Things you can do TODAY to advance your Project Management Career

There is a worldwide shortage of project professionals, which presents a huge opportunity for those in project management roles to get ahead. In fact, project management has grown to become one of the UK’s largest areas of business over the last decade.

The ILX whitepaper on Increasing Graduate Employability in 2021 (sign up for a free download), hones in on the project profession’s skills gap. More than 87 million professionals will be needed to fill project roles across the world by 2027. Which is why here at PRINCE2 we are passionate about project professionals unlocking their potential and achieving a fulfilling career in project management.

So, whether you are starting out or looking to advance in the project management field, today is the day to take action! Each of the following tips is actionable right now, and there is no time like the present to advance your career.

Enrol on a training course

Let’s get this one out the door first; naturally, we are going to recommend enrolling on a training course. The UK is facing a major talent shortage, but with a globally-recognised qualification such as PRINCE2 or PRINCE2 Agile, you can gain the business-ready skills that set you apart and enhance your employability.

Those already working in project roles will potentially be offered training courses by their employers as part of a skills development programme. But this is not always the case, and so you must take back control of your own destiny and career advancement. Remember, it is not your manager who is in charge of your career, but YOU!

When looking to enrol yourself in accredited project management training, an e-learning course is a great option for studying alongside your role. E-learning courses are self-paced and available on-demand for maximum convenience.

Step out of your comfort zone

One of the top things you can do to advance your career – or in fact, any area of your life, is to do something that scares you! Hate public speaking? Put yourself forward to do a presentation at work. Guilty of always being a team player? Sign up to take the lead on a project. Go to a networking event or apply for a job that’s higher up the career ladder, the list goes on! Anything that pushes you outside your comfort zone is going to broaden your experience and help you progress, so step up to that challenge today! If the worst happens and it doesn’t go smoothly, then learn lessons from the experience, dust yourself off and try again!

Update your LinkedIn

Updating our LinkedIn profile is something many of us only get around to doing when we are on the hunt for a new job. However, keeping this professional social media presence up-to-date can be of great benefit. For starters, LinkedIn is a fantastic networking tool, it’s great for raising attention to the work you and your company do. It is also the ideal place to open up conversations around topics of interest and gain other professionals’ views on matters.

Beyond this, updating your LinkedIn profile can be the perfect way to reflect. Taking time for reflection will allow you to realise all that you have achieved, and how valuable your work and experience to date has been for your career. Be sure to add details of the projects you’ve been involved with, as well as links, results, outcomes and notable achievements.

The same goes for updating your CV or adding to any other online portfolio of your work. It is always worth bringing up to date whilst a job is fresh in your mind.

Ask for feedback

As daunting as it may be, asking for feedback is a perfectly normal part of work life. Whether it’s from your boss, stakeholders, your peers, or your team, gaining feedback is one of the top things you can do to advance your career. There is much to learn from gaining insight and opinions from others.

The unfortunate truth is that many one-to-ones have been canceled during the pandemic, but there is little reason why these can’t take place online. So even if you haven’t returned to office working, there’s no excuse not to get feedback from your manager. Whilst formal reviews tend to be an annual occurrence, getting less formal feedback can, and should, happen incrementally.

And this leads us nicely onto our next tip…

Set yourself some goals

Feedback from management, stakeholders, and peers should help you set goals. Take onboard what they’ve said and turn it into actionable goals. Put your goals in writing and set out how to achieve them. Keep them small and easily attainable, as realistic targets keep you motivated far better.

Claw back some personal development time

Personal development does not have to involve a BIG commitment. It could be as simple as spending ten minutes after your lunch break reading industry news, articles, or blogs. The PRINCE2 blog is a good place to start. Keeping your finger on the pulse will teach you new things, and can give you a fresh perspective.

Networking is another way to develop yourself. Whether it’s online with fellow professionals, or building relationships with your team, better your relationships with others can do wonders for your self-confidence and ultimately develop your career. In the case of your team, bettering your working relationship is only ever going to be a good thing, so spare the time to talk to your team today.

Source: prince2.com

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Service management adoption in an Agile organization

How do you adapt the ITIL® service management framework to a genuinely integrated agile environment?

In short, it’s not easy but definitely offers a challenging, engaging and surprising journey – one that we’ve been on recently.

ITIL challenges in an agile environment

For example, in a young and purely Agile company devoted to successfully developing HR software for large, prestigious companies, neither service management nor ITIL are necessarily “loved”.

However, despite the outstanding quality of the software developed, the company’s clients were keen to have a clear, well-structured, documented and continually evolving service management structure.

Our goal was to provide a valid and solid response to the customer’s expectations and, at the same time, combine the best of the ITIL framework and an Agile mindset.

The starting point – creating a single point of contact

Beginning with the existing incident process and major incident procedure, we found lots of simultaneously-active communications channels, producing confusion and misunderstanding.

So, the first step was to establish a classic single point of contact (SPOC) – provided by a team (i.e. service desk) or person (i.e. service manager). With all support activities flowing through a simple and effective channel, this had a transformational power: offering clear ownership, reducing waste, removing duplication and enabling a single source of truth.

Where is the value? 

