the Lean Start Up and/or Design Thinking approaches so that CEOs & their leadership teams can ship product and services that customers actual want and will pay for.
The Fake Agile is simply when the centre of the business' universe is not delighting the customer, where shareholder values still dominate strategic initiatives. This customer first mindset, triggered by the late Peter Drucker, may well be some years away.
Oh yeah, I know, that's a heck of a mouthful of tools I'm throwing in there, but if you are truly going to transform to the digital age you have to STOP doing a lot of useless 'stuff'.
A big thank you to Steve Denning, Alex Osterwalder, Steve Blank, Jeff Sutherland and my close friend and partner for all large scale agile transformations at Wemanity Are Van Bennekum for providing content and guidance on my journey and mission to hep entrepreneurs turn their vision into reality. Thanks!!
Gamification is able to support all the recruitment phases, encourages and improves the general involvement of employees and simplifies the training-on-the-job. Gamification is a
a strategic tool to stimulate creativity, involvement, and motivation of employees and to get in touch with “Millenials", an increasingly important target for HR management.
The way people connect in their personal and professional lives has changed
fundamentally in the last few years – the world has effectively formed a giant network.
People now expect to be able to get things done at work in the same way.
Office 365 is an invitation for your organization to work in that way. It allows you to
become more connected, collaborative and structured in how work gets done. But it can
only do that if you take the people in your organization on that journey with you.
The Office 365 Customer Success team have contributed our experiences of working
with customers on their journeys to working differently to this guide. We hope it inspires
you with what is possible and that you like it, use it and share it with the people in your
organization. We’d welcome feedback on it, through the Office 365 Network.
Change the way you work, because the way you work impacts the work you do
PRESTO is a business performance enhancement solution offering a fresh perspective on operational discipline to many aspects of business management that are often missed using traditional approaches. This executive deck give's a top-down view of PRESTO complete with a case study and client testimonials from a client in the UAE.
Driving Operational Efficiency, Engaging the Business and Managing Change Across Shared Services
Mastering the Change Management Challenge for Stronger Talent and Consistent Performance
This digital transformation programme aims to equip you with the latest skills to assess how your company should evolve and transform in Digital Revolution 4.0. It aims to equip you with a digital strategy roadmap.
This digital transformation programme aims to equip you with the latest skills to assess how your company should evolve and transform in Digital Revolution 4.0. It aims to equip you with a digital strategy roadmap.
2. AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET2 AGILEBUSINESSINFO.CO.UK
D
espite how it is often portrayed,agile
and flexibleworking isn’t just about
meeting the demands of employees or
offering incentives to members of an
enterpriseworkforce.Although this is
a crucial factor and outcome,agility in
business is about more than employ-
ee benefits.It is away for companies to meet their strategic
business goals in a challenging business environment.It in-
volves doingwork differently and focusing on performance
and outcomes rather than on time and attendance.
New,more agile models ofwork are being adopted not only
by nimble,entrepreneurial start-ups but by larger more es-
tablished organisations as a necessary means to survive in
today’s fast paced and global market.
TheAgile Future Forum (AFF)was established in 2012 by
22 founder companies to support the growth of agilewor-
king practices across UK PLC.Our organisations differ in si-
ze,sector and location,but share a commonview thatwork-
force agility,supported and implemented by business lead-
ers can deliver sustainable,enhanced business performance
and greater employee engagement.Our research suggests
the benefits are equivalent to 3 – 13% ofworkforce costs.The
biggest driver ofvalue is the ability to meet the demands of
your customers more effectivelywhilst recruiting and re-
taining talented staff members.
Agileworking is about businesses and employeesworking
together to considerwhere,when and how towork to
maximise productivity,innovation and ultimately deliver
bestvalue to an organisation.There isn’t a one-size-fits-all
solution for every business but agileworking has helpedAFF
companies to compete in the global market. We call on
other business leaders to consider thevalue thatworkforce
agility may bring to their organisation and ultimately,to the
UK economy.
Workforce agility
is integral for UK
PLC to thrive
Traditional ways of working are no longer
sustainable. In this age of instant connectivity,
demographic and social changes, as well as
increasing customer demands, business leaders
and organisations are recognising the need
to think about the way they operate.
