Sophy Chilingarova provides consulting services to help organizations improve business processes, communication, project management, and efficiency. She has experience managing complex projects involving multiple stakeholders and disciplines. Some of her services include analyzing processes, implementing changes, and training staff on topics such as agile planning, communication, and conflict resolution. She has worked with companies in industries like software, urban development, and economic and social issues.

1. Sophy Chilingarova
http://sophychilingarova.com
http://linkedin.com/in/sophychilingarova
http://crazy-questions.blogspot.com
Services for commercial, research,
civil projects and organizations
Kyiv, Ukraine
Global and local

2. Cutting costs
Crisis management
“Bringing order to it”
Fast growth management
Cross-disciplinary projects
Knowledge management
Complex projects
Efficiency
All the examples below are real cases from my practice. Names of
the companies are not revealed for the sake of commercial privacy.

3. Case 1. Cross-Department
Communication
If some of your employees or
departments “work badly”
Crisis management
“Bringing order to it”
Cutting costs
Customer satisfaction

4. Situation
Company producing software and mobile
applications for clients has consistent problems with
their very creative design department.
Designers are always out of schedule, ready work
does not comply to managers' requirements,
deadlines are missed, customers are unhappy.
What to do? Dismiss all? But will the new ones be
better? Design department looks overloaded with
work but is it really so? Nobody of the company's
management have enough experience in the design
area to make conclusions.

5. Analysis. First Touch
After a couple of meetings it appears that
designers also have complaints.
They don't feel themselves a part of the team,
schedule and tasks are unclear and always
changing.
Somebody is always running up with something that
“should have been done yesterday”.
Software development managers say:
“No, it's not true!”

6. Solution
Through series of consultations with both
departments and series of joint meetings, the
following was developed and set up:
● a process to assure that designer acts as a part
of the project team
● set of tools to communicate and store task,
schedule, and status information approved and
agreed on by both teams
● a work process for design team to split time
between “short-term” and “long-term” and
minimize interruptions; again, approved by all
interested parties

7. Results
Predictable schedule became possible.
Obligations are not broken, company doesn't loose
customers for this reason.
In the design department, as a grass-roots process,
a person able to take up management tasks
showed up, with the consent of the others.
Work relationships improved.
Moreover, opening an extra designer position
(that before considered as no-question, just had to
understand what skills we really needed) appeared
unnecessary: the current team can handle all.

8. Case 2. Corporate Knowledge
Management
If you need to:
● better control your company
● share knowledge and practices to enjoy the
effect of scale instead of spending extra money
Crisis of growth
Knowledge management
Visibility and transparency
Multiple stakeholders
Process standardization
Cutting costs

9. Situation
Fast growing company. Marketing and sales
departments are established in different parts of the
world and naturally given a great deal of flexibility and
freedom since this is a necessary condition for growth.
But at some point higher management starts feeling
that they are loosing vision of what is going on in
the company.
A coordination tool is needed to assure that all
departments and new hires comply to important
policies and goals, improve cooperation, prevent
spending resources for “reinventing the bicycle” by
sharing practices, tools, and knowledge.

10. Thus, a decision was made to build an
intranet portal for these purposes.

11. Analysis. First Touch
A series of interview with stakeholders revealed the
main needs in information/knowledge management
and coordination. As well as gave a hint of the current
practices and habits.
Based on this:
● a draft structure for portal was outlined
● along with a draft work process allowing
departments to fill the content themselves, as a part
of their normal work, without need to hire a special
“content management” team

12. Further Analysis & Implementation
Suggested tools were checked for their ability
to support the requirements.
While the base framework was implemented, a
more detailed structure was agreed on with
stakeholders and passed on to developers.
Implementation steps and schedule defined.
Responsible persons (half-time for this project)
were assigned by departments management
and the process of cooperation set up.

13. Further Analysis & Implementation
1st version of the portal with the most critical
information was released.
Defined work process between business
teams and back-end development set up and
working.
For further, more stable phase of the project, the
company management assigned a designated
project manager to coordinate it's roll-out.
...continued

14. Results
Company got a one-entry-point tool for all
the most important information and
coordination.
Very simple at the beginning, it could grow
and scale smartly to include more information
and data sharing capabilities
Implementation and support took very little
additional resources above what company
was already using.

