Difference between Project Management and Event Management

1. Project Management :

Project management, as name suggest, is simply management that focuses on planning and organizing project along with its resources as well as managing lifecycle to be used.

2. Event Management :

Event management, as name suggests, is simply management that focuses on using business management and organizational skills visualize, plan and execute all events such as social or business events.

Difference between Project Management and Event Management :

Project Management	Event Management
It mainly focuses on management of project activities until its completion.	It mainly focuses on each and every aspect related to events.
It is a temporary management process.	It is a permanent management process i.e. an ongoing process.
Project manager have more responsibilities than event manager.	Event manager have less responsibilities than project manager.
Factors affecting project management includes internal relationship, management tools, network as planning tool, time complexity, improper risk management, etc.	Factors affecting event management includes financial factors, timing and location, publicity, risk in costs, environmental issues, short lead times, etc.
Process of this management includes initiating, monitoring, planning project, controlling, and finally closing project.	Process of this management includes initiation, planning, implementation, event and finally closure.
Its benefits include accurate increase customer satisfaction, saves costs, reduce risk related issues, improve team collaboration, etc.	Its benefits include increase level of creativity, save time, effective risk management, measurability, increase level of satisfaction, etc.
Its main objective is to identify methods or techniques that one can use and complete project effectively in given period of time.	Its main objectives is to manage and control all events that might occur during operations of service.
Type of project management includes six sigma project management, agile Programming project management, Lean project management, etc.	Types of event management include event coordination, event entertainment, event designs, appreciation events, etc.
Project management is more difficult than event management.	Event management is less difficult than project management.

Source: geeksforgeeks.org

Continue reading

Recommended Study Plan for APMG International Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certification in 2022

Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certification Exam

If you are interested in becoming an expert in executing Lean Six Sigma projects, you should consider the Black Belt certification. A Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certified professional is at the highest level of Six Sigma certification and is regarded as an expert in this field.

An APMG International Certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Foundation has skills for applying analytical tools and leading change. With a Black Belt certification, you could find yourself in a position where you are responsible for managing complicated projects and supporting improvement teams.

Lean Six Sigma Black Belt is a subject matter expert who guides and mentors junior members of the organization while operating improved performance and efficiency throughout the company. It requires disciplined study, experience, sound preparation, and test-taking strategy.

Lean Six Sigma Black Belt training program makes upon the prerequisite Green Belt program to propel students to an expert level. Students will gain a deep knowledge of DMAIC and DMADV principles and apply these skills and methods to make better business decisions and solve critical process problems.

Upon completion, the Lean Six Sigma Black Belt student will:

• Possess keen insight and in-depth knowledge of lean enterprise concepts
• Be able to identify non-value-added elements to processes
• Have advanced knowledge of how to employ Lean Six Sigma statistical tools and analytics in projects
• Be well-adept at using the specific tools and functions of the complete Lean Six Sigma process

How to Prepare for Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certification Exam?

1. Test Yourself on Self-Study

To achieve your Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification, you should pass the different decisions Lean Six Sigma Black Belt test. Before taking your test, ensure you have tried your understanding with online practice tests to sharpen your test procedure.

Take a look at some online Lean Six Sigma study guide for a broad assortment of training tests, examinations, and questions. On the other hand, Lean Six Sigma Training courses additionally have an excellent choice of Lean Six Sigma help, including Black Belt practice tests.

2. Concern Yourself in the Methodology

When taking a certification exam, you should learn through encounters with a preliminary variant of the item or innovation. With the Lean Six Sigma method, that is somewhat tougher. Your most ideal choice is to drench yourself as much as possible in Lean Six Sigma outside of legitimately reading for your test.

There is a lot of data for novices and import clarifying a significant number of Lean Six Sigma's tools and phrasings.

3. Take Online Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Practice Exam

For competitors who do not have a training institution close by that gives training on this course or the individuals looking for some other work during the day and cannot attend training sessions, this certification can be acquired from a few online platforms. There are a lot of websites that supply you with online practice tests and certifications.

4. Join a Black Belt Community

Due to the wide and, for the most part, just nature of Project Management, there is a broad scope of gatherings and conversations you can discover on the web, all with shifting degrees of value.

Learning as much as possible while obtaining ready for the Lean Six Sigma Black Belt test will place you in a high situation to understand your business to enhance measures and decrease errors.

Likewise, however, with every online discussion, be aware that not every person is a specialist, and not all commitments will be suitable or proper!

5. Taking the Exam

Here comes the most important day of your journey towards the Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. Now, you will take the APMG International Lean Six Sigma Black Belt - Foundation examination.

Take a good snap a day before the examination day. Before joining into a proctored exam room, go to the restroom. Freshen yourself. Because remember, during the examination, if you go to the washroom, you will be penalized for exam duration as the exam clock does not stop during breaks. Do not carry anything other than your Identity proof, Admit card, and reference book.

Conclusion

APMG International Lean Six Sigma Black Belt - Foundation has globally recognized Lean Six Sigma Black Belt professionals certification. It is not challenging to crack the examination with strategies and good preparation.

Lean Six Sigma Black Belt certification extends so many new doors for you. Lean Six Sigma certifications are some of the most popular and recognized credentials, and they are beneficial not solely for the individual but for the organization. This is certification not to miss with some of the benefits, including career progression, a competitive salary, and working in different industries.

So if you observe these tips mentioned above, you will not only pass an exam, you will come out with flying colors.

Continue reading

Understanding ITSM

IT Service  Management (ITSM) :

As technology part is becoming integral to most of business, companies are looking forward to the incorporate IT to fulfill all the required needs of the companies. ITSM stands for IT Service Management which consists of policies, processes and procedures for managing, implementing, improving and support the IT services. The IT service includes hardware, software or computing resources the organization supplies for an user but Its consistent focus stays on improving IT customer services in alignment with business goals.

ITSM is becoming the key enabler of transformation and modernization efforts with certain companies who push automatic user-centric processes to improve all over productivity, it is a disciplined complicated system with certain intended goals . whereas, ITSM automation very cost efficient. This article is a wholesome potion of the topic and will provides all basic knowledge to the reader.

Why businesses need ITSM ?

There are a number of reasons for which ITSM is required for a business.

Let’s know some of them.

◉ ITSM makes IT teams work process easy by providing fast, agile, tension free response from the unexpected events, new offers and competitive threats.

◉ Reducing IT wastage and cutting costs.

◉ Improved agility for new IT services.

◉ Automatic cloud processes create an end user portal where user will be provided auto provision resources within a private or public cloud .

◉ Improves the customers experience and satisfaction.

◉ Streamlines employee onboarding.

◉ Improved request coordination for more efficient service.

◉ Betterment in pushing out faster and more consistent updates.

◉ Quick respond to major issues/changes.

◉ Faster change in management processes.

◉ Improved quality of services.

New technologies like Machine Learning, Cloud Computing and Internet of Thing (IoT) are implementing, deploying these technologies in an ITSM can change business game, here are some skills needed for the ITSM are automation, artificial intelligence and analytics, business management, communication, change management, leanings and agility, customer services, interpersonal skills, innovation. ITSM software suites contain everything which is business related which work under frameworks of their choice and offer flexibility for all over development.

Framework :

ITSM frameworks are targeted at specific industries or businesses needs like telecommuting, government system, healthcare etc. These are some most used frameworks.

◉ IT infrastructure library 4 (ITIL 4)

◉ Business process framework(eTOM)

◉ Control objectives for information and related technologies(COBIT)

◉ FitSM

◉ Microsoft operation framework (MOF)

◉ The open group architecture framework (TOGAF)

Keep it in mind before implementing ITSM processes :

Ina organization if we will see IT team is like a service provider not just like another department. Because IT support teams are continuously working to provide a good working environment. There are 3 major things that each business has to keep it in mind before implementing ITSM processes i.e.

1. The maturity of the team

2. Problem Statement

3. Framework to be adopted

Finally, ITSM has a power to change the business culture as well as relationship between IT and business. It always focus to what the business want and ITSM introduces that technology/tools/services to achieve the business goal. So main moto of ITSM is delivering value to customers.

Source: geeksforgeeks.com

Continue reading

Difference between Project Management and Warehouse Management

1. Project Management :

Project management, as name suggest, is simply management that focuses on successful completion of project and produces a specific output or product on given period of time.