Fiona Cannon OBE
Director, Agile Futures Forum
“The biggest driver of value is the ability
to meet the demands of your customers
more effectively whilst recruiting and
retaining talented staff members”
READ MORE ON AGILEBUSINESSINFO.CO.UK
The Agile stadium
Spotlight on
the innovative
developments of high
density stadiums
across Europe
P4
Planning for change
Can an Agile approach
to your business
improve planning and
productivity?
P7
Champions of Agile
Tips on the key
ingredients needed to
successfully adopt an
Agile culture within
your business
Please RecycleFollow us MediaplanetUK @MediaplanetUK @MediaplanetUK
Managing Director: Carl Soderblom Content and Production Manager: Brogan Wright Designer: Vratislav Pecka Business Developer: Alex Williams Project Manager: Sam Ayerst E-mail: sam.ayerst@mediaplanet.com
Mediaplanet contact information: Phone: +44 (0) 203 642 0737 E-mail: info.uk@mediaplanet.com
IN THIS ISSUE
AGILE
Make it work for your
business and your people
Agile projects are more likely to succeed
3times
64%
of features delivered
via traditional
project methods are
rarely or never used
The Values
Individuals and interactions over
processes and tools
Working software over
comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over
contract negotiation
Responding to change over
following a plan
Success
The business benefits
92% 63%
78%
recommend
agile
average quality
improvement
of stakeholders
more satisfied
52%
Ability to change organisational culture
41%
General resistance to change
33%
Availability of people with the necessary skills
31%
Management support
26%
Project complexity or size
Challenges
Top barriers to agile adoption
Before and after
The business benefit
63%
cheaper
83%
fewer defects
24%
faster delivery
63%
smaller teams
Learn more about Agile Business on
agilebusinessinfo.co.uk
Source: BCS – The Chartered Institute for IT
4. AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET4 AGILEBUSINESSINFO.CO.UK
www.gowerpublishing.com/projectmanagement www.gpmfirst.com
Gower Publishing
Specialists in Project and
Programme Management
You’ll find over 120 books from classic project management
through to the most challenging and cutting edge works,
all written by leading international experts
GpmFirst – NEW for 2015
Online eBook Library and
Community of Practice
Subscribers to GpmFirst can enjoy online access to over 120 project
management books and a rigorously moderated expert CoP featuring
author extras, articles, templates, checklists, slides, training tools,
models, videos, podcasts, workshops and facilitated discussions.
Create a personal profile and a customised branded informal,
corporate or student network to share content with your group.
IPMA have donated 400 subscriptions of GpmFirst to
develop new Project Manager skills and capability in
developing nations.
Sign up today for your free 28 day trial!
INSPIRATION
The Agile stadium
The Amsterdam ArenA One of the first stadia in Europe to make the move to Agile
The Agile stadium is coming to
Europe and is bringing with it
an experience that the next ge-
neration of fans will love and
bring them back to watching
sports in stadia again.
Long gone will be the days of foot-
ball being watched only by men
over 40 on television and in pubs
and stadiums; with long queues to
buy beer & food in a cash only envi-
ronment with connectivity so bad
in some stadiums that phone calls
are a challenge and anything else
on the phone is impossible.
The next generation of fans are
experiencing the world through
mobile.They are creating their own
content and sharing that with their
friends and other fans. They watch,
buy, curate and create every day so
that retail has already redefined it-
self to fit that pattern. Sports is star-
ting to catch up. The US is leading
the way with almost all the NFL sta-
diums now fully connectedwith HD
Wifi and MLS and NBA have also in-
vested in smart stadia technology.
The 49ers WiFi system has a net-
work backbone that can transfer 40
gigabits of data each second. That’s
about 40 times faster than today’s
fastest home internet connections.
The 49ers 68,500 fans can order be-
er and food from their smartphone
app and getvideo and other content
in the stadium with fans able to sel-
fie and upload anytime they want
to share the experience.
In Europe many of the big Stadia
havenotyetinstalledHDWiFi,butit
is coming. AFC Ajax, FC Schalke 04
and Borussia Dortmund are moving
from an analog to a digital fan enga-
gement experience.This is the start
ofsmarterAgile stadiums in Europe
and a better fan experience which
is the basis to bring the next gene-
ration of fans back to the stadia.