15. Case 3. Work Process
Improvement and
Automation
If you need to save your resources
Cross-team coordination
Eliminate unnecessary work
Cutting costs
Automation

16. Situation
Global company producing an advanced
hardware-software product with a complicated
release process.
Several teams in different parts of the world are
involved.
The goal is to reduce human work during the
release process.

17. Analysis and Solution
Communications and interactions between
teams analyzed.
All the activities taken by different teams listed
and reviewed for opportunities to simplify and
automate.
Based on this: communication processes
redefined and a substantial part of the work
passed from humans to scripts.

18. 3-5 days weekly work for several highly
qualified employees in several teams reduced
to one day work for one person.
Not less than for a half of this reduction – not
automation, but work process reorganization
accounted.
Results

19. Case 4. Complex Project
Management
If you need to coordinate effort of multiple
parties in your project,
sometimes multiple legal entities
Cross-department cooperation
External providers
Client-oriented project

20. Situation
Company buys a service from external online
service provider to support one of its important
client-oriented processes.
Integration of this service requires joint effort of the
provider, several departments dealing with different
groups of clients, and internal back-end support
team.
As often, soon appears that the provider's view of
how business processes work does not fully match
the company's view (while it still has some
important features that make it valuable).

21. Solution
Scrupulous work of:
● specifying the desired process
● comparing with provider's capabilities
● agreeing on some changes to make, and some – to
skip
● defining priorities with the business team
● coordination of work between business
stakeholders, external provider and back-end
development department

22. A workable solution is implemented
and launched.
All sensitive clients interests are
satisfied.
The company got the new
opportunities it was striving for.
Results

23. Case 5. Cross-Disciplinary
Research Team
If your task is formulated vaguely but a result
must be concrete. If the team consists of
people with different background and each
one is equally important
Multiple stakeholders
Uncertain goals
Conflict of interests
Professional misunderstanding
Efficiency

24. Situation
A team of highly skilled researchers and
specialists from different disciplines working on a
naturally cross-disciplinary task.
While all the skills are valuable and knowledge
multiplication effect is critical – there are some
problems too.
Different vocabulary and way of thinking in different
professions. Different types of people with different
expectations and vision.
The goal is general and it is the team's task to
make it specific.

25. Approach to Solution
If it's a new team, it takes time. People need time
to get used to another way of doing things.
Moderate sensitively. Watch time but remember
that only certain things can be done in a certain
amount of time.
No tragedy if not all that was planned has been
done if you can use properly what actually has been
done.
Make the best of communications in the group.
Give people initiative.

26. Results
Yes, it's possible
to work in such conditions
and provide results valuable for a client who
values “brick and mortar” (drawings and
numbers) in a finite period of time
and keep the team satisfied.
See http://openurbanlab.org for details.

27. How I Can Help You
Consulting for management on
● changing business processes to improve productivity,
communication, adaptability, control
● eliminating extra costs due to inefficient processes
● eliminating critical flaws
Help in the change implementation
● plan so that all stakeholders interests are considered
● create a common action plan with all stakeholders
● train, coordinate, adjust, look after

28. How I Can Help You - II
Launch a new project / Guide complex project
● gather all stakeholders requirements
● analyze current state and what is possible
● agree on a common action plan
● look after it's implementation
Train your staff on
● agile planning/work
● communication/resolving conflicts

29. Companies & projects I worked with
Motorola, Veeam Software, e-Legion, StarSoft
European University in St.Petersburg, Start Development
(St.Petersburg)
...
Co-founder of Open Urban Lab (http://openurbanlab.org)
Co-organizer and moderator of multiple workshops in urban
development
Volunteer manager and expert in “Nova Kraina” civil platform,
field or economic development and urban development
Cooperating with H.Beolle Stiftung and other organizations in
civil society development projects, Ukraine

30. My Qualifications
Project management, process management, business
process analysis, business efficiency
Stakeholder approach, complex and multiple-stakeholders
projects, cross-disciplinary team management
Formal PM methodologies: agile, scrum, kanban, RUP,
CMMI, 6 sigma...
Software & IT industry, urban development, economic &
social development, place-making, group-work moderation
and coordination
Organizational structure and theory, motivation, social
psychology, sociological methods

31. Contacts
http://sophychilingarova.com
http://linkedin.com/in/sophychilingarova
phone: +38-050-299-2704