With a demanding customer, it was vital and meaningful that we constantly asked the question: does this activity, procedure or practice add any value to our customer or to us as an organization? ITIL 4’s guiding principle tells us to “focus on value”.

So, we added a lean service request fulfilment process to order and prioritize the numerous service requests that had been handled previously by an incident process. With the clear need for an ITSM tool we selected Jira Service Desk, which was already used by the DevOps teams and ready to integrate with several other tools.

The power of iteration

To iterate means continual and progressive improvement; where failure is not a threat but an opportunity. In ITIL 4, the guiding principle recommends us to “progress iteratively with feedback”.

The concept of the Minimal Viable Process perfectly lines up with the practice of iterations. Therefore, we experimented with incident and service requests to test how our assumptions were working, how our colleagues responded and how our workflow and automation were operating. This helped remove bottlenecks, waste, confusion and fostered simplicity. 

Collaboration, Collaboration and more Collaboration 

Our work's most valuable resource has been the continual collaboration with all stakeholders: the DevOps teams, Operations management, product owners and business relationship managers. To “collaborate and promote visibility” as ITIL 4 suggests covers multiple perspective, needs, and expectations. This was the toughest task we faced but it enriched us and ensured the final results.

Simple and Practical 

We started with an MVP (Minimal Viable Process) based on the core elements, kept it simple and practical, encouraged feedback and then we started again with another iteration. 

Once we achieved an acceptable result with change enablement, we moved to the problem management practice and then to the Information Security Management practice.

We created simplicity to be a failure-proof tool and the first, essential weapon against error and inaccuracy. Therefore, we achieved the goal to cover a large number of requirements with a limited number of processes and adopt a coherent approach.

Automation

With Jira, we have automated communication, synchronization among records, SLA management, teams assignment, access management without the need for code development. This has been one of the biggest surprises – the effectiveness and the simplicity of this ITSM configuration tool has really made our lives easier.

The overall result has been a lean and effective framework of service management practices, stable and mature enough to provide reliable services to a demanding customer.

This has been a great experience and an excellent opportunity to merge ITIL and Agile mindsets.

Source: axelos.com

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Assurance and decisions in programme management

Why are the themes in Managing Successful Programmes (MSP®) valuable for programme management?

For simplicity’s sake, in MSP 5th edition, whilst the principles are akin to rules that should be followed and the processes define a programme’s lifecycle, the seven themes outline topics – key areas for consideration when managing programmes – and a number of practical examples for implementation.

For example, the justification theme covers the entire journey from the initial programme mandate to the complete business case; in other words, addressing the overall purpose of the programme and the desired benefits and value for stakeholders.

The structure of the themes provides the “bread and butter” for a programme manager and these topic areas recur throughout a programme, regardless of what it’s trying to achieve or the industry you are in.

Assurance and decisions themes – a close relationship

While all of the themes in MSP 5th edition are interlinked, the assurance and decisions themes have a close relationship.

The concept of assurance is important to MSP as a whole and it’s really about the programme manager having confidence that what they are doing is right. And being confident is a crucial component when making decisions in a programme because it reverberates through everything: the sponsoring group becomes confident that the objectives will be achieved; investors recognize that outcomes of benefit will be fulfilled and, even at a project level, team members operate under the knowledge that their work in delivering the outputs is important.

For a real-world example that demonstrates how making decisions requires assurance from a multitude of perspectives, there is no better current example than the UK’s multi-billion pound transport initiative HS2.

Assurance and the three lines of defence

In MSP 5th edition, assurance links for the first time to the “three lines of defence” concept, which includes controls at project, programme manager and programme board/sponsoring group levels.

The purpose of this is summed up by thinking of organizational change as the “Wild West”: projects without the governance and controls of programme management can have a self-focused interest, doing what’s right for them but not serving the programme.

So, the first line of defence – focused on individual projects – is about using assurance to make sure projects are running effectively. The second line is where a programme manager takes a “helicopter view” of the whole horizon to ensure each project contributes to the programme or supports another project. The third line is where the programme board or senior leadership team considers the more strategic, long-term goals for the organization to ensure the programme is in line with them.

Having assurance is a given in any programme scenario but needs to be tailored accordingly. For example, an innovation and growth programme, while more speculative, still needs solid checks and balances on the investment made. If the programme is about improving delivery efficiency (such as technology solutions for remote working), assurance is supporting a more long-term strategy for working arrangements.

Decisions – learning from the past

The decisions theme in MSP values what’s been done before and what lessons can inform the future. This is about collectively bringing everyone together with the full facts to make a coherent and rounded decision.

With decision making, more often than not, it’s not possible to please everybody. And with major programmes, decisions are daunting because the implications are enormous. However, if the choice the programme manager makes is in the interests of the programme and organization, then it’s the right decision.

But this is where you need an audit trail with data which demonstrates why particular decisions were made. Ultimately, in programme management, you need to be held accountable for the investments you sanction and the projects you choose to progress or not.

The oversight that MSP’s assurance theme provides and the learnings and awareness of risk that feed into the decisions theme are there to ensure good programme governance.

Source: axelos.com

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How to help agile projects gone awry

To what extent do agile advocates anticipate that agile projects can go awry?

Rarely.