Agile:It’snotjustforITanymore
High-performingorganisationsaredemonstratingthat
adheringtoprovenproject,programme,andportfolio
managementpracticesreducesrisks,cutscosts,and
improvessuccessratesofprojectsandprogrammes–allwhile
helpingtoensurethatprojectsandprogrammesremainalig-
nedtotheorganisation’sstrategicobjectives.
ITorganisationshavelongreliedonAgileprojectmanage-
menttechniquestohelpthemachievethesegoals.Asglobal
competitionincreases,though,moreindustriesaretakingno-
ticeofAgile’sversatilityandincorporatingittotheirtoolkits
asawaytoadapttochangingproductmarkets,fluctuations
intheeconomy,andshiftsininternalorganisationalstrate-
gy. Organisationsfromindustriessuchasfinancialservices,
education,energy,constructionandgovernmentarereporting
that,whenimplementedcorrectlyandintherightconditions,
Agileishelpingthemdojustthat;accordingtoProjectMana-
gementInstitute’sPulseoftheProfession®In-DepthReport:
OrganisationalAgility,organisationsthatareadeptatagile
processesaretwiceaslikelytoreportsuccesswiththeirnew
initiativesastheircounterpartswithlowagility.
RespondentstoPMI’sPulseoftheProfession®In-DepthRe-
port:OrganisationalAgilityidentifiedkeyactionsthatthey
associatewiththesuccessfulimplementationofagilemetho-
dologyattheirorganisations.64percentcited‘shorterdeci-
sion/production/reviewcycles’;54percentcited‘integrating
thevoiceofthecustomer’;and53percentcited‘eliminationof
organisationsilos’.
Regardlessofwhichsubsetoftoolstheyuse,practitionersat
organisationsthathaveincorporatedAgilepracticesagreeon
onepoint:agileiswhatyoumakeofit.Thecultivationofan
Agileprojectcultureevolvesorganicallywithinanorganisa-
tionbasedonitsuniqueneeds,assistedbyrigorouschange
managementprocesses.Ratherthanjumpinginhead-first,
you’llwanttoselect,sampleandincorporatethetechniques
thatbestfityourcompanyprofileandintegratetheminto
projectprocessesinmanageable,measuredincrements.
Brian Weiss
Vice President, PMI Practitioner Markets
Johannes Waldstein
Co Managing Director, FanPlay
PHOTO: HUAWEI
5. AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET MEDIAPLANET 5
kognitio.com/know
You have too much raw data
You want to know who, when, what, why?
You need to predict, to anticipate
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Data
In the words of 1986 film character Ferris Bueller “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look
around for a while, you could miss it.” In the 18 years since the John Hughes classic was released,
digital technology has increased the speed of business exponentially.
Howcloudcomputingisenabling
businesstobemoremobileandAgile
I
n 1986 the landline telep-
hone was the main com-
munication tool and being
at work meant being in an
office for eight hours. Fast
forward to 2015 and internet tech-
nology, mobile services and cloud
computing mean our working li-
ves are moving fast and the line
between home and work continu-
es to blur.
Technology has enabled busines-
ses to become more responsive to
customers’ needs, with employees
able to access the same computing
services,platforms and power at ho-
me and on the move as they can in
the office. This mobility and agility
would not be possible without cloud
computing. The cloud provides the
computing infrastructure and eco-
nomies of scale that enable busines-
ses to access increasingly complex
computing applications and servi-
ces on a pay as you use basis, accor-
ding to business requirements. The
financial flexibility of cloud services
means companies are gaining ope-
rational efficiencies whilst reducing
their ITexpenditure.
Back in 1986 this would have been
unimaginable. As would the abili-
ty to access a company’s core busi-
ness systems and data from any lo-
cation; or conduct analysis of bu-
siness data on the move using a
smartphone, laptop or tablet. Ho-
wever, the development of a mobi-
le, responsive, flexible, agile work-
force has become a reality due to
cloud computing.
Looking ahead 15 years, it’s clear
that cloud computing is funda-
mental to the next wave of digital
development. The Internet of
Things and the rise of the smart ci-
ty will mean a significant increase
in data. Only the cloud will provide
the data storage, processing and
analytical capabilities needed to
unlock its value. Thanks to servi-
ces and applications built, mana-
ged and accessed using cloud com-
puting, businesses will become
more mobile, increasingly Agile
and faster than even Ferris Buller
could have ever imagined.