2. Warehouse Management :

Warehouse management, as name suggests, is simply management that focuses and control operations of warehouse such as receiving, picking, shipping, storing, etc. of inventories of business.

Difference between Project Management and Warehouse Management :

Project Management	Warehouse Management
It mainly focuses on management of individual project till it gets completed successfully.	It mainly focuses on management and storage of inventories, material sourcing in large amount.
It is a temporary management process.	It is a permanent management process i.e. an ongoing process.
Project manager have more responsibilities than service manager.	Warehouse manager have less responsibilities than project manager.
Factors affecting project management includes improper risk management, timing issues, improper communication among team members, structural complexity, etc.	Factors affecting warehouse management includes lack of space, excess stock, low traceability and connectivity, improper time management, etc.
Process of this management includes plan, manage, execute, monitor and control and then finally closing project.	Process of this management includes receiving goods, assigning location in warehouse, storing goods, picking goods, and finally shipping.
Its benefits include improve team collaboration, improve team effectiveness, minimizes confusion regarding role, keeps team aligned and focused, etc.	Its benefits include increased profitability, boost speed of picking, receiving and order processing, decreases inventory costs.
Its main objective is to organize and control activities so that project is completed successfully as soon as possible inspire of all risks.	Its main objectives is reduce overall operation cost as much as possible and increase profit and main accuracy of inventories.
Type of project management includes Kanban project management, waterfall project management, PRINCE2 project management, etc.	Types of warehouse management includes cloud-based management system, standalone management system, supply chain execution module, etc.
Project management is more difficult than service management.	Warehouse management is less difficult than project management.

Source: geeksforgeeks.org

Continue reading

Difference between Project Management and Financial Management

1. Project Management :

Project management, as name suggest, is simply management that is employed in project to maintain its activities from project initiation till its termination and meet organizational goal.

2. Financial Management :

Financial Management, as name suggests, is simply management that focuses on management of financial operations and resources that in turn increase profit and achieve objective of organization as soon as possible in satisfactory manner.

Difference between Project Management and Financial Management :

Project Management	Financial Management
It mainly focuses on management of project planning and its completion.	It mainly focuses on management of financial operations of organization.
It is a temporary management process i.e. one time activity.	It is a permanent management process i.e. an ongoing process.
Project manager have more responsibilities than financial manager.	Financial manager have less responsibilities than project manager.
Factors affecting project management includes project manager, organizational culture, no expertise, no clear objective or goal, etc.	Factors affecting financial management includes savings and investments, financial goals, provision of emergencies, financial potential, etc.
Process of this management includes project initiation, project planning, project execution, checking performance controlling activities, and at last terminating project.	Process of this management includes planning, organizing, controlling, and monitoring financial resources to achieve goal and objective of organization.
Its benefits include increase customer satisfaction, reduce risk of failure, improve performance, maintain time and budget, etc.	Its benefits include cost control and profit planning, cash flow management, tactical planning and cost management, preparation and execution of budget, etc.
Its main objective is to lead working team to achieve goals and fulfill requirements of customer.	Its main objectives is to maintain financial department i.e. maintain cash flow of organization or company.
Type of project management includes PRINCE2 project management, Kanban project management, Six sigma project management, etc.	Types of Financial Management include Treasury and capital budget management, working capital management, insurance and risk management, etc.
Project management is more difficult than financial management.	Financial Management is less difficult than project management.

Source: geeksforgeeks.org

Continue reading

Difference between ITSM and ITIL

1. ITSM: 

It is an actual practice or you can call it a professional discipline of managing different kinds of IT operations. The ITSM stand for IT Service Management which means the implementation and management quality of it service that match the need of business. It is true that information technology would play an important role in human business. Computer, telephone, Network and printers like device control are responsibility of IT department. Now ITMS is not just for the IT organization it also the hot spot for enterprise performance. ITSM software is no longer short term process. 

ITSM software tools are calm with some components such as

1. Database

2. Business objects

3. Process engine

ITSM is used to create plan and manage change in the system for profit in business. It’s manages the IT budget so that bill can be easily pay end to buy new tools when it required and as well as in investment.

Benefits:

1. Improve efficiency which helps the organization to maximize their resources.

2. It’s reduced operational post it’s help the organization to scale there operations more easily.

3. It’s also the remove risk from damaging business and ensuring IT organization can implement new changes in IT involvement.

4. ITMS improve visibility into operations and performance.

5. It give a boost to self service productivity in organization.

6. The best part of this is it’s gives a better service and customer experience

7. It saves the business time and money and reduce unnecessary workload.

2. ITIL: 

It is a basic cover guidance of ITSM but its provided the best practice. ITIL is considered as the registered trademark of AXELOX. ITIL refers to Information Technology Infrastructure Library which is a framework design to plan, deliver, select, maintain overall life cycle of IT service in an organization. ITIL v2 used to applicable and uniform structure on service support and deliver and include the original process for business to follow where as ITIL v3 will help the business to improve their service as well as guideline on every service strategy.

Benefits:

1. Stronger a judgement in between IT and the business.

2. It’s improved service delivery as well as customer satisfaction.

3. ITIL reduce costs throw improve use of resources.

4. Provide a stable service Environment support constant business change.

5. It’s also helpful in better management in business risks and service failure.

6. It easily solved issue by inscribing the root causes.

Difference between ITSM and ITIL :

ITSM	ITIL
It refers to IT Service Management.	It refers to Information Technology Infrastructure Library.
It’s used in plant all the business changes and manage those to keep the business profitable.	It is used in calibration of IT related business and issue service to the customer.
This service management tells how you manage the services that your organization delivers to it’s customers or clients.	This infrastructure library tells one of many items in the tool box which you can implement to do it very well and achieve better service management.
It’s used to plan the budget for saving and investment in future.	It’s used to make delivery of IT service.
ITSM used by the IT management team for manage the delivery service in a suitable way. It has some other frameworks like six sigma, DevOps, COBIT, etc.	ITIL is a best practice for ITSM framework. Means the best practices of ITSM are provided by ITIL.
ITSM always plans for the changes that needs to be implemented and managed in the business to gain the profit.	ITIL always focuses aligning IT to the respective business in an aim of providing better service to the customer.
It is a professional discipline for managing different IT operations.	It is like a guiding framework for implementing ITSM.

Source: geeksforgeeks.org

Continue reading

Lean Six Sigma Explained

If you are looking to improve the way you carry out processes in your business and change the way things work, Lean Six Sigma may be an ideal option.

Nearly forty years old, this methodology has helped thousands of organizations around the world speed up production, improve efficiency and help save money.

You may be wondering if it is right for your business and if so, how to go about becoming a qualified practitioner. If the answer to both of these questions is yes, we’ve put together this short guide to help you find out more about Lean Six Sigma.

The history of Lean Six Sigma

Lean Six Sigma was initially devised by Motorola in 1985. The methodology came into being as a way for the company to reduce manufacturing issues and increase efficiency.

In fact, ‘sigma’ is a measurement of variation. With Lean Six Sigma, you want to reduce the number of variations (or defects) in your processes, as well as eliminate any unnecessary steps. Sigma strives to achieve near-perfect output, high-quality and consistent improvement.

This methodology was initially used by companies in the manufacturing industry. However, Lean Six Sigma has now been adopted by a wide range of different sectors including IT, healthcare, marketing and banking.

If your business has processes in place, then the Lean Six Sigma methodology can be applied.

What is Lean Six Sigma all about?

Lean Six Sigma is about data gathering, looking at issues analytically and measuring data to see if the processes put in place are working.

It’s also about continuous improvement. Once a problem has been resolved, it still needs to be monitored to see if there is a better, more efficient way of carrying it out.

Lean Six Sigma requires buy-in and commitment from everyone in the organisation, from the Managing Director to those on the shop floor. Everyone across the company needs to be aware of what is being done and how even the smallest changes can have a significant impact.

A good project manager skilled in the Lean Six Sigma Methodology will rally people behind any changes that need to be made.

What is DMAIC?

DMAIC is one of the critical methodologies that Lean Six Sigma uses. It is utilised to find and eliminate defects in a process.

DMAIC stands for:

◉ Define – define the problem, as well as what and who is needed to solve it

◉ Measure – quantify the problem and establish a baseline so you can see how things are improving

◉ Analyse – identify what is causing the problem and how you can change or remove these issues

◉ Improve – solve the problem, implement the changes and check that any amends made are working

◉ Control – ensure that the problem does not return, and that the process continues to improve over time

The belts of Lean Six Sigma

Six Sigma has a lot in common with karate. Both require precision, dedication and knowledge.