Now that agile practices have almost grabbed “centre stage” (where project management tended to remain in the background) there is commonly little consideration of the question: “is Agile the best choice given this situation?”.

Agile, in recent years, has become more focused on the process of implementing a framework while foregoing measurement of real outcomes with proportional governance and rigour. My own observations over 15 years are that Agile projects fail as often as any others do, although for different reasons. And “Agile transformations” have cost many organizations in lots of ways, with little measurable benefit to their bottom line, business or people.

How and why agile projects go awry?

A failure to consider the bigger project picture is a common reason for Agile project problems.

Agile enables businesses to commit to fixed costs and timelines but with variable deliverables. Often though, businesses try to deliver a fixed set of deliverables iteratively using an Agile-based framework. This will often fail as delivering fixed deliverables is much better suited to a PRINCE2® approach.

Agile focuses on delivering small increments in an iterative way – useful for innovating, responding to feedback, dealing with high rates of change, risk or complexity. However, this can often lead to considering only parts and not the whole.

Conversely, project management typically insists on understanding the scope of what must be achieved, so most projects in 2021 require big picture knowledge.

When Agile focuses on showing something for feedback early on, the necessary infrastructure and data is often neglected, providing wireframes with little meat on the bones. One example I was involved in faced a regulatory deadline, had already cost several million and it was discovered no-one had planned for infrastructure with only a few months to go. The first quote from the incumbent was years and millions to provide. We overcame in the end, however it continues to happen to others today.

Likewise, having more than one team involved can result in overlooked dependencies, platform consistency and integration because everyone is so busy focusing on “delivering value” iteratively.

Why do these problems arise in agile projects?

Agile isn't always the answer and rarely the answer on its own.

Oversight and governance are seen as something negative and unnecessary in Agile. However, as it’s about enabling teams to focus on continuously delivering value, it’s always necessary to both support and direct iterations of value in relation to the whole.

Sometimes, an organization’s internal process, capability or capacity simply aren’t ready to engage in the way Agile projects require. The resulting conflict can easily be accommodated through a mixed methods approach that leverages continuous improvement to adapt collaboratively and as needed.

Even if MoSCoW (must-have, should-have, could-have, won’t-have) prioritisation is used, it is often mistaken for a task list of M followed by S followed by C etc. If all the deliverables are fixed, then prioritization is futile and the dependency mapping seen in PRINCE2 is much more useful.

How can project management support agile projects?

There are several key elements in project management that can help minimize the risk in agile projects:

◉ Communications plan

Having a clear plan to establish what the entire enterprise needs in terms of communications and who are the right people to get involved is, to some degree, “baking in” governance. Agreeing a cadence, approach, necessary meetings, attendees, observers, facilitators, scheduling and purpose is critical in Agile projects as these can take up to 30% of capacity every iteration.

◉ Understanding the bigger picture

Where there is a need for greater clarity on scope, an established tool like a PRINCE2 project initiation document (PID) assists in understanding and planning for the bigger picture beyond the iterations.

◉ Strategic risk management 

Using a RAID log – to organize risks, actions, issues and decisions – may also help manage longer term risks rather than just immediate issues. This is especially true in risk-averse organizations or those already using such an approach. PRINCE2 Agile® combines the control and governance of PRINCE2 with an appreciation of agile delivery methods. This approach recognizes that running projects should balance agile and waterfall approaches.

For a more traditional organization just embarking on an agile journey, this knowledge helps them to navigate how to leverage each approach. In addition, it can help close the gap in the languages of different methods.

Today, it’s rare that one framework will provide all the answers. PRINCE2 Agile offers a stepping stone between them.

Supplying appropriate governance and working with Agile teams to build a capability ensures that everyone has a greater awareness of what the organization needs outside a limited agile focus.

Source: axelos.com

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Investing for the enterprise service management future

What should individuals and organizations be doing to prepare for the next phase of improvements and growth – and what is the role for best practice training and development?

◉ Focus on Enterprise Service Management (ESM) excellence

This means excellence in maturity for the short and long-term betterment of the organization. This is larger than IT these days. It includes all stakeholders and the interactions across the organization, including customers. It also assumes the presence of value-based ITIL® 4 best practice in the enterprise.

The goal of this is not to force a framework on any organization, nor is it to eliminate controls for the sake of speed/customer satisfaction. In my opinion this begins with what customers expect, then find ways to make that expectation a "wow" versus a "meh".

◉ Relationship Management

Organizations must evaluate their current operation, processes and activities to try to become more agile by reducing organizational silos, focusing on outcomes and perceived value (as seen by their customers).

◉ Elevate experiences

This is not just about an isolated focus on either Customer Experience (CX), User Experience (UX) or Employee Experience (EX) anymore. Focusing on one without the others is an oversight that will negatively impact many organizations. Yes, customers pay the bills of any organization but the employees are the ones who drive that experience. So, you must take care of employees who will, in turn, take care of the customer and everyone wins. The goal, therefore, is so-called Total Experience.

If there’s too much focus on the money, technology or process then employees may not see (or care about) the organizational success. This increases the employee's risk of not being satisfied in their job, so putting the customer's experience at risk.

To achieve Total Experience, ITIL 4 knowledge helps make it repeatable, engaging and increases the speed at which you can do it.