Learn more on
agilebusinessinfo.co.uk
Sue Daley
Head of Programme, Big Data, Cloud
& Mobile, techUK
PHOTO: THINKSTOCK
6. AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET6 AGILEBUSINESSINFO.CO.UK
ImplementinganAgileculture
Poorunderstandingofhowstrategyis
managedwithintheorganisationis
themajorbarriertosuccess.Agileor
not.WhybeAgileifyourstrategyisdelive-
ring? However,mostorganisationsfailinthis
becausetheirportfoliosarenotfocusedonthe
deliveryofbenefit.Theprojectsthataresup-
posedlydelivering thebeneficialchangebe-
comedetachedwhentheyshouldatalltimes
bedynamicallylinkedtoperformanceandin
turnrigorouslymonitoredandassessed.
It is that rigorous monitoring and assess-
ment that ensures the project is on track
and still going in the right direction which
allows for agility.Agility to me means keep-
ing in step with your strategy while having
the ability to change as soon as the signal to
do so occurs.
Robert Streeter
Senior Project Manager,BCS
The Chartered Institute for IT
Agile is justanothertoolinthebox.It’sjust
anotherwayofsolvingthechallengeofgetting
thingsdone.Anymethodcorrectlydeployed
willproduceefficienciesandcompletethejob.
There is also a tendency to think that the
‘new’ thing is somehow going to be better.
What agile does is provide a new verna-
cular to problem solving and work execu-
tion that a good project professional will ha-
ve been able to solve from previous project
management knowledge and experience.
Any project will perform badly if the
teams and stakeholders have no confiden-
ce in the method.Agile has provided new
hope.And if being different and new gets
things done I fully support it. But I await
the research evidence which shows me it
really is cost effective.
Agile has a part to play in almost any
project.Any risk manager would agree that
it could be used where there is high uncer-
tainty and poorly defined scope, or within
a work package in a well-structured project
and possibly for new product development.
Could it be used to manage the portfolio
of a large enterprise? Unlikely.The costs of
oversight and integration are currently pro-
hibitive.
What do you see to be the
barriers to business’ becoming more
Agile?
How does Agile compare to other ap-
proaches and what are the advantages?
How do you see Agile developing in
your industry?
Modern change initiatives can hap-
pen through internal innova-
tion, but more commonly they
are being driven by external influences on
the business environment. It follows that,
in order to stay competitive, businesses and
individuals face three choices: Resist chan-
ge, allow change to happen without mana-
gement, or apply formal change manage-
ment to drive the process. Resisting change
brings the risk of becoming irrelevant.Al-
lowing change to simply “happen” might
seem the easy path, but ultimately the bu-
siness will lose out as others remain more
pro-active. Change is happening all around
us,whether we want it to or not. The im-
portant thing, then, is to develop the abili-
ty to recognise the change, identify what is
needed and respond accordingly.
Embracing the benefits of Agile can
result in significant business wins – but by
definition a move to a new approach means
a new mind-set, and that can be harder to
achieve.Today,Agile is supported by a range
of techniques such as Scrum, Kanban and
User Stories.What’s more, applications of
Agile have moved well beyond the software
development arena alone. Now,Agile is an
emerging player in areas such as product
development, DevOps, project management
and business analysis.That, of course, me-
ans that adopting Agile has become a chal-
lenge that extends far beyond the core IT
team,where such a change could be imple-
mented in a relatively discrete way. But the
good news is that there doesn’t need to be a
one size fits all approach when you’re ma-
king the move.
Advances in technologyareallowingbu-
sinessestomoveawayfromapurefocuson
buildingfromthegroundup.Instead,theycan
starttofocusmoreonsolvingthebusinessis-
suesanddealingwithchangingbusinessen-
vironments,usingAgileapproachestomove
quicklytosolutionsandbenefitsrealisation.
As technology and Cloud solutions ad-
vance and mature this trend will continue
at an increasingly rapid pace.As a result,
business leaders need to find ways to ensu-
re that their business is responding to the
competitive challenges they face,whilst at
the same time leveraging the opportunities
that are being presented.
