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JLL (Nyse: JLL)
Future of Project Management: Driving Value for Agile Organizations
Gokul Nedumaram
Successful agile transformations have four main characteristics:
(a) Strong buy-in from top level management, with unwavering support, to drive change and make the appropriate investments.
(b) Shift focus from project based to product-based approach to change the way initiatives are funded and to enable persistent teams.
(c) Transform the culture to outcome-based approach, fostering a culture of innovation, experimentation and self-governed teams.
(d) Investment in the right tools, with appropriate training, to implement on-demand DevOps based delivery.
The Project Management Organization (PMO) and the project managers can be the driving force of this agile transformation. They can take an active role in enabling all the four characteristics mentioned above.
Champion business agility
Business agility changes the mindset of an organization. Business agility can transform how an organization thinks, acts and responds to changes and opportunities. Organizations who implement agile practices only for their IT teams, and not the business and operations teams, won’t be successful in the long-run. Just as how it is important for IT teams to transform their practices, the business and operational teams also must change their mindset to be agile. Otherwise, the organizational transformation comes to a screeching halt.
PMO can help organization to envision how value can be unlocked by building passionate, empowered workforce, nurture individuals and teams with growth mindset, evolve processes and structure to pursue emergent opportunities.
PMO can be the enabler to bring governance and ensure strong portfolio management for initiatives that can demonstrate measurable business value. With good facilitation skills, PMO can bring diverse group of business leaders to align their initiatives to the organization’s vision. They can bring consistency in the way prioritization is done and business value is measured. They can make the process of transformation transparent and measurable to influence the future direction. They can analyze the roadblocks to agility and determine if there are systemic issues and if it is one-time occurrence.
Organizations like Business Agility Institute serve as an excellent resource for knowledge and training in business agility. The PMO can partner with such organizations to coach the executive teams on the various aspects of business agility and how to implement it in their business domains.
Own the delivery process
Successfully scaling agile requires strong leadership to foster team cohesion and collaboration. The project managers can take charge of the delivery process by coordinating across multiple agile teams. The strong foundations of project management like stakeholder management, communications, planning and risk management will come in handy. The project managers and PMOs can lead in the following three areas:
(a) Leadership: Bigger initiatives will require a delivery lead who can manage multiple agile teams, including business, IT and operations. Experienced project managers are usually good in leading by influence. This is a key skillset in becoming a servant leader, who can influence the agile practices. Practices like scrum of scrum can help to identify and remove organizational impediments that are beyond the control of individual scrum masters.
(b) Governance: The project managers and PMO may have to shed some of their traditional thinking with respect to standards and status reporting and focus on outcomes and business value. With the growing use of Enterprise Agile tools, the data collection and reporting can be automated, which frees up time for the project managers and scrum masters from doing mundane status reporting.
(c) Agile Practices: Championing agile practices is not about enforcing standards but about working with agile mindset. There is a difference in ‘doing agile and being agile’, and the project managers can do agile health checks to ensure good agile practices are being followed. They can encourage practices like try-test-learn approach and look for learning in every iteration or sprint. They can coach the individual teams’ scrum masters to improve team cohesion and collaboration.
Getting trained in agile scaling frameworks like Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) or Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) greatly enhances a project manager’s chances of success. Even if the organization doesn’t decide to adopt a scaling framework, there are some best practices in each framework that can help with resolving the obstacles.
The learnings and experience of a PMO are still relevant and required for running successful agile organizations. None of the above scaling frameworks talk about a traditional PMO, although DAD framework references program and project managers. So, the project managers and PMO may have to evolve into different roles to serve the future organizations’ needs. By taking an active lead in the organization transformation, the PMO can become the Agile Transformation Office. The project managers may have to transform themselves and take the roles like Delivery Manager, Release Train Engineer, Agile Coach or Scrum Master.
Organizations like Business Agility Institute serve as an excellent resource for knowledge and training in business agility. The PMO can partner with such organizations to coach the executive teams on the various aspects of business agility and how to implement it in their business domains.
Own the delivery process
Successfully scaling agile requires strong leadership to foster team cohesion and collaboration. The project managers can take charge of the delivery process by coordinating across multiple agile teams. The strong foundations of project management like stakeholder management, communications, planning and risk management will come in handy. The project managers and PMOs can lead in the following three areas:
(a) Leadership: Bigger initiatives will require a delivery lead who can manage multiple agile teams, including business, IT and operations. Experienced project managers are usually good in leading by influence. This is a key skillset in becoming a servant leader, who can influence the agile practices. Practices like scrum of scrum can help to identify and remove organizational impediments that are beyond the control of individual scrum masters.
(b) Governance: The project managers and PMO may have to shed some of their traditional thinking with respect to standards and status reporting and focus on outcomes and business value. With the growing use of Enterprise Agile tools, the data collection and reporting can be automated, which frees up time for the project managers and scrum masters from doing mundane status reporting.
(c) Agile Practices: Championing agile practices is not about enforcing standards but about working with agile mindset. There is a difference in ‘doing agile and being agile’, and the project managers can do agile health checks to ensure good agile practices are being followed. They can encourage practices like try-test-learn approach and look for learning in every iteration or sprint. They can coach the individual teams’ scrum masters to improve team cohesion and collaboration.
Getting trained in agile scaling frameworks like Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Large Scale Scrum (LeSS) or Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) greatly enhances a project manager’s chances of success. Even if the organization doesn’t decide to adopt a scaling framework, there are some best practices in each framework that can help with resolving the obstacles.
The learnings and experience of a PMO are still relevant and required for running successful agile organizations. None of the above scaling frameworks talk about a traditional PMO, although DAD framework references program and project managers. So, the project managers and PMO may have to evolve into different roles to serve the future organizations’ needs. By taking an active lead in the organization transformation, the PMO can become the Agile Transformation Office. The project managers may have to transform themselves and take the roles like Delivery Manager, Release Train Engineer, Agile Coach or Scrum Master.
The articles from these contributors are based on their personal expertise and viewpoints, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of their employers or affiliated organizations.