With karate, you receive a new colour belt when you pass your exams. With Lean Six Sigma, although you do not receive a physical belt, the different grades are called ‘belts’!

People with no formal Lean Six Sigma qualifications are known as ‘white belts’. After this, there are three different levels of accreditation.

Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt

This is a short introduction to the world of Lean Six Sigma – ideal for those who may not be managing change but are involved in supporting the people that are.

Learn more about our Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt

Lean Six Sigma Green Belt

The next step on the Lean Six Sigma ladder, a Green Belt, is a good starting point for project managers. This course introduces them to the problem-solving frameworks that Lean Six Sigma utilises.

This is a lifetime certification and does not need to be recertified.

Learn more about our Lean Six Sigma Green Belt

Lean Six Sigma Black Belt

In karate, a black belt means that you have mastered all there is to know and are ready to lead others. The same applies to a Black Belt in Lean Six Sigma.

This advanced course teaches delegates how to drive change across the business as well as how to measure performance.

This certification needs to be renewed every three years.

You don’t have to complete Lean Six Sigma Green belt before you take on this accreditation, but it is recommended.

If you want to take things even further, you can study for a Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt. This shows that you can not only lead others but are qualified to teach them in Lean Six Sigma methodology too.

Learn more about our Lean Six Sigma Black Belt

Why is Lean Six Sigma so beneficial?

Lean Six Sigma has the following benefits for organisations.

◉ It improves productivity

◉ It improves quality

◉ It increases customer and stakeholder satisfaction

◉ It ensures compliance with government regulations

◉ It reduces waste

◉ It reduces operating costs

◉ It reduces risk

◉ It reduces employee turnover

It also has benefits for you too! Holding a Lean Six Sigma Qualification can increase your salary and help you get promoted to managerial roles.

Source: itonlinelearning.com

Continue reading

Top 7 Proven Benefits of Why You Need an OMG-OCUP2-ADV300 Certification

OMG's worldwide UML Certification Program delivers an objective measure of your UML 2.5 Specification knowledge-and means to the rest of the IT community that you have serious credentials. OCUP 2 OMG-OCUP2-ADV300 Certification will benefit you by giving you vital documentation to present to employers and clients. It also helps companies looking for skilled UML practitioners like you by giving them a foundation for hiring and promotion decisions.

The UML Certification Program suggests three levels of certification: OMG-Certified UML Professional 2 Foundation, Intermediate and Advanced. Each group has its examination, progressively testing more complex concepts and the UML 2.5 Specification usage.

Have You Ever Thought About Spending Time Making An OMG-OCUP2-ADV300 Certification?

Suppose this is something that has crossed your mind, good! You are on the right track. You can opt to take a course in your desired field or grow your horizons and take a course in a new skill. Getting a new certification or qualified talent has many pros and almost no cons or drawbacks.

Investing your time, money, effort, and energy in making professional certifications can only aid you. It will never hurt you or your competitors. There are countless advantages of OMG-OCUP2-ADV300 certification, and we give you our top below:

1. Realize a Competitive Advantage

When you have training that your competitors do not, it sets you. Certifications can determine you from other professionals in your field, showing that you have a confirmed commitment to learning and excelling in your profession.

2. Boost Efficiency with OMG-OCUP2-ADV300 Certification

OMG-OCUP2-ADV300 certification can also help give your independent business a solid foundation. The advanced training, information, and understanding you gain from specialized coursework can provide you with up-to-date tools and technical strategies that will guide and direct you to execute your projects, letting you control all aspects of your work more effectively.

3. Improve Your Resume

While many individuals have unique skills written on their resumes, it is possible to fake abilities when written on paper without proof to back up any claims. Certifications are predominantly legitimate, and it is difficult to falsify the possession of certificates, and that is because employers can ask for proof and check for their legitimacy.

Obtaining OMG-OCUP2-ADV300 certification is a sage choice for those new to the IT industry who do not have much prior work experience. While work experience needs previous employment and time to acquire, certifications are examination, skills, and knowledge-based. Even those who have not been employed in information technology for long can express their professional abilities and impress employers.

4. Increase Your Earning Potential with OMG-OCUP2-ADV300 Certification

The time and effort invested in OMG-OCUP2-ADV300 certification often result in increased income. Most clients will comprehend the higher costs of specialized training and pay for consultants with industry certifications.

5. Grow Your Knowledge and Skills

By acquiring new and updated industry information or techniques, you can hone current work habits that may be driving inefficiencies or quality issues with your output while increasing your competencies.

6. Establish Professional Credibility

An increasing number of companies, non-profits, and government organizations that, when working with independent consultants, want or may even be required to hire those with specific OMG-OCUP2-ADV300 certification from recognized OMG programs. The certificate shows your commitment to superior professionalism, upholding industry standards, and continued learning. These merits can help increase your professional credibility and prestige within your network, with your current clients, and when seeking new business opportunities or bidding on projects.

7. To Achieve Personal Goals and Triumph Over Challenges

You may have set a personal purpose to make a new certification, whether professional recognition or personal achievement. Earning an OMG-OCUP2-ADV300 certification this way may be the most satisfying, as you are rewarding yourself for your efforts. If it occurs to lead to a raise, promotion, and recognition - even better. These are also the hardest to earn in some cases because of the self-motivation and discipline required.

Final Thoughts

Have you decided yet whether or not getting an OMG-OCUP2-ADV300 certification is right for you? If you have not entirely made up your mind, worry not. The beauty of the OMG-OCUP2-ADV300 certificate is that you can secure them at any point during your career in OCUP 2 Advanced.

As this article shows, there are many benefits of further developing OCUP 2 Advanced skills and knowledge. Still, you must decide what is in your best interest and what will best progress your career in the direction of choosing.

Continue reading

Using ITIL 4 to Manage Risks

In this challenging time, leaders need to ask themselves two key questions: How do we cope with the COVID-19 crisis? And how do we ensure that next time we are ready? In a situation where physical interaction is not possible, and digital means of communication, collaboration, and work have become even more crucial than before, these questions are inevitably related to the ways an organization utilizes its digital capabilities. And when it comes to digital, ITIL is a source of advice. In particular, ITIL 4 risk management guidance.

To help – in terms of content areas – this article points to where to look for good practice for the volatile today and uncertain tomorrow.

How do we cope with the crisis?

As one could expect, the most obvious consideration is continuity management. Service continuity management should have ensured that the organization is ready for any disaster of high probability and impact. If this were the case, the organization would now operate in a “safe mode,” something which has been largely planned and tested. If not specifically for the current situation, then for this type of crisis. Unfortunately, many organizations were not sufficiently prepared and have had to adjust their work to the new circumstances here and now.

Which ITIL practices can help now? And not just ITIL 4 risk management

First of all, all of the following ITIL practices are focused on risks:

◉ Risk management – this provides a common approach to the reassessment of risks and the planning of countermeasures.

◉ Information security management, availability management, and capacity and performance management – applying these consistently ensures that the organization has sufficient understanding of its resources, vulnerabilities, and opportunities.

◉ Architecture management, workforce and talent management, supplier management, and relationship management – these help to maintain an effective position in the business ecosystem and to ensure that the organization is adjusting to the external changes.

Then, due to the extra demand for digital services, the situation is putting extra pressure on incident management, service desk, infrastructure and platform management, and software development and management.

Essentially, every aspect of service management is affected, and every practice should contribute to an organization’s resilience, recovery, and evolution. The crisis will go away, and organizations will have to reconsider their strategies and architectures for the new version of normal. Which brings us to the next question.

How do we ensure that next time we are ready?

Volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (collectively known as VUCA in the ITIL 4 risk management guidance) within the business environment will never go away. The days of detailed long-term planning are long gone, and those organizations that were in denial about this are now forced to reconsider their position. Those that embraced VUCA earlier, are better prepared for the current situation.

Organizations now need to become agile and resilient. This means that, on the one hand, they need to be able to move and adapt quickly, flexibly, and decisively to support internal changes. On the other, they need to be able to anticipate, prepare for, respond to, and adapt to both incremental changes and sudden disruptions from an external perspective.

