Smart Automation is defined as using technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), bots and robotic process automation (RPA) to automate complex business processes. The end goal? Improved productivity, accuracy and consistency with minimal human interaction and therefore lower costs.
The traditional role of a Project Management Office (PMO) is to define the standards for project management within an organisation. Sounds simple enough, right? Define the rules and then ensure everyone sticks to it… But when “the rules” in this context actually means finding the best, most effective and innovate ways to ensure strategic business alignment and delivery success, it’s easy to understand why PMOs constantly need to reinvent themselves. As project management continues to make significant shifts toward faster, smarter delivery, the key to survival for any PMO is finding the best way to facilitate agile practices by blending the right mix of technology, people and process. Leveraging technology to automate PMO tasksArtificial Intelligence (AI) and Robotic Process Automation (RPA) technologies are being used across many different industries to automate mundane and labour-intensive tasks. For the modern PMO, it offers the opportunity to automate all of the day-to-day tasks related to data collection, tracking and reporting. This is great, not only from a time-saving perspective but because it also means the PMO team can shift their focus to activities where they can add more value. Building a data analytics strategy A PMO’s power lies in its understanding of when and how projects succeed and fail, not only from a pure delivery perspective but also looking at post-implementation success factors like market share, customer satisfaction, employee adoption, increased profits and sales. Having access to this information allows the PMO to properly guide teams in a way that ensures a much higher rate of success. Understanding governance within an agile contextWith the shift to agile delivery methods, governance, visibility and control are all things that typically fall by the wayside due to the misconception that it only succeeds in slowing delivery down. The PMO’s mission should be finding the right governance fit for the industry type, organisational style and delivery scale by continually evaluating and assessing with the goal to make continuous adjustments and refinements. Placing a greater emphasis on coaching and upskilling With the shift to agile, PMOs typically expand to include people from across the business who come with a wealth of business expertise and experience but aren’t necessarily technically skilled from a delivery perspective. The PMO needs to step into a coaching role to support these new team members in effective ways of working while also building a better understanding of project dynamics, challenges and key considerations. Conducting a PMO audit It’s easy to fall into the trap of merely offering the PMO services that you think all PMOs should offer, but do these really make any material difference to the business? The purpose of a PMO audit would be to take a critical look at each and every service that is offered, marrying this up to what your business stakeholders need, and then stopping and starting services accordingly. In this way, you’re ensuring that you are focusing your collective energies in all the right places, thereby cementing your place within the broader organisation. Struggling with any PMO-related issues within your organisation? Give Analyze a call on 021 447 5696 or email us on info@analyze.co.za to find out how we can help.
Digital Transformation, in simple terms, is defined as the use of digital technologies to revamp your business processes (or create new ones) in order to improve the way you operate and to provide more value to your customers. But in reality, it is a whole lot more than that. It is also a mindset change, one that requires you to be open to continuous exploration and experimentation in order to find new and innovative ways to solve business problems.
Strength-based leadership is defined as the ability to identify and make best use of not only your own strengths, but also the strengths of your team. This is done by moving away from traditional employee development methods, which typically zone in on areas which people need to improve on, and rather highlighting where they excel and understanding how that contributes to the greater good of the organisation.
A Request for Proposal (RFP) process can be intimidating for any project. This is because there’s a lot riding on selecting the correct partner, one who is not only like-minded and aligned to your ways of working, but who can execute on your requirements in a way that is matches your company’s strategic outlook. After you’ve gone through the effort of putting together a detailed RFP information pack that fully describes the project mission, goals and objectives, the focus needs to shift how you will evaluate each respondent in order to determine the winning bid.
All project can be complex to manage, but there’s something to be said about the extra complexity that large-scale projects introduce. There are varying opinions on what exactly a large-scale project is, but to us it refers to a project that requires a much larger team (think 50 people plus), at least a year or more to complete and a much larger investment than your average project might.
In an article published on Fin24.com earlier this year, it was reported that, according to a study done by global cybersecurity company Kaspersky Lab, malware attacks in South Africa had increased by 22% in the first quarter of 2019 alone.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time of course… The same goes for developing a software product. Trying to tackle all of the features and functionality at once is going to feel like you’ve taken on an impossible task, and risk of failure will be high. By breaking that product down into its standalone components, you can start building the product up, one feature at a time.
With the allure of lower running costs, flexible payment options, easier deployment, improved security and scalability, as well as painless upgrade paths, Software as a Service (SaaS) has steadily been increasing in popularity year after year. In fact, SaaS has become so popular that it is estimated that it will account for approximately 60% of public cloud spending by 2020.
Most companies are subject to some form of regulatory obligation, whether you’re building a product, or providing a service, you have to operate within a certain set of rules which have been created to ensure that your product or service is not only safe for use, but also provides value to your customers. Compliance at its core is being able to prove that you are doing what is expected according to this prescribed set of rules.