◉ Employees are people too! 

This is probably one of the biggest challenges that organizations face today. After Covid-19, work habits have changed and people realized a couple of things: first, life is fragile and taking care of yourself and family is paramount. Second, company loyalties are now more fiction than reality: people are beginning to redefine their own lives and companies need to do the same or lose the workforce they need to meet their organizational goals.

Companies will need to be more than just a money-making system for the shareholders and must find meaningful and inspirational goals to motivate, hire, and keep their staff. The focus must be better balanced between the “why?” and the cash.

◉ Individual advancement

Individual motivations are not holistically being addressed in the mainstream yet. That said, I believe that we’re starting to see the pendulum swing back a bit too. That means individuals who take the initiative ahead of their counterparts to get the relevant training, certifications and experience will find themselves in a more lucrative spot than those who wait.

It’s about being in the right place at the right time and taking action. We have seen this play out time and again through history and it will occur again. My advice is to find a role and organization that excites you; then, find and take the training to get up to speed faster than your competition. That way, it will be others following your success rather than you following theirs.

Source: axelos.com

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Steps to Ace Your Next PRINCE2 Agile Foundation Certification

What Is PRINCE2 Agile Foundation?

The PRINCE2 Agile Foundation Certificate allows professionals to deliver agile projects, which is done using the PRINCE2 management controls. Such controls work upon agile delivery techniques that to are of an extensive toolset along with its framework.

The Agile Foundation is a newly developed certification level to help PRINCE2 Agile. The new qualification will fit within the current content scheme and is another route for candidates to take PRINCE2 Agile Practitioner. The introduction of the Agile Foundation will enable a broader audience to help from the positively received guidance on delivering, managing, or working within agile projects and project teams, without the need for any prior knowledge of PRINCE2.

PRINCE2 Agile Foundation and Practitioner connects agile concepts with the world’s most popular way to project management. Developed in reply to user demand, The PRINCE2 certificate is designed to help professionals deliver agile projects by tailoring PRINCE2 management controls with a broad toolset of agile delivery techniques and frameworks.

In this day and age, project management has become a vital cog and a highly sought-after skill for modern-day business industries. The PRINCE2 certificate and the training course target anyone working in the environments, project manager, or unless who has not taken any education or certification in PRINCE2.

About the PRINCE2 Agile Foundation Exam

To achieve the PRINCE2 Agile Foundation certificate, you have to look for a multiple-choice questions exam. You can begin from scratch with zero prior experience. But before that, you have the option of taking a training course of three days where you will get the guidance of experts in this field. You will get to learn many details of agile project teams, management, and delivery. To get the certification, you have to show your understanding of all these concepts by correctly answering the question in the exam.

PRINCE2 Agile Foundation questions are in multiple-choice and multi-response format. You get 60 minutes to make the 50 questions of this exam. Moreover, you can take the exam in English, Dutch, German, Polish language. Also, the exam cost is USD200.

Ultimate Top Tips to Help You Pass Your PRINCE2 Agile Foundation

Passing your exam is essential, but we know it is never simple. But here is the deal, we have the ultimate top tips to help you pass your Agile Foundation exam with flying colors!

Then the list below is going to be helpful to you:

1. The Agile Foundation Exam Facts

The PRINCE2 Agile Foundation exam aims to establish that you will be able to act as an informed and trained member of a project management team using a PRINCE2 environment that is supported. You will need to prove that you know and remember the method's principles and terminology to pass. You should also state the relationships between the processes, the deliverables, roles, and the management dimensions of the project.

2. Set Up Your Schedule

Every project wants a good schedule, and this examination certainly does not differ from that rule. Exam day will be here before you even know it, and therefore prior planning cannot be threatened. You require to set up and guarantee that you stick to your course work, revisions, and exam schedule as well as deadlines, and you should also have built-in risk factors. As you can see, this is like how you would perform an actual project. If you are not good at organizing, you will have to nurture and hone that capacity to work successfully in project management.

3. Practice PRINCE2 Agile Foundation Exam Questions

There is another trick to passing this examination. It would be best if you familiarise yourself with the PRINCE2 Agile Foundation exam questions. The more you practice doing these questions, the better your possibilities of shooting for a full 100% mark in that examination. Also, doing this regularly will enable you to fix any of your weak areas if you find that you have any.

4. Do Not Panic During the Exam

First, read everything through simply so that you can understand. Underline keywords in your questions and finally start answering. Do the straightforward questions first, then get onto the tough ones. Double-check your answers, keep an eye out on time too. Just in case you get hit by a wave of anxiety, remember you can constantly retake the exam, but you may not need to if you keep calm.

Conclusion

We hope you have found this guide to passing the PRINCE2 Agile Foundation exam. Thorough knowledge of how PRINCE2 works and a great exam technique should help you to pass your exam. The study, effective revision, and practicing sample exams will boost your chances of passing the exam and achieving a qualification recognized in industries worldwide.

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Transferable skills – a fusion of knowledge and expertise

Transferable skills are not a new concept, but the ones employers consider valuable evolve over time. Understanding this is essential for people entering the workforce or those wanting to progress their current careers.