Resilient and agile organizations can cope much better with changes, including the large-scale ones: they’re able to adjust their operating models quickly and smoothly. This means they have a much wider range of “normal operations” and the need to activate a continuity plan usually comes much later.

The key ITIL practices enabling organizational agility and resilience are:

◉ Strategy management

◉ Knowledge management

◉ Architecture management

◉ Workforce and talent management

◉ Risk management

◉ Relationship management.

The current pandemic has so far highlighted the importance of digital technology for every organization and household. The effective management of digital services will be crucial in ensuring an organization’s readiness for new changes and risks. ITIL 4 provides practical and up-to-date guidance which can help organizations to become and remain agile, resilient, and sustainable in our constantly changing world. Why not start with the ITIL 4 risk management guidance.

Source: itsm.tools.com

Continue reading

5 Project Management skills to take with you into 2022

There is a lot we’d like to leave behind from 2021. Namely, the pandemic and its continued negative impacts, stress and worry on our lives. But there is also a lot we’d like to package up to take forward with us into the new year. We have all been on a steep learning curve over the last two years in some form or another, and as we stride into 2022, an opportunity opens up for us to reflect upon what we’ve learned.

Our skill sets have evolved considerably lately. Not just our skills on paper – though this may be true for some, but our soft skills, the personality traits at our core. For many professionals, not least Project Managers, these attributes can do great things for their careers and for their growth. So read on to discover the top 5 skills to take with you into 2022.

Emotional Intelligence

Empathy increasingly has stature in the workplace. The ability to truly understand another’s viewpoint, to actively listen, and to be self-aware, all form what is often referred to as EQ – emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence has been shown to improve job satisfaction and retention rates. Leaders who possess a high EQ will build better relationships with their employees, in turn helping to reduce stress amongst teams and to minimise conflict. In the project profession, emotional intelligence helps managers to lead projects more successfully. “Human” skills such as EQ are sure to be of increasing value to organisations in 2022 and beyond.

Collaboration

If the last two years have taught us anything, it is to unite in the face of adversity! “We’re all in this together” has very much been the motto of the pandemic, and this carries across well into projects. Project teams must continue to come together and work as one in order to meet goals efficiently and successfully. Strong collaborative practices such as open communication, and skill-sharing are what will advance projects. And so, collaboration is a top skill to harness going into the new year.

Adaptability

Each and every one of us had a crash course in adaptability when the coronavirus turned the world on its head. Overcoming challenges is often part-and-parcel of the project profession, where adaptability can mean the difference between failure and success. And so, if we can hone our agility skills going into 2022, it will be of great advantage for navigating change. The PRINCE2 Agile course is ideal for those shooting to be more adaptable. It promotes the flexibility of Agile and combines it with the framework of PRINCE2, covering topics such as responding to and navigating change, and risk management processes.

Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is fast scaling the list of in-demand skills, not least because of advancements in technology. As more and more manual tasks are automated, there becomes an opening for strong analytical skills. Evaluating data and findings is where humans add value. Project professionals must increasingly be equipped to think critically, to process information and to form strategic solutions. High-level thinking is set to be prominent in 2022, and so it is a top skill to work on building. Be self-aware and consider how you approach challenges, ask questions, and practice evaluating evidence.

Problem solving

Our final trait to sharpen for the year ahead is problem solving. We have faced some pretty complex problem solving through the pandemic, and it is those who have innovated who have experienced the greatest success. Effective problem solving is about reasoning and ideation, thinking outside the box and actioning plans too.

And a bonus sixth skill to carry into 2022… resilience! We have all built up a fair amount of resilience in the last two years. The skill of resilience ties in perfectly with problem solving. It’s about having the ability to hold your hands up and say, ‘this is difficult’, before getting down to tackling the challenge and problem solving.

Heading into 2022 we must ride the wave of any cultural shifts sure to come. Improving upon these skills will be of great advantage to project managers and professionals, their careers, and each project they undertake.

Source: prince2.com

Continue reading

Change Management for Project Managers

Why Project Managers are evolving to Change Managers

Projects and Programmes - What is the key focus?

If you happen to work on project or programme management and you like to excel at what you do, you almost certainly concluded long ago, that you cannot focus just on the triple delivery constraint of scope-time-cost. 

Sponsors have an obligation to continuously monitor the desired project output

As a Project Manager - you did everything right but your project was considered a failure. Countless project managers have delivered their projects on time, on track and on target, and still they were not applauded by their top management, who considered the project to be a failure.

This is extremely frustrating for project managers, who in such a scenario, would have done nothing wrong.  Their line managers, whether programme managers or sponsors, have the obligation to continuously monitor the desired project output, ensuring it remains relevant and a contributor to the expected programme outcome.  

Typically, Projects deliver outputs and Programmes deliver outcomes

It is worthwhile stressing that, typically, projects deliver outputs and programmes deliver outcomes – read benefits realisation.  Obviously, large-scale transformation projects, set up individually and not integrated in a programme, can also deliver outcomes, but these would not be a majority. 

Aligning to strategic objectives with an agile approach

For programmes to deliver the expected outcome and realise the desired benefits, they must be fully aligned with the strategic objectives set out by the organisation.

Two decades ago, Strategic Planning would define 5-year objectives and roadmaps. Things have changed significantly, and Strategies are now “living organisms”, that continuously morph and adapt to ever-changing challenges and new predators in each sector.

What then, is the impact of programmes, caused by this dynamic of change?  How can programmes cope with the new strategic requirements?  What is the impact on defining the expected outcomes, and qualifying and quantifying the desired benefits?

The obvious response is “agility”.  No, you did not read “all projects must become Agile”. Agility is a mindset, not a manifesto or a methodology.  It is simplifying processes and flattening governance structures, and not eliminating them altogether. Agility is working together, at all levels and in all functions, to make the whole organisation nimbler, and more malleable. Resilience is also a very important factor to endure permanent change. 

Portfolio Management

This is where portfolios come into action.  The portfolio management function works back-to-back with the core leadership of the organisation, to understand strategies and objectives, and ensure these are translated into operational guidelines for programmes and projects.

Portfolios scrutinise, assess, measure, estimate, etc, and ultimately sift the programmes and projects selected to implement the strategy.  Are project's outputs contributing to programme's outcomes, and programme's outcomes aligned with the strategy?  Do projects and programmes have the elasticity and ductility necessary to react, pivot and transform, to ensure continuous alignment to (everchanging) strategies?

Portfolios are responsible for creating the conditions and setting up the scene that allow programmes and projects to flourish and strategies to be brilliantly implemented.  Through Maturity Assessments, portfolios map out the existing Company Culture and Governance and Assurance Frameworks.  Similarly, Capability Assessments determine the current aptitude of the resources available, to undertake strategy implementation. A gap analysis exercise will determine the effort and time required to evolve from present to future states.

The impact of Change Management on Projects, Programmes and Portfolios

Hence, if Portfolios are responsible for preparing People and Organisations for change, how can they actually do it?  None of this is easy but, still, it is easier to prepare organisations for change, than People.  There are a number of assessment models and approaches available, but I personally recommend the Praxis Framework and, specifically on Business Integrated Governance, the model developed by the CoreP3M Data Club, also featured in Praxis.  

The million-dollar question is: “How can leaders work with people, to grow the company-wide agility mindset and nourish the resilience to change of all elements in the team?”.  This is not an easy ask. People don’t mind change, they just don’t want themselves to have to change along with it. But the fact is that they do. Oh yeah, they certainly do. So how can leaders lead people to change?  How can leaders drive people into scenarios of permanent mutation?  How can people trust change and feel safe again? What are the new foundations of individual and family stability?  

The role of the Leader

Maslow would say that safety contributes to happiness. I say that happiness contributes to productivity and to generating value.

A leader’s mission is therefore to make people happier.  This applies to executive managers, to portfolio, programme, project managers, and to business-as-usual managers.  In fact, it applies to all leaders in the organisation.

Effective and efficient change requires alignment with strategy, flexible delivery, and benefits realisation.  All these require people to embrace change.  People that not only are willing to change, but that are the change. 

Is it a case of “the Project Manager is dead, long live the Change Manager”?  No, not at all.  It’s a case where all Project Managers must also change, and (also, not instead) become Change Managers. Project and Programme Managers need one more layer of competency, a new mindset – Change Management.  

