Strategy & Business

Projects Deliver No Value! – interview with Mark Smalley

Where ASL offers guidance how to provide applications and related services, the Business Information Services Library offers guidance to business people who “consume” IT as a business asset. Their concerns are typically: How much budget should I allocate to information and technology, as opposed to other business assets such as people, machines, buildings? What kind of information and technology do I need to help my business both survive and succeed? How do I deal effectively with the IT department? How do I ensure that the users actually realize the value from the significant investments? How can I demonstrate that I am managing information and technology in accordance with its importance to the organization?

Wdrożenie AI a zarządzanie zmianą – lekcje, wyzwania, sukcesy – wywiad z Łukaszem Dwulitem

Z pewnością rozwój AI przyniesie nowe wyzwania związane z bezpieczeństwem i prywatnością danych. Niemniej jednak, jestem przekonany, że świadome i stabilne zarządzanie tymi technologiami oraz stworzenie odpowiednich regulacji, pozwoli nam bardziej skupić się na korzyściach, które sztuczna inteligencja może nam przynieść i ograniczy potencjalne ryzyka związane z tą transformacją.

Seeing the World Through ADKAR Glasses. Why Change Management is Indispensable in Business? – interview with Scott McAllister

Through the pandemic, organizations worldwide shared a very similar experience, and leaders worldwide realized they’re in the people business irrespective of their industry. So, I think the pandemic actually helped to put the discipline of change management more into the spotlight. I challenge our discipline members: it’s our time to shine, but this window won’t stay open forever, so we really have to demonstrate value. However, I think more and more leaders now understand that just knowing the right answer is not enough. We must bring our teams along on the journey, even if we’re unsure of how to do so. But more and more leaders are starting to realize the value of adoption, contribution to business outcomes, not just having the strongest technical solution.

Ventures in Pursuit of Startup Happiness – interview with Tore Rasmussen

Lean Startup uses scientific method on new ideas. So, instead of writing a really long business plan that is filled with assumptions you start by addressing that all you have are these ideas and assumptions but you don’t know anything. Let’s try to formulate our assumptions into falsifiable hypothesis and let’s identify the most critical assumption and test it with real customers. So, you don’t start building. You take the minimum viable product and you try to test different aspects of your business model on real customers and you get real feedback when you’re early in the ideas. You just test with problem interviews, paper or a prototype and get feedback and you can learn from that. In comparison to agile software development, Lean Startup method suggests to deploy the product to production on the first day. You build something straightaway just to test it and tasks don’t come from uses stories but they come from experiment.

PMOs Should Speak the Language of Business – interview with J. Kent Crawford

Where companies are doing PPM without the PMO, I wonder: are they managing the portfolio strategy? I would contend they are not; I would contend that’s part of the execution of the strategy. The strategy, the strategic objectives, the goals, for what comes in the future year, should be generating the drivers, the determinants for what then you use to structure the portfolio. Then the project management office or demand office, or whatever we call this, uses these drivers to build the business cases. Some organizations have great alignment for organizations between strategy and execution but where that is lacking, we’ve got to fill the gap. The steps that come after the identification of the strategy and the initiatives that will fulfill it, those steps are not really performed in a strategy office. The PMO needs to cover that.

ESG – zmiana dla ludzi i planety – wywiad z Filipem Wójcikiem

ESG (ang. Environmental, Social i Governance) to już swego rodzaju nowa rzeczywistość (bo trendem tego nazwać nie można), która niejako wymusza na firmach, aby zaadresowały w swoich działaniach potrzeby nie tylko właściciela czy akcjonariusza, ale także pozostałych interesariuszy, jak chociażby pracowników, klientów oraz środowisko naturalne. Zmiana też nie jest nagła. I chociaż możemy cofnąć się do pierwszych kroków w stronę ESG jeszcze w XX wieku, to takim dużym kamieniem milowym było porozumienie paryskie z 2015 roku, określające redukcję globalnych emisji. Jeżeli nic nie zrobimy, będą nasilać się ryzyka fizyczne (np. susze, huragany, powodzie), co również negatywnie odbije się na życiu i zdrowiu ludzi oraz kondycji gospodarki. Pamiętajmy jednak, że ESG jest szerszym obszarem niż tylko klimat i nie powinniśmy tego pojęcia spłycać. Mówimy też tutaj o prawach człowieka (w tym pracowniczych) i sposobie zarządzania organizacją.

Project Management in Clinical Trials – a Healthy and Sustainable Future – interview with Agata Bloswick

Clinical project management uniqueness lies in its specific application within the drug development industry.  Our focus is on testing new medicines on patients, involving human experimentation. As a result, we must adhere to a multitude of ethical and regulatory principles alongside the standard project management principles.

Thriving in Chaos: Unlocking the Secrets of Strategic Luck in a Disruptive World – interview with Jonathan Brill

We’re clearly moving into a world that is more disruptive and where there’s more randomness in our businesses and our lives. And that means that we need to think differently about how we interact. With the world moving forward, instead of focusing first on optimization and efficiency, we need to focus first on resilience and flexibility because when you do that, you create dramatically better outcomes over time. There are three basic things that you can do to increase your resilience and flexibility. The first and most important thing is to become aware of the range of things that are possible. If you believe that the range of things that are possible are only those that you’ve experienced in your lifetime, then we’re in for a big Surprise!

Ekosystem innowacji i rozwoju – jak pomóc startupom osiągnąć sukces? – wywiad z Pauliną Muszyńską

Startupy to młode, dynamiczne przedsiębiorstwa dążące do szybkiego wzrostu i skalowania swojej działalności. Jednakże towarzyszące im cechy i wymagania często sprawiają, że zaangażowanie w prowadzenie startupu staje się czymś więcej niż tylko biznesowym przedsięwzięciem. I tu właśnie mówimy o startupie jako stylu życia.  Może być pasjonujący i satysfakcjonujący, ale wymaga ogromnych nakładów pracy, poświęcenia i umiejętności radzenia sobie z presją. Potrzeba tu zaangażowania na najwyższym poziomie, innowacyjności i kreatywności, ale też zdolności do zarządzania wieloma aspektami działalności. Startupy to specyficzne twory, które rządzą się swoimi prawami i często mają niesztampowy „cykl życia”. 

Leading Projects with Data – How to Effectively Transition to Data-Informed Project Management – interview with Marcus Glowasz

Despite all the hype about data, analytics, and primarily AI, it must be clear that people remain the key factor in projects. AI has zero value without data, and data has zero value if people are not bought into data as a concept. In the end, data is produced through people’s activities. That could be project plans, RAID logs, stakeholder maps, etc., but also presentations, meetings, reports, lessons learned, and so forth. Everything is data that we as people produce and need to feed into a data ecosystem for us to make continuous use of growing information and knowledge. And with such a workable data ecosystem, meaningful analytics can be applied that produce valuable insights for our project decisions.