A report from UK agency Nesta and the City of London Corporation found that almost three-quarters (74%) of employers considered transferable skills “equal to or above technical skills” when hiring new people. The report also highlighted the top 12 transferable skills, as rated by companies:

◉ Oral communication/presentation skills

◉ Collaboration and teamwork

◉ Initiative

◉ Problem solving

◉ Organizational skills

◉ Adaptability/flexibility

◉ Independent working/autonomy

◉ Written communication

◉ Critical thinking

◉ Resilience

◉ Creativity

◉ Analysis and evaluation skills.

The combination of these skills with technical capabilities gives people what the report calls “fusion skills” which are “a merging and blending of skills and industries – including arts, design, technology and business” – that constitute “key components of the current and changing labour market”.

Skills in programmes and projects

What is striking about the skills highlighted in the report is how relevant they are to programmes and projects.

For example, communication remains one of the chief reasons for project failure – it’s impossible to communicate too much in a change environment; collaboration is vital to break down siloed working; seeing problems, finding solutions and surprising your manager is all part of initiative – and fits with agile approaches of responding to customer demand; change initiatives value individuals who are problem solvers and critical thinkers; continual change as we enter a post-Covid world requires adaptability and flexibility, especially at programme level and, at a time of doing more with less in programmes and projects, resilience is essential.

Recognizing and developing your transferable skills

How does an individual self-diagnose their own selection of skills that could be transferable while building new ones?

As your career changes and evolves, you need to cultivate new skills and that could mean finding opportunities to help plug gaps in your knowledge and expertise today.

And, if you work specifically in programmes and projects, developing these skills is vital to help deal with the pressures and demands of change initiatives.

Organizations should know what they require from people to get things done and, if there is an absence of the necessary skills in-house, they need to invest in appropriate training and development.

Harnessing best practice methods for skills development

Training people in PRINCE2®, for example, gives them a method and step-by-step journey through managing a project.

When applying the techniques to a live project, the knowledge gained from the best practice guidance becomes skills that are transferable to other projects and other roles.

As part of developing these skills, younger and newly-certified people coming back from training courses should be mentored as junior project managers to see how the method is used in their organization and to learn practical application of the approaches from their mentor.

Leadership, communication and team management are three important capabilities you’ve got to get right when leading projects and programmes. And while not every element of these skills is contained within PRINCE2, it signposts you to other knowledge that will expand your overall armoury of skills.

However, if I’m interviewing people with both best practice certifications under their belt and experience, I anticipate the candidate will have developed knowledge of communication, leadership skills and the ability to manage people.

This gives me confidence that they have a foundation of transferable skills applicable to most projects or programmes – which is valuable and reassuring for both employer and employee alike.

Source: axelos.com

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Change communications – simplify the message and maximize engagement

A lot of business change communications can be one way and, whilst this is informative and raises awareness, the key is achieving a two-way dialogue with the opportunity for people to share their views and be heard.

During Covid-19, there have been fewer chances to do that with the lack of working physically alongside others. You can use virtual sessions, videos, email and other digital channels but it’s not the same as having proximity and the beauty of less formal, more spontaneous moments to converse.

When trying to convey information about change and what it means to the organization and to employees, put simply you need people to understand what you’re saying. However, during something like digital transformation, there is a danger of using a lot of jargon and techno-babble that will confuse a lot of people. Therefore, the messaging needs to be simple.

Before you embark on change communications, it’s essential to understand the context and culture of the organization. For example, different teams may have been using a variety of legacy systems and approaches for many years; any change can increase fear and suspicion about what it means to them, especially with the current pace of digital transformation in companies. So, messaging needs to allay people’s fears from the outset and make them feel they are part of something exciting.

The risks of getting change communications wrong

Once you’re ready to communicate change, the aim is to maximize engagement and reduce confusion.

Without this, you risk alienating employees which will affect their ability to accept and embrace the change.

What we are aiming for is to reach a tipping point where more people are “on the bus” with the change than not. That will encourage and motivate others to follow (though accepting that not everyone will).

Communications that work company-wide

In most organizations there is a “mixed economy” of staff with workforces spanning generations, including those further along in their career and others just starting out. Communicating effectively to a broad base of employees can be challenging.

For example, when introducing a company-wide system (such as Microsoft 365), some people will have experience of it already from previous organizations, while others will only know legacy systems. So, it’s key to help them understand what it means and what’s in it for them.

A useful approach is to create personas and target messages to the “lowest common denominator”. For example, “Sally” has worked at the company for 30 years and has no experience of using new systems and tools. So, aiming communications at Sally will ensure the language used is easy to understand, accessible and relatable to everyone.

This means we avoid technical jargon – rather than saying “system integration”, we talk about “systems interacting with each other” – and keep real people in mind when devising messages. Consequently, individuals should understand the benefits and help the change happen.

In fact, we have started using the real-life “Sally” (not her real name) to review our planned communications. This way, we’ve been able to create simpler, more accessible and relatable communications in the organizational context to support the process.

Best practice approaches to challenges

Learnings about creating and communicating a vision from Dr John Kotter’s change model, something I keenly advocate, certainly chime with the methods in Managing Successful Programmes (MSP®).