The same way outputs are way less important than outcomes, processes and tools are way less relevant than people. People deliver outcomes. People deliver change. By improving their people management skills, leaders will master the delivery and management of effective and efficient change.

Source: apmg-international.com

Continue reading

Using PRINCE2 at NatureScot Case Study

NatureScot is the Scottish Government’s agency for all matters relating to nature, and one of its responsibility’s is to organize Green Infrastructure Strategic Intervention (GISI) projects. This paper explores how PRINCE2 was used to organize the Knowledge Exchange event, which intended to create networking opportunities for those involved in GISI projects.

The paper will also discuss how specific PRINCE2 principles were applied to the project, specifically to unexpected events.

Case Study

1. Introduction

NatureScot is the Scottish Government’s agency for all matters relating to nature. Our website is at Nature. Scot, which also hosts our Green Infrastructure Strategic Intervention (GISI) project pages.

As Green Infrastructure Project & Funding Officer at NatureScot, I am the first point of contact for the following:

◉ Eight construction projects that are creating or improving greenspace and other green infrastructure in areas of multiple deprivation in urban Scotland.

◉ Six community engagement projects.

◉ Communications to encourage the mainstreaming of green infrastructure.

The GISI is a £16 million European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) that NatureScot manages on behalf of the Scottish Government. The 15 capital projects supported by the fund are predominantly managed by local authorities, but three are managed by housing associations, and one by an NHS Board. They fit well within the PRINCE2 definition of a project because they are all temporary and are delivering a specific change in-line with a business case.

The GI Community Engagement Fund is smaller (£0.5 million) and supported 11 applications to increase involvement in greenspace, within areas of multiple deprivation. Nine of these proposals were delivered by charities. These grants did not closely align with the definition of a PRINCE2 project, because they were much more closely linked to business as usual (BAU) for the applicants. The exception was a pilot to work with a discrete community to design and install a ‘raingarden’ to reduce surface water flooding within a small area beside two tower blocks.

2. Background

In Scotland, the mainstreaming of Green Infrastructure (GI) into projects is behind London and mainland Europe, and actors tend to work in isolation, even though they have good links with EU and global networks. In order to address this, one of the objectives of the GISI is to encourage a network of actors in the GI field to reduce siloed working and increase momentum towards mainstreaming GI in Scotland.

Green infrastructure (GI) is the network of multifunctional greenspace and other vegetated features, and is being increasingly recognized as as important as ‘grey infrastructure’ such as roads, sewage networks, etc. GI can address multiple problems faced by society in the face of climate change and biodiversity loss. A well-designed and maintained GI has been proven to improve mental health, help with urban cooling, maintain good air quality, reduce surface water flooding caused by extreme rainfall, and encourage active travel when integrated with active travel networks.

The Knowledge Exchange project was part of a programme to fund GI projects, best called the Green Infrastructure Strategic Intervention (GISI).

Main stages of the GISI	Dates
Test market for grant intervention	Sept 2013 to Dec 2014
Develop fund criteria, processes, and products to secure funding and Lead Partner status	Dec 2014 to July 2015
DecManage applications and funding for Phase 1 projects and Community Engagement and promote the GISI. Repeat for Phase 2 projects	July 2015 to June 2023
Review project and close	June 2023 to Dec 2023

Table 2.1 Main stages of the GISI

3. Aims and Objectives

The specific aims of the Knowledge Exchange in September 2018 event were to:

◉ Host a GISI stakeholder event at a venue in the Central Belt.

◉ Aim the event at organizations with GI funding, staff from other ERDF Strategic Interventions in Scotland, Scottish green infrastructure network partners, and organizations that are potential applicants in future funding rounds if Phase 2 does happen.

◉ Have an event that is relevant and interesting enough to attract capacity attendance.

◉ Ensure that NatureScot’s profile is prominent at the event and in the communications surrounding it.

◉ Visit one or both sites from Round 1 that are making progress on the ground, or another green infrastructure project.

The event was part of NatureScot’s Sharing Good Practice series and needed to be within the set budget of £2,000.

The long-term goals were to promote more collaborative working or knowledge sharing among actors in the UK GI field, and to influence the Shared Prosperity Fund that was to replace EU Structural Funds post- Brexit.

The benefits resulting from the event will be that the network of organizations delivering and managing green infrastructure will be strengthened. Green infrastructure will have increased further in prominence, as an important part of modern urban planning and management.

4. Approach

A Sharing Good Practice (SGP) event is an opportunity to apply the PRINCE2 principle ‘Learning from Experience’ since projects with grants have valuable knowledge and experience that can help other potential applicants. The presentations at events are valuable, but just as important are the informal networking opportunities, and, ideally, on- site discussions during site visits.

The involvement of speakers with high profiles in the GI field, such as our CEO and staff from the ERDF Directorate that approve our funding, indicated that the success of the event could not be left to chance. During a period of austerity, attendees needed to be sure their time would be worthwhile. Specifying the requirements was one of the first steps:

◉ Each project should be given the chance to present to the audience.

◉ There must be two speakers (keynote and summing up) with UK prominence in the GI field.

◉ The participants should be welcomed to the event by either the Chair or CEO of NatureScot.

◉ The programme needs to have visits to projects.

◉ Sustainable travel must be a reasonable option.

◉ Publicity must credit NatureScot, GI, ERDF and partner organizations.

◉ Catering companies must source food locally when possible.

◉ Any organization involved will expect to see their project credited appropriately.

◉ People attending will provide feedback.

◉ People attending will have real opportunities to share their experience and learn from others attending.

4.1 Description of Planning process

The Sharing Good Practice (SGP) had an established process in place which we used the PRINCE2 method for. After the Knowledge Exchange was accepted, as part of the programme, two members of the SGP team were assigned as contacts, one of whom sat on the project executive as a senior supplier. The second person helped with most of the administrative tasks.

The project board included:

◉ Head of GI Fund team in NatureScot: project executive

◉ Manager of Sharing Good Practice team: senior supplier

◉ Head of Strategy at Central Scotland Green Network Trust: senior supplier

◉ Key contact from one of the Glasgow projects: senior user

◉ Project & Funding Officer: project manager.

Tasks	Breakdown of tasks
Planning	Organize the programme Organize catering Source the venue Organize speakers, workshop leaders, and facilitators Review dates to improve attendance, visit potential venues.
Pre-event	Publicity and promotion Practical communications for the event Draft in support from other parts of NatureScot Organize any materials needed for workshops, specification, and management of facilitator contract.
On the day	Ensure that the equipment is in place Greet attendees Record the event Risk assessment for any site visits Draft tweets and decide on a hashtag search for the event.
Administrative	Upload the presentations to the website Organize expenses payment and accommodation for speakers if needed Information system security checks for viruses in presentations Transport and subsistence (T&S) for speakers and workshop leaders Book coach transport.
Project management	Produce the project brief Complete the business case (online database form) Maintain the daily log Assemble the project initiation documentation (PID) Manage the budget for the project Manage the timeline Deal with risks and issues arising Record lessons to be learned Write the closure report.

Table 4.1 Breakdown of tasks

As an organization, we have existing tools to record and plan details of a project. Existing templates from Sharing Good Practice include: a planning timetable, tested programme timings, event checklist, and expenses forms. There is also a task list template available within NatureScot. In addition, we used the PRINCE2 Handbook to refer to best practice methods.

5. Challenges

We faced a few challenges during the lifecycle of the project. Some of these were minor, handled in passing, and possibly unique to this project. Others are possible issues for future events and were included in the lessons report. The venue change and cost increase triggered a management by exception event and was escalated to the project executive. Once again, the PRINCE2 method facilitated solutions.

Challenge	Solution
The original venue withdrew from the contract three months before the event, and a few days before we were due to distribute the flyers about how to get to the event, etc.	The information from the original venue search was still available, meaning a replacement was quickly found.
A TV news programme wanted to interview key personnel during the day, and with very little notice. The communications person had not been given clear boundaries	The team was briefed, so the project manager could advise on the interview without too much disruption. The Head of GI was able to do the interview.
The air conditioning was noisy and needed to be switched off by one of the venue team.	Identifying team members to deal with unforeseen problems on the day was a good idea.
A field visit leader was ill on the day.	A community member willingly stepped in on the day as a replacement because the project had high community buy-in.
The change in venue resulted in an increase of £600 to the overall budget.	The project risk thresholds resulted in the increased cost being promptly handled via the appropriate route, which gave greater confidence to the decision-maker. The previous recording of venues as a saved project document made deciding a replacement faster.