Key toadoptingAgileistoworkouthowto
improvewhatalreadyexistsandintroduce
Agileinawell-informedandtailoredmanner,
basedonwhatyourbusinessneedstoachieve
andwhereyouneedtoimprove.Ifyoucanget
togripswiththatchallenge,thenallthebene-
fitsofAgileareoutthereandprimedtoequip
youforcommercialsuccess.
ThreeleadingexpertstalkusthroughthebenefitsofAgilebusinesspracticeandprovide
insightonhowtheapproachisdevelopingwithintheirindustries.
Read more from our experts online agilebusinessinfo.co.uk
Steve Wake
Chairman, Association for
Project Management (APM)
PANEL OF EXPERTS
The main obstacle to becoming more
Agile is resistance to change. Organi-
sations and practitioners advocating
for Agile face inertia created by years of wor-
king within structured silos and compart-
mentalized task groups.They also face the
fear of new variables and unknowns: “Will I
need to learn new skills?Will my job and my
role at the company, change dramatically?”
Agile advocates have to manage these fears
and changes, and conquer the mind-set of,
“We’ve always done things this way.”
Agile offers flexibility,transparencyand
customer-centricitythatdistinguishesit
fromotherapproaches.Theapproachbuilds
fluidityintotheproject’sscope,tasks,timeli-
nes,andresources,andshortiterativecycles
allowteamstomakecoursecorrectionsover
theprojectlifecycleasneeded.Itfacilitates
communicationbyallowingopen-channel,
open-endeddialogueforrapiddissemination
ofimportantinformation,andpositionsthe
customerasthekeystakeholder,incorpora-
tingtheirinputateveryphaseofexecution.
As the Agile blueprint becomes more
refined and specialised, it is being recogni-
zed as a game-changer across a wider cross-
section of business entities.We’re seeing
more integration of Agile in industries bey-
ond IT and healthcare, including financial
services, education, energy, construction,
and government. By managing this chan-
ge, these organisations are taking the first
steps in the evolution of a more adaptable,
fluid project environment that will pay divi-
dends in higher success rates, greater mar-
ket share, and competitive advantage.
Brian Weiss
Vice President, Practitioner
Markets PMI
7. AN INDEPENDENT SUPPLEMENT BY MEDIAPLANET MEDIAPLANET 7
It is not only the cool techy start ups in East London that can benefit from Agile project management.
Big corporations can save big bucks too. It will speed up your work and make your workers happy.
Timetobeagile
By Stefano Pozzebon
I
n an era of cutting costs and
fast moving scenarios, big
corporations can save ti-
me and money by embra-
cing efficient management
practices that, collectively, come
under the name ofAgile Project Ma-
nagement.
In a traditional management ap-
proach the work is scheduled over a
long period of time and, although it
may be very clear what final results
the project aims to,a top-down con-
trol tends to slow down production.
What an Agile Project Manage-
ment approach does is breaking
down the workload into smaller
segments to create a more dynamic
stream of production. Every seg-
ment constitutes a work unit assig-
ned to a specific team, each team
being responsible for providing
their results in a short, fixed period
of time,called Sprint.Normally eve-
ry Sprint lasts about two weeks.
This also allows a continuous re-
vision of the work completed so
far, as every work unit is evaluated
at the end of each Sprint. A Sprint
is effectively an independent cycle
of production, and because of the
constant iteration between back-
wards and forwards, this methodo-
logy also comes under the name of
SCRUM, after the rugby formation.
In the game, players must move
forwards but can only pass the ball
backwards, to a supporting player.
In the same way, in an Agile pro-
ject environment each small unit
completes its share of the work and
then passes it on to another unit.
Agile management promotes indi-
vidualinitiativeovercontrolfromthe
top, and, in this way, it is much fitter
to respond to a change,as the develo-
pers are not asked to follow a schedu-
led plan, but rather to move on from
wherethepreviousteamhadarrived.
Linda Lloyd is responsible for im-
plementing Agile practices at Tha-
les, one of the world’s largest aero-
space and naval manufacturers.
She was commended twice by the
Ministry of Defence for leading her
teams to constantly exceed expecta-
tions while managing defence cont-
racts worth millions of pounds.