Also, in MSP, the stakeholder mapping and engagement techniques – along with programme leadership guidance – are especially useful. For example, stakeholder mapping allows you to potentially create multiple personas (from the board through to “Sally”) that will enable clear, targeted and comprehensive communication of the vision.

Ultimately, it offers a really practical approach to think about what you’re communicating, to whom and how.

When conveying change, you don’t want language to be a barrier – people need to understand, relate and appreciate what it means to them.

Source: axelos.com

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ITIL 4 – giving IT a seat at the boardroom table

The trigger for changing service management in Australia has been the shift in the latest version of ITIL®.

ITIL 4’s focus on recognized value and digital strategy now enables us to show business that it needs IT on the board to make the best strategic decisions. This is not IT waiting to be told what to do but acting as instigators for driving and meeting business objectives.

It’s also about removing barriers to career advancement, so IT professionals are not treated solely as operations people but as key stakeholders.

Read More: ITIL Certifications

While organizations are only just waking up to this, it’s down to people like me to show them how service management is a critical activity to the success of the business.

ITIL 4 – focusing on the right type of value

My family background is in hospitality and my father once told me that, when working as a waiter in a restaurant, you must be delivering value by enhancing your customers’ experience.

It doesn’t matter what problems are happening in the kitchen – when you come out to greet and take customers’ orders, you’re still smiling.

This is what I see in ITIL 4: it’s a focus on value but, also, perceived value. I tell my teams that in IT we do many things we think add value, but customers don’t always see it that way.

As a comparison, when buying a coffee, if the barista uses my name and remembers my usual order, that’s value. But, if they add a chocolate biscuit but don’t ask me if I like chocolate, I don’t recognize that as value.

Now, in the ITIL 4 framework, I see perceived value everywhere: progressing iteratively with feedback to understand what the customer sees as value.

Becoming an ITIL 4 Managing Professional and Strategic Leader 

Achieving the ITIL 4 Managing Professional level has given me knowledge of approaches for dealing with a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous) environment, working at speed and with different stakeholders.

However, obtaining the ITIL 4 Strategic Leader designation is more about reaching another echelon in organizations. If you really want to be effective in service management, it goes beyond just managing operations to representing IT at the leadership level.

Today, I’m having different types of conversations with business leaders. For example, presenting ideas to the CIO about how the organization needs to improve; building on organizational strategy and talented people to ensure everyone is “singing the same tune”.

ITIL 4 and service management in Australia

Within IT there are many different frameworks and there’s only so much time for individuals to learn new things.

For this reason, it makes sense to bring people from different disciplines – and using various methods and frameworks – together with a common purpose; sharing the knowledge, learnings and different approaches we all have.

The idea of having different flavours of activity is very much part of ITIL 4 – now adding a taste of Lean, Agile and DevOps to the mix.

Source: axelos.com

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Business and IT: collectively envisioning a new future

It’s ridiculous that IT and business are still talked about as separate entities in 2021.

Yes, it’s getting better but it’s still based on outdated attitudes and mindsets. Today, everyone in an organization should understand what they’re contributing to and why.

Read More: ITIL 4 Foundation

However, higher up the “food chain” in companies, there’s still a reticence about understanding IT; for any executive in the world today, it’s an absolute necessity to have an understanding of IT.

Similarly, IT people need to know what the business does, where value is created, and how its customers perceive value.

If I had a magic wand, one of the key things I’d do with the onboarding process is ensure everyone clearly understands what their organization does. It needs more than just saying “here’s your computer and security pass”.

Lessons to learn from the past year 

The whole working from home scenario has generated huge appreciation for the work IT has delivered during a crisis scenario. Not least because this level of business continuity fell into place after years of procrastination about remote working.

Yes, what enabled this was IT, which suddenly stepped up and brought people together. IT wasn’t just one of the “heroes’ of the pandemic, it also became a strategic partner. This is something IT doesn’t generally know how to be and the question is: how do you make it last?

Smart IT organizations have seen the potential to capitalize on the moves and changes of the past 16 months; CIOs will be advancing the conversation to how value streams can really create more value for employee experience, customer experience and improving digital access to systems.

The opportunity now is to provide systems in an easy-to-use, consistent way and ensuring a fluid, human working environment.

Planning for future success

To make this happen, IT organizations need to be thinking how an enterprise can operate more easily, better, faster and automating what it can. However, this means understanding what the business does rather than just facilitating the latest technology.

In turn, business people need to be more tech-savvy; thinking about how technology will enable tasks and how they relate to the bigger picture. This involves improving repeatable tasks by asking: “how many of our staff are behaving like robots and could the work be done by real robots?

Cutting headcount is not the principal consideration here. It’s more about redeploying people to deliver value-based work and better experience; things that need human compassion, empathy and sentiment.

If business and IT work collaboratively, they should see these opportunities simultaneously: not only what is important currently, but to collectively envision the future. This the golden path to strategic partnering.

The role of frameworks, methods and movements

Theoretically, IT and other frameworks should help the business/IT relationship. In practical terms, they need to do better.

Whether it’s Business Relationship Management, ITIL®, DevOps, Agile or COBIT, each provides sensible guidance. The trouble is, business people don’t tend to understand them or want to. There is, if you like, a language barrier.