Table 5.1 Challenges and solutions

6. Successes

The event featured on the regional TV news, which exceeded expectations. Organizations that were interested in applying for Phase 2 of funding attended and were inspired to apply. The event enabled networking that led to better quality applications. The GISI is agreeing contracts with Phase 2 projects, some of which may be showcased at the UN Climate Conference in Glasgow in November 2021.

Existing projects realized that they were part of a larger trend, which is likely to continue well beyond the lifetime of the GISI. The community food growing projects were inspired to increase efforts toward a Glasgow-wide network of community food organizations.

Taking a risk by including a facilitated session on the performance of the GI Team provided constructive feedback. Recommendations were included in NatureScot’s response to the Scottish Government’s consultation on the Shared Prosperity Fund, the replacement for European Structural Funds. The facilitated session also made explicit how the GI Team had improved by understanding that change is very common in project management, and endorsed our problem solving and project management focus.

The most serious challenge to the project was the booked venue withdrawing its availability, because of change to its charitable objectives. The clear definitions of project organization and management by exception in the PRINCE2 manual expressed that I did not have to make decisions alone. We had a strong ‘focus on products’, which was crucial when the original venue cancelled. The product description for the venue and recording of results from the initial search made choosing a replacement simpler and faster. It is possible that without these two documents, the event would have been cancelled.

The lessons report has led to changes in how projects that may attract media attention interact with our communications team. The communications personnel are giving clearer boundaries on what to expect on the day, and ways of further delegating tasks on the day allows the project manager to take part in interviews more flexibly.

We were in the right position to be able to realize the benefits of the project outcome:

◉ The attendees are better connected, resulting in a network of community food growing projects.

◉ The benefits were as described in the project brief and business case in the Sharing Good Practice database, but the publicity exceeded expectations.

◉ The biggest contributor to success was the project brief (derived from AXELOS) in setting limits on the scope of the project, emphasizing the importance of learning from previous projects, and recording results.

◉ We had thought to organize a similar event for the Community Engagement projects. However, a review of the lessons report concluded that the potential risk regarding management of grant claims was too great to organize, without the support of the SGP team, which had been abandoned.

Source: axelos.com

Continue reading

Agile Project Management: not just for software & IT projects

Interest in and demand for Agile approaches for an increasingly wide range of projects and initiatives has never been higher.

Agile is a key trend. Interest in and demand for Agile approaches for an increasingly wide range of projects and initiatives has never been higher.

However there is a myth commonly attributed to Agile which continues to persist, after much discussion and debate, that often discourages individuals and organisations from even considering, let alone adopting, Agile Project Management. The myth says that Agile is only suitable for software and IT development projects.

In some ways it’s understandable that this misconception exists; after all, the whole concept of Agile was born in the IT and software development arena.

However, it’s simply not true, and it’s a myth that needs busting once and for all.

The AgilePM® approach – based on DSDM Consortium’s Agile Project Framework – has been designed to be industry agnostic, making it applicable for a wide range of projects and change initiatives, ranging from marketing and business development to restructurings and transformations.

AgilePM sets out a step-by-step guide to considering the feasibility of the work and suggests breaking the work into small but independently valuable components. It encourages their early implementation to generate funds to pay for further work.

Each of these elements makes AgilePM a sensible approach to launching anything new. After all, IT hardware and software are just examples of new products and services. AgilePM is not a set of instructions for technical work; it guides how any new product or service, or any refresh of existing products or services, can be launched.

A new marketing campaign, a new type of flooring, transferring a call centre from offshore to onshore can all be easily managed using AgilePM.

AgilePM helps to establish the feasibility of the new idea through the completion of a few well thought out documents which push those involved to outline the problems they are trying to solve or the capabilities they want to create.

It keeps options open by ensuring these questions are about what the future needs to be and not how it needs to be created. AgilePM establishes both what will exist in the future and the benefits that this will realise by describing very high level stories about what the project will lead to.

The recognition that specialists and experts can debate how best to achieve this only when the expected benefits have been estimated and agreed by more commercial minds is a great way to stop ‘vanity’ projects, i.e. creating new things for the excitement of creating new things. This protects capital from being sunk into things that will never pay back what was spent on them.

Building confidence in project management

Breaking work into independently valuable component parts delivers value very early in the life of the project. It is thanks to AgilePM that this practice is spreading, which reduces project risk and builds confidence in project management. It allows sponsors to get early evidence about the take up rate of their products or services.

We no longer spend all the money delivering all of the requirements before finding out if our ideas are as exciting to our customers as we thought they were going to be. We find out early if our assumptions were right, with money left in the budget to fix the things that don’t work.

If we are right, then early customer take up generates revenue to pay for further work and creates an atmosphere of success which is very exciting to be a part of.

The AgilePM guidance, training and certification scheme was developed by APMG International and DSDM Consortium.

Based on DSDM’s Agile Project Framework, the guidance offers a robust, practical and repeatable methodology for all types of projects. It achieves an ideal balance between the standards, rigour and controls required for effective project management, and the fast-pace, change and empowerment provided by Agile.

Source: apmg-international.com

Continue reading

Difference between Scrum and Six Sigma

1. Scrum:

Scrum is a lightweight framework for agile development. It is subset of Agile Software development process which is nothing but an iterative and incremental software development technology.

Scrum can be defined as an assembling of peoples and that represents a teamwork. A group of ten or less than ten peoples in which they have specific skills to perform their own task in a particular era. Scrum was introduced to develop, deliver and for satisfying the products in a multiplex habitat.

The team of scrum consists of a product owner, a scrum Master and the developers. It mainly focuses on the product and other roles as well.

1. Product Owner : Product owner represents the product’s stakeholder and it manages the requirement of the customer, also focuses on the productivity and betterment of business. This is the most important role which handles both the business sides as well as the developer’s side in the scrum team.

2. Developers : Developers plays a vital role here; they manage all the technical part for growth of the business. They also convey to the researchers, architects, designers, data specialist, analysts, engineers, programmer, for developing for developing or improvement of the product.

3. Scrum Master : Scrum master is responsible for removing the obstacles during the production or delivering. It also ensures that the scrum framework is obeying the methodologies of business or not and also in the growth of production. Scrum mainly helps the product owner to keep the backlog of the product, well-being of the business.

Workflow of Scrum :

In scrum workflow, it requires several steps those are:

1. Sprint Planning : In this method the product owner and the developers discussed together that which product backlog items should be given to the sprint. This sprint planning focuses on the correct executing and removing error to get a sprint goal and backlog.

2. Daily Scrum : Daily scrum given the overview of sprint goal. The developers with lack of their time they can check quickly and easily, assess the program, activity plans for the next 24 hour. The daily Scrum is limited for only 15 minutes.

3. Sprint Review : This process initiated at the end of the sprint. It authorizes the scrum team, the occasion to present the recent increment done to the stakeholders. It checks the improvement and the work process of the sprint.

4. Sprint Retrospective : This is the final step in sprint. This method ensures that what change could occur in sprint for the Improvement. This process resolves by collaborating all the members such as the product owner, scrum master, the developers, and the entire scrum teams for the betterment and progress of the business.

2. Six Sigma :

Six sigma it is a set of approach and which provide tools for processing and improvement. Six sigma was introduced by an American Engineer named as “Bill Smith” in the year 1986, when Bill Smith was working at Motorola company.

The term six sigma has been derived from statistical method. This mainly focuses on achieving profit and financial status. Six sigma is highly recommended for business growth and increment of profits as well. Based on statistical method we can easily detect the error in the system and also the cause of decrement in the business.

Six sigma always tries to succeed with its dedications and great efforts. It requires whole commitment with the entire organization and keeps everything in a detailed way so that it helps to understand quickly all the strategies. Abolishing dissimilarities, it saves our money and also reduces the faults.

Some of the most used tools for measuring and analyzing the process such as; Control Charts, 5 Whys, Root Cause Analysis, CTQ tree, Statistical Process Control, Process Mapping etc.

Workflow of Six Sigma :

The methodology of six sigma is based on two principles DMAIC and DMADV.

1. DMAIC :

DMAIC is derived from various words and having their specific meanings.