Adopting Agile in a regulated en-
vironment like the military indu-
stry was not an easy task.“It is more
like a culture that the company has
to take up as a whole,” she says. “Of
course, there are still some require-
ments that must be fulfilled, I am
talking of financial requirements,
regulation requirements and so on,
and there must be a central control
from the top.”
Ahybrid approach is the one to fol-
low: “You still need to track projects,
youstillneedtounderstand,andeva-
luate, the performance of the soft-
ware teams, and to deliver what was
agreedwith the customer.”
For this reason, the figure of the
project manager is key: “It might
look smaller in terms of produc-
tion, because every team should
be working on its own, but the
manager’s role is actually more dif-
ficult because he/she has to deal
with all those different types of re-
lationships and make them work
together.”
Companies that adopt an Agile
mentality are quicker to respond to
changes and their employees bene-
fit from the freedom of initiative
they are given.The role of the mana-
ger is to channel that initiative to
game winning solution.
Linda Lloyd
Portfolio Project Manager,
Thales E-Security & APM
Member
Learn more on
agilebusinessinfo.co.uk
COMMERCIAL FEATURE
Planning for changeThe business case has been
made, the budget agreed,
deliverables defined, stakehol-
ders identified, milestones set
and risks assessed. The pro-
ject plan has been set out and
all systems and processes are
in place. So what could possibly
go wrong?
Even the best laid project and pro-
gramme plans can fallvictim to the
unexpected, leading to costly over-
runs or even cancellation.
According to Stephen Jones,
chair of the Association for Project
Management’s(APM)specificinterest
group on planning, monitoring and
control, the Agile approach provides
that flexible extra dimension to react
rapidlyandgettheplanbackontrack.
“Agileisnotareplacementforpro-
ject management,” he explains.“It is
a framework and mind-set that en-
hances how projects and program-
mesarerun.
“From the outset, you expect that
things are going to change and that
requires different behaviours to mo-
ve quickly and efficiently by crea-
ting anAgile teamwithin the project
team,aplanwithintheplan.”
Stephen introduced an Agile ap-
proach with earned value manage-
ment during the design phase of an
IT implementation programme at
Sellafield Ltd, where he is a project
manager. Thanks to this process,
when the project moved to execu-
tion under another project mana-
ger, an unforeseen issue that could
have had a serious impact on delive-
ry and budget was swiftly identified
and resolved.
He is also contributing author to
APM’s Planning, Scheduling, Moni-
toringandControl:ThePracticalPro-
ject Management of Time, Cost and
Risk,whichincludesasectiononthe
role that Agile can play. The guide is
dueforpublicationthissummer.
He’sconvincedthereisvalueofthe
approach beyond IT, such as in com-
plex engineering design and other
long-term projects where assump-
tions made at the front end often
changeastheplanprogresses.
It’s not an excuse not to do things
properly, he added. It’s not an open
chequebook and it’s not a hiding
place for poor performance.You still
needabaselineplan,youstillneedef-
fectiveriskmanagement.
“But expect that things will chan-
ge and be prepared for that in a way
that allows you to deliver value and
benefits, rather than doggedly follo-
wing the plan.”
About the Association for
Project Management (APM)
– apm.org.uk
The association is a registered
charity with over 21,150 individu-
al and 547 corporate members ma-
king it the largest professional bo-
dy of its kind in Europe. As part of
its strategy to raise awareness and
standards in the profession it is cur-
rently in the process of applying for
a Royal Charter.
APM’s mission statement is “To
provide leadership to the movement
of committed organisations and in-
dividuals who share our passion for
improving project outcomes”.
The Association for Project Ma-
nagement is committed to deve-
loping and promoting project and
programme management through
its FIVE Dimensions of Professio-
nalism.There are a number of ways
in which you can benefit from what
we do, including:
membership
qualifications
events
publications
online services
Association for Project
Management
Ibis House, Regent Park,
Summerleys Road
Princes Risborough,
Bucks, HP27 9LE
+44 0845 4581944
www.apm.org.uk
Stephen Jones
Deputy Head of Project
Management Capability,
Sellafield Ltd
“Agile is not a
replacement for project
management, it is a
framework and mind-
set that enhances
how projects and
programmes are run.”