Equally, there are “tribes” in IT organizations or managed service providers that are serving the same “master” but with different approaches that they entrench like a dogma.

However, by taking a value-focused approach, it shouldn’t matter what framework you’re using. The overarching point is: “what does it mean for the organization and its customers and, just as importantly, the wellbeing of our people?

ITIL 4 – adding the service layer

The opportunity ITIL 4 presents is based on the premise that organizations are either going through, have gone through or are aspiring to go through digital transformation. In other words, how they interact with customers, suppliers, employers and use technology to innovate and enable service delivery.

ITIL 4 explains that, with digital transformation, there is a layer of service that should underpin everything. For example, whether it’s a hospital delivering services for patient care, schools supplying education services or retailers providing consumer products, each enabled by digital technology.

ITIL 4 also emphasizes how an enterprise should deliver services that provide value. And this concept creates a better conversation between IT and business, with an appreciation of the end-to-end value chain and sharing a common language.

Source: axelos.com

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Collaboration and communities – using ITIL 4 for IT service management

In the current world of remoteness and uncertainty about places of work, language and common understanding take on a new level of importance.

My work over the past four to five years has involved bringing people together in organizations to use ITSM effectively.

Read More: ITIL 4 Foundation

This has become even more critical in the past 18 months with people missing out on face-to-face experiences and having less facility to share day-to-day learnings. With ITIL® 4 moving people’s way of working from processes to practices, this requires greater stakeholder collaboration.

Therefore, we are beginning to see the growth of organizational best practice communities, sharing successes, spawning other communities and creating combined sources of knowledge.

Creating a service quality community 

In one large, global organization I’ve worked with, the customer journey is facilitated by teams across the world.

This also combines multiple methods – such as ITIL and DevOps – but with often-conflicting strategies and people at odds with each other.

To address this, we created a service quality community based on ITIL practices. This works by taking people out of their usual role and objectives to participate in a global community that focuses on value streams for the customer and organization. Removing the strain of day-to-day conflicts across time zones has led to collaboration.

The approach used to achieve this includes:

◉ Understanding the company vision: what is it and how do stakeholders contribute to it? In the service quality community, that means everyone – from C-level to analyst – coming together to talk about value, based on the ITIL 4 principle of focus on value.

◉ Agreeing a purpose statement: starting with an outside-in view (how does the organization look to the customer?) and solving it using an inside-out view (how can we do better with our end-to-end service?). 

◉ Creating a charter: Continually review the charter, challenge one another respectfully; we don’t solve the incident, rather the bigger picture. 

◉ Identifying “fragile” services: for example, you might have legacy technology supporting a digital service. This needs care, maintenance, and alignment between teams to reduce its fragility and ensure service quality. 

As a result of creating a community such as this, the organization has seen improvements in its net promoter score, employee experience (including training and development in ITIL 4) and customer experience (while gradually moving away from service level agreements).

Bringing people together in this way helps both the business and customers but also employees’ mental health, by building an environment where they can speak freely. Having a focus on value and ITIL 4’s other guiding principles has become the easiest way to create a foundation for one, common language and a better understanding of how people contribute to value.

From reactive to proactive

One of the biggest challenges to successful improvement is people stuck in the cycle of reactive responses to the latest problem or situation.

Senior leadership teams need to understand this and release both time and budget to allow people to get together and, often, not solve anything initially. Instead, a community will identify proof of concept areas in the organization and focus on what the customer considers important in order to demonstrate value.

When others see the work of the community, they will want to get involved for the right reasons and bring their contribution also.

ITIL 4 practices have given us the capital, leverage and structure to formalize how we do this. It helps people discuss and deliver value in a way they didn’t consider before.

Source: axelos.com

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Is workplace productivity dwindling as we adjust to the ‘new normal’?

The endless months of home working are taking their toll. We are struggling with the deficit of social interaction during our working day, and the always-on culture is blurring work and personal space or time. This is triggering stress and damaging our mental health. Whilst numerous studies during the pandemic have shown that productivity is higher when working from home versus an office setting, as time goes on, we are likely to see this decline. Loneliness, poor job satisfaction and worsening mental wellbeing all hinder productivity. So, as we head into the ‘new normal’, what is the best way to handle the problem of productivity?

Quantifying productivity

Work from home fatigue must be addressed. If productivity is dwindling among remote workers, is the solution to pull them back to the office? Many businesses have returned staff to the office post lockdowns, but this has put bumps in the road for the lives of a lot of employees.

Remote working has allowed us to shift our hours to suit. We’ve juggled commitments and childcare arrangements, formed new schedules and routines, and in some cases even relocated to enhance our work-life balance. Research has found that an overwhelming 97.6% of us want remote working, in some form, to be here to stay. And so it seems that heading back to the office isn’t as easy as flicking a switch! We are stuck between a rock and a hard place. So what is the solution?

Just like any key performance indicator in our business, we must measure and monitor productivity. Tracking an employee’s output can be as simple as noting the number of tasks, items, or duties an employee completes within a timeframe. Chances are most organisations will already have this data. Average those numbers and allow this measurement to set personal benchmarks. From here you can monitor and determine the effect of any change. (For example, returning staff to the office or introducing hybrid working.) You will be able to identify the quantity of an employee’s output and whether the change improves or declines productivity.