1. D: D stands for defining the customers requirement and project goals.

2. M: Measures the key point on the recent process going on.

3. A: Analyze the data. It analyzes data from the existing one for their benefits.

4. I: Improve processes. Examine and analyze for the progress.

5. C: Control future executions for the accurate outputs so that errors doesn’t comes again.

2. DMADV :

DMADV is also derived from various words.

1. D: Defines company and customer needs.

2. M: Measures CTQs (Characteristics that are critical to quality). It measures the product ability for growth and production and damages.

3. A: Analyze data from our computation.

4. D: Design the new method based on the preceding move.

5. V: Verify the pattern by a pilot run, applicating the new method and provide it to the owner.

Difference between Six sigma and Scrum :

Six Sigma	Scrum
Six sigma focuses on the method of controlling and similarities through reducing of errors and disparity.	Scrum is based on Agile program management process which focuses to control the software and product development by repetitive progress methods.
It is based on DMAIC and DMADV principle.	It is based on DMAIC and DMADV principle. It is based on Agile principle.
It requires highly changes on the documentation and good strategy.	It only requires changes on the teammate’s interaction and customer partnership.
There is no need of teammates	There is need of good teammates for guidance.
In six sigma there is no need to verify their works to such other departments.	In scrum the process is considered and verified by various departments.
It is ideal for companies working on large scale projects where the requirements and functions/processes are clearly declared.	It is ideal for agile companies which work on projects with changing requirements.
Six sigma improves processes by eliminating waste and variations.	Scrum breaks down the project into short sprints.

Source: geeksforgeeks.org

Continue reading

ITIL 4 and Digital Transformation White Paper

This white paper considers the inseparability of service management and digital transformation. It also examines how ITIL 4 puts services at the heart of the discussion and reflects the need for new ways of working to accommodate broader technological shifts and other management approaches.

Introduction

The term ‘digital transformation’ is widely used by business and technology leaders, but it is worth pausing to reflect on what it really means, how it emerged and why it is important. This paper will use the fictionalized example of a mobile banking app to demonstrate the concepts of digital transformation. The basic concept of digital transformation is that several significant technological events radically changed the way all enterprises work. Some of these created secondary events, which compounded the transformative power of this convergence of events. The list below is not exhaustive, but it serves to illustrate related advances that are relevant under this broad topic1:

• The availability of cheap and abundant computer power (Moore’s Law2)
• The availability of cheap and abundant storage space (Kryder’s Law3)
• Ubiquitous network connectivity (Gilder’s Law4)
• The explosion of internet-connected devices (Metcalfe’s Law5)
• Precise geographic location identification
• Data analytics, machine intelligence and machine-to-machine interactions
• Real-time feedback via social media.

The combined effect of these advances enabled representation in a machine-readable and actionable format of every document, image, video, sound, transaction, and measurement (typically referred to as digitization). This, in turn, disrupted entire industries with new business models and value-creating opportunities. ‘The business’ and ‘the technology’ became inseparable (often referred to as digitalization).

The advances described above created the conditions to catalyse the growth of other technology-related ideas, such as agile IT, rapid application development, Internet of Things (IoT) and software defined infrastructure. This fuelled a virtuous cycle, the consequences of which can be summarized as:

• The time and cost needed to prototype, build and run technology-powered services has significantly reduced, lowering the entry barriers for new competitive threats and opportunities.
• The cost for customers to change service providers has significantly reduced, which has lowered the barriers for change, therefore making markets more ‘liquid’ and enabling significant shifts in market share.
• The ability of organizations to reach, understand, influence and adapt to changes in customer behaviour has significantly increased, therefore improving the ability to create ‘mass personalization’ experiences through technology-powered services.
• The popularity of social media and the reduced cost of switching has made enterprises susceptible to real-time customer sentiment. Every type of enterprise is subject to an unprecedented level of threats, expectations and opportunities. Competitive forces are accelerating the innovation which is required to improve the way people work and live, changing the dynamics of local and global economies in the process.

For example:

• GE is providing field technicians with cutting-edge augmented reality glasses, which allow remote experts to see exactly what the technicians see as they repair wind turbines. It also provides the workers with hands-free access to information.6
• The Chinese education firm Liulishuo is changing education by introducing a sophisticated English teacher powered by artificial intelligence (AI) that delivers personalized, adaptive learning to millions of people.6
• Thomson Reuters has developed an algorithm that uses streams of real-time data from Twitter to help journalists classify, source, fact-check, and debunk rumours faster than ever before.6 This is a response to the critical need for accurate information which feeds the 24-hour news cycle.
• Amazon’s Echo device is managing customers’ shopping needs and the daily demands of busy lives. Amazon is now so integrated into day-to-day lives that new apartment complexes are designing dedicated Amazon Lockers for their buildings. People now trust the company with physical access to their homes, letting couriers make deliveries via Amazon Key and its smart-lock system.6
• Siemens offers its MindSphere operating system for IoT manufacturing devices to anyone, and as a result is cementing itself as an integral part of the new IoT universe.6
• Guatemalan shoe store Meat Pack pinched customers from competitors through a mobile app called Hijack. When potential customers entered a rival’s store, they were detected using the app and offered a promotion at Meat Pack. A discount countdown began, starting at 99 percent and ticking down by 1 percent every second until the consumer entered the Meat Pack store. When a discount was redeemed, the person’s Facebook status automatically changed to inform the world.7
• Netflix tracks how customers interact with on-demand film downloads to improve its recommendations engine. It looks at metrics such as when customers pause the movie and what scenes they watch again. Amazon Video cut its celebrity interview section of The Grand Tour after its data showed that most of the international audience skipped this section in Season 1 and 2.7
• Knewton incorporates the ability to track specific data about how students use its software to continuously improve the quality and effectiveness of its online class materials. It tracks how long it takes students to complete an assignment and their ultimate score. It also tracks their keystrokes, how long it takes them to answer individual questions, and if they stop in the middle of an assignment or question.7
• Catalina, a global marketing company, is using consumers’ profiles and in-store location, determined by the product QR codes they scan to generate offers as they shop for groceries.7
• Airbnb disrupted an entire industry, moving from initial idea to product in less than eleven months. It hyper-scaled to ten million bookings in less than 56 months.8
• Estonia became the first nation to hold legally binding general elections using the internet. It held a pilot project for the municipal elections in 2005, parliamentary elections in 2007, and parliamentary elections through mobile phones in 2011.9

Services and their ‘digital characteristics’

Imagine you were asked to build a new mobile banking service for Bank X. How would you define and segment the customers and other stakeholders of the service? How would you know what outcomes they were trying to achieve? And how would you define the components of value that really matter?

ITIL® 4 defines service as follows:

A service is a means of enabling value co-creation by facilitating outcomes that customers want to achieve, without the customer having to manage specific costs and risks.

The examples above neatly illustrate the importance of the definition of a service. In each case the relationship between customers (or stakeholders), value and outcomes is clear.

What is not always clear is how these things are managed as distinct services, or the role of the service provider in owning the associated costs and risks. When looking at an existing service, it can be difficult to imagine the mindset of the service provider when they first envisioned the service.

As we start to think about the role of the service provider, it is worth considering some of the key characteristics of technology-powered services that evolved from the virtuous cycle of digital transformation.

• Speed-to-market: These services have a quick transition from initial idea to reality. This requires much closer collaboration between teams from ‘the business’ and ‘tech’. Active involvement from those that really understand the customers, their desired outcomes, and what they value, is critical for success.
• Modular: The services are designed based on modular, loosely-coupled components, often focusing on a ‘minimum viable service’ that can quickly benefit from real-world feedback. This architectural style has the added advantage of allowing incremental changes in small batch-sizes, which both reduces the risk of change and increases change velocity. As with the characteristic above, this also requires close ongoing engagement at the business-technology interface.
• Fail or scale: The service leverages the low barriers of entry that come from a digital environment. Experimentation is cheap, rapid scaling is possible and failure is an option. Failure could mean change, and this sometimes presents a cultural challenge in organizations where the appetite for risk is historically low. 
• Cloud economics: The economics of these services are driven by OpEx and variable costs, rather than CapEx and fixed costs. This change in economic approach can often provide the catalyst for investment, but also presents challenges because the costs of using cloud platforms are consumption-based and may be unpredictable.
• Unknown unknowns: Given the pace of change it is important to recognize from the outset that there are some things we just don’t know. Service owners consciously seek feedback from customers and build adaptive systems that allow the service to incrementally evolve. This can be daunting because it involves consciously seeking feedback and asking customers and other stakeholders what they really think.
• Data-driven insights: This type of service leverages an individual’s data for mass personalization, and the entire data set for hidden insights. Not only does this require careful attention to navigate the challenges of information security, it also means that we need to become familiar with manipulating, processing and drawing insights from huge volumes of data.
• Automate to reduce toil: These services leverage automation wherever possible to allow for rapid change, predictable quality and the elimination of low-value human effort. This means that we need to culturally accept and embrace technology and automation and recognize our value. Often the best time to embed this mindset is at the start of service development activities, when technical debt is at its lowest and enthusiasm is at its highest.
• Improve services, not IT: The success of each service is reliant on empowered service teams that are free to be adaptive within certain boundaries. Traditional, top-down leadership, based on functions and rigidly prescribed processes, reduces change velocity and stifles innovation. Leaders should refocus their efforts on setting appropriate boundaries, developing service teams with a broad range of skills, and removing all unnecessary blockers to adaptive and incremental improvements. Service teams should be trusted and empowered to make the right decisions based on their in-depth knowledge, rather than a one-size-fits-all approach to the governance of functions or processes.