Addressing WFH fatigue

A system for tracking output not only helps to identify productivity trends. It also encourages employees to observe their own work and performance. Pair this with a workplace culture of openness and honesty, where regular 1-2-1 meetings take place, and employees are actively listened to, and you have a recipe for success! Workers will respond more positively to feedback, and even bring their own performance observations to the table. Exercise target setting too. Having a goal to shoot for can boost morale and assist in eliminating fatigue.

Break the monotony by introducing schemes that will keep motivation high and increase productivity as a result. For example, rolling out company-wide professional development training. Creating an environment of continual learning shows your employees that you are investing in them and their careers, whilst also improving their skills and helping them to reach their targets. The time spent training may also serve as a welcome break from their daily tasks.

The ‘new normal’

It’s unlikely that we’ll be restoring a nine-to-five Monday-to-Friday, office-based working as the norm any time soon. In fact, most companies that can are transitioning to hybrid working in some form. And so, it is of huge importance that issues such as WFH fatigue or dwindling productivity are tackled.

Monitoring performance can go a long way to getting to the bottom of what is causing fatigue in order to overcome it, but companies must also listen to their employees. Whether this is on a one-to-one basis or through employee experience surveys, gaining insight is invaluable. Companies must also take action, make conscious decisions and improvements. They must become more innovative in how they keep teams engaged, motivated, valued and, ultimately, productive.

Source: prince2.com

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Behaviour and ITIL 4

Why is behaviour a cause for concern in organizational change and improvement – and how does it relate to ITIL® 4?

Behavioural analysis has been around since the 1950s and actively used in companies since the 1970s.

Despite that, many managers today repeatedly tell employees to do things and then leave them to it. When they don’t fulfil expectations, bosses yell at them. What leaders and managers often miss is that people act on the consequences for them; when they are rewarded personally, they feel better and perform better. Yelling and scolding does not cause a specific behaviour; it can even produce undesirable behaviour!

Read More: ITIL 4 Foundation

Understanding the fundamentals of behaviour is leadership and psychology 101, before even thinking about making changes in an organization.

Behaviour and the “dead man’s test”

Behaviour is action: if we don’t have actions, we don’t accomplish anything.

This means behaviour must be active. The so-called “dead man’s test” in organizational behaviour management tells us what is active or not. For example, just being in a meeting could be done by a dead man, so it’s not active behaviour.

Such a test can be applied also to concepts such as agile: a method says “you need to be agile”, but how does that look? What is the active behaviour behind it? You “need to co-operate/collaborate/communicate”, but what is the active behaviour and how do you measure it?

Equally, a framework says you “must register incidents”. However, if it doesn’t tell you how, when and what’s in it for the employee, people can choose whether to “behave” or not.

If people understand the “why” and the consequences, then managers can begin to influence behaviour.

Behaviour and best practice frameworks

ITIL 4 is very aware of behaviour change and emphasizes it as important. For example, covering concepts such as co-operation and mindset at a high level.

However, the framework – like any framework – doesn’t make the change. In itself, it doesn’t pass the “dead man test”. This is not a criticism of ITIL, as we shouldn’t expect it necessarily to define behaviour, but it’s still knowledge we need to have. It is probably even impossible to define the actual behaviour behind ITIL 4 practices (along with practices in any model or framework), as performance (behaviour that produces results) depends on the context, organizational goals and other stuff.

When looking at the operative behaviour of people, it might achieve an end result but be either undesirable or unethical for some reason. Therefore, defining the right behaviour and looking at how to reinforce it by managing the environment and consequences is as important as producing the correct result.

Behaviour in ITIL 4

Certain types of behaviour are brought out in ITIL 4, such as servant leadership in ITIL 4 Specialist Create, Deliver and Support; communication and collaboration in ITIL 4 Specialist Drive Stakeholder Value and organizational change management in ITIL 4 Strategist Direct, Plan and Improve. Each organization must define its servant leadership and the behaviour behind it.

ITIL 4 gives you tools and possibilities but it’s people that make the actual changes and improvements. In numerous areas of ITIL, you need to work with people, mindset and organizational culture. Culture is the collective behaviour of people in the organization, but this begins with understanding individuals’ attitudes.

Practitioners need to go deeper into topics such as servant leadership to understand what their behaviour should be, i.e. being there, looking, listening and coaching people.

ITIL 4 practices and avoiding the punishment trap

Managers might think their job is to make other people change, but the job starts with them.

It takes reflection and self-knowledge to achieve personal behaviour change that then influences others. In traditional leadership styles – when leaders and managers use punishment – people might comply and the boss’ behaviour is reinforced. This is the “punishment trap” and to be avoided!

Combining better understanding of behaviour with methods like ITIL 4’s practices will lead to different discussions: not just about results, but about how people will arrive at those results. Rather than telling people what to do, asking them if they’re comfortable with a way of working and how they would do it instead builds better motivation. Knowing what a reinforcer is for each of your employees is the fundamental element for building a high-performance organization with happy people in it.

Seeking more knowledge about behaviour and how it can be used in organizations is one of the key parts we need to add to our portfolio of skills.

Source: axelos.com

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