Service management: thinking differently

Returning to our example of the creation of a new mobile banking service, we start to think about our responsibilities as a service provider. Certain characteristics of the service lead us toward different ways of funding, architecting, ‘developing’, ‘operating’ and ‘managing’ the service.

The below examples of ‘thinking differently’ are driven by the context and characteristics of the service in question. A different service with different context and characteristics might require other forms of adaption. For example, a service with brittle architectures, high technical debt and limited need for regular enhancements may struggle to seize the benefits of digitalization. In fact, the service management mantra of adopt and adapt has never been more relevant than in situations where there is an abundance of choices. When developing our mobile banking app for Bank X we will plan for the following:

• Speed-to-market is important, with an acceptance that a ‘minimum viable service’ will be launched quickly to lay the foundations for rapid, incremental enhancements.
• The team will apply design thinking techniques and seek out skills in user experience (UX)/customer experience (CX). This will ensure good understanding of the customers’ expectations and desired service outcomes. A lot of focus will be placed on the bank’s external customers, but the design workshops will also include representatives from other key stakeholder groups to ensure that compliance, security, reporting and other dimensions of the service have been considered.
• A feature roadmap will be defined and prioritized to deliver the sufficient minimum viable service. This will include enrolling in the service, checking account balances and recent transactions, intra-account transfers, payments to others and ATM and branch locations. The features and functionality to deposit cheques using the smartphone’s camera, create and amend standing orders and direct debits, and block or unblock a card will be recorded on the service backlog but deferred to future releases.
• The service will require a loosely-coupled architecture, based on small blocks of code (microservices) and APIs, to allow for these rapid, incremental enhancements.
• A few service architectures will be proposed and assessed against the key dimensions of cost, performance, speed and risk. The team will settle on coding the application in Python and leveraging simple infrastructure-as-a-service capabilities. Furthermore, a rigorous information security assessment will be performed to gain approval for utilizing Public Cloud Provider X.
• As different architectures will be assessed, items may be added to the service backlog. For example, a simple approach to data back-up and archival may be agreed to balance speed and risk, but the team may then decide that there are other approaches to optimize for cost and performance after the minimum viable service has been launched. These approaches would then be reviewed and prioritized along with the roadmap of features and functionality as part of a holistic service backlog to create an appropriate balance between cost, performance, speed and risk.
• While the rest of the IT organization is designed around the traditional boundaries of applications, infrastructure, development, operations and security, the service team will be established as a separate entity with all the necessary skills required to manage the end-to-end service. A service owner will be appointed from IT with responsibility for facilitating the outcomes that stakeholders want to achieve from the service, whilst owning the specific costs and risks associated to it.
• A representative from the bank’s retail business unit will also be appointed to own the ‘voice of the customer’, to secure funding for the evolution of the service and make decisions on behalf of the business. Given the agreed approach of ‘start small, scale-fast’, this business representative will meet regularly with the IT service team to help steer efforts.
• During the initial development of the service, the service team may decide that they would incorporate continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, highly-automated testing and blue-green deployments to maximize change velocity, minimize the risk of changes and reduce the impact of service failures.
• The application developers will quickly produce working code, along with the mechanisms to evolve it at speed and with increased quality. Meanwhile, the platform engineers will spend time understanding the key metrics of success (sometimes referred to as service level objectives) and defining appropriate error budgets to act as a throttle between the desire for change and the desire for stability. Furthermore, platform engineers will leverage centralized cloud platform management capabilities to ensure corporate standards are embedded, platform capabilities can be instantiated through automation, cloud-consumption costs are fully transparent and the ‘toil’ of repeatable, manual activities is automated where possible.
• Eventually, all stakeholder groups will agree the minimum viable service is ready for launch. The marketing campaign will be based on a ‘soft launch’ in a single country and v.1 of the new mobile banking service will be launched as a ‘blue deployment’, with feature flags set to control the initial roll-out.
• Once initial customer feedback is positive, the uptake of the mobile banking service may quickly exceed expectations. The transparency of cloud-consumption costs might show that demand is high and indicate that there are some parentless elastic IP addresses associated with the service that are incurring costs. The elastic IP addresses will be ‘stopped’ to optimize for cost.
• The service team will quickly move to reviewing and prioritizing items on the service improvement backlog and decide when to introduce new features into the next version whilst making operational changes to the underlying platform to improve monitoring.
• The CI/CD pipeline and automated testing established for v.1 will mean that the service team can quickly build and test the next version of the code. And the platform engineers will have new security standards so that the platform capabilities are instantiated through automation. Within a short time, version 2 of the Mobile Banking Service may be launched as a ‘green deployment’, using the same feature flags to control the roll-out.
• If monitoring the data suggests that the service is not performing adequately and highlights a need to roll-back to the ‘blue deployment’, the team will identify how to resolve the issues and quickly have a new version for the ‘green deployment’. Furthermore, the team may identify and introduce new automated testing to ensure repeat situations are caught before launch and new auto-scaling rules so that similar situations don’t impact the customer experience.
• The service team will continually identify, assess and prioritize opportunities to improve, evolving the service based on nearer-term business needs, rather than commitment to a fixed, multi-year plan.

Inseparability of service management and digital transformation

It is important to note that our approach to funding, architecting, developing, operating and managing the fictitious mobile banking service is not meant to be comprehensive. It simply aims to articulate the interrelated nature of many of the ideas often associated with digital transformation and ‘modern’ IT management. Although all organizations should consider how they can benefit from the technological advances associated with digital transformation, they will also need to master different IT management techniques.

Trying to break down the complexity of IT management is not a trivial task and the traditional IT domains of applications, infrastructure, development or operations are counter-productive to creating agile environments that foster innovation. ITIL 4, the latest iteration in the world’s leading service management framework, is unique in that it puts services at the heart of the discussion and reflects the need for new ways of working to accommodate broader technological shifts and other management approaches. This framework recognizes that true value does not reside in IT processes, functions or digital transformation programmes, but in the uniqueness of each service. Rather than promoting a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach, it also provides guidance that can be adopted and adapted to the uniqueness of each service.

References

1 Jim Miller, Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimmiller/2018/08/13/what-is-a-digital-transformation-and-why-should-you-care/) [Accessed 22nd February 2019]

2 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law [Accessed 22nd February 2019]

3 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Kryder#Kryder’s_law_projection [Accessed 22nd February 2019]

4 https://www.netlingo.com/word/gilders-law.php [Accessed 22nd February 2019]

5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law [Accessed 22nd February 2019]

6 Accenture Technology Vision (2018) https://www.accenture.com/t00010101T000000Z w /gb- en/_acnmedia/Accenture/next-gen-7/tech-vision-2018/pdf/Accenture-TechVision-2018-Tech-Trends-Report. pdf#zoom=50 [Accessed 22nd February 2019]

7 Accenture Technology Vision (2013) https://www.accenture.com/us-en/_acnmedia/Accenture/ Conversion-Assets/Microsites/Documents8/Accenture-Technology-Vision-2013.pdf [Accessed 22nd February 2019]

8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_Airbnb [Accessed 22nd February 2019]

9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_voting_in_Estonia [Accessed 22nd February 2019]

Source: axelos.com

Continue reading