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Agile in large organizations can often be unruly, leading to a PMO that either closes its eyes and hopes for the best or controls too tightly, eliminating what makes agile such a boon in the first place.
Controlled Agility™ brings governance back to agile ways of working, aligning it with the organizational strategy without stifling innovation and flexibility.
How do we plan and fund our strategy? How do we align our organization with our strategy? Which processes apply for agile and non-agile? How do we combine sprint planning with Gantt and milestones?
At Projectum, we developed the Controlled Agility™ framework to better understand and manage agility in large organizations.
The goal is to look at project and work management areas and give you the freedom to identify your specific needs from a people, process, and technology perspective.
The Controlled Agility™ is a multidirectional framework: it can be considered top-down and bottom-up.
Which direction you look from will give you different considerations, depending on where in the organization you are.
The essential part of the framework is identifying which teams are working according to which methodologies – and figure out which tools and structures that need to be in place. It’s not a case of replacing methodologies or processes but identifying which tools can provide the relevant overview for decision-making on an organizational level.
The foundation of everything is, put bluntly, the actual work being done by people in the organization. Team collaboration in the Controlled Agility™ framework is divided into three different groups:
Tools like roadmaps that can show dependencies between projects and deliverables can identify potential risks and allow for clear communication.
No matter the work processes, all work hinges on team collaboration, that is being able to deliver information, products and results within the team to achieve a common goal.
This is also a place where there should be structures in place to allow for ordinary things like setting deadlines, managing progress, identifying ownership, etc.
It’s important to choose a solution or define a workflow that allows freedom of work as well as a way to gauge progress in projects and work.
Having an available time tracking solution is not only mandatory in the EU – it’s an excellent tool for evaluating how time is spent and comparing it to investments and gains.
In the Controlled Agility framework, this runs across all processes and structures and should be able to capture complex work and processes. A good time registration solution also means more flexibility as you can easily move people to different projects and register their time right away – this means there’s always an up-to-date insight into how time is spent.
Deciding how to structure time registration affects the possibilities of reporting and potential gains.
People management is a large discipline that is about ensuring the optimal balance between project completion and employee happiness.
Because of that, we won’t dive too far into people management here. In the Controlled Agility Perspective, it’s about ensuring that people can move freely between projects and departments as needed and according to their skills.
Therefore, people should be managed as a coherent whole, as much as possible to improve employee satisfaction and ease flow across the organization. It should be easy to transfer to projects, logistically, and the employee should feel safe and comfortable with minimal change management.
Business Case Management is about having the overall vision for the company and ensuring that the work being done is not only feasible but provides value for the organization.
Good business case management sets the organization free to work in the way that makes sense for them. They trust that the work makes sense – and it becomes clear how to track and manage progress both on the team level as well as the PMO/executive level.
Tips for Effective Business Case Management
• Involve Stakeholders Early: Engaging stakeholders from the beginning ensures their buy-in and support.
• Be Realistic: Provide realistic estimates for costs, benefits, and timelines to avoid setting unachievable expectations.
• Use Clear and Concise Language: Avoid jargon and ensure the business case is understandable to all stakeholders.
• Focus on Value: Highlight how the project will create value for the organization.
• Regular Reviews: Periodically review the business case to ensure it remains relevant and aligned with organizational goals.
As always, the most important thing is organizational alignment. With OKRs you can ensure that everyone knows what the overall strategy is – even if realizing it can vary from department to department.
Governance is both the beginning and the end of any organization. This is where we handle the organization’s strategy and follow up on whether it’s being executed. With Controlled Agility™, governance comes into play, but the key is collecting information rather than decreeing methodology.
Deciding what data to collect – and how – is not a one-off decision.
As projects pick up speed, it might be necessary to keep track of new things, unexpected challenges or previously undefined dependencies.
The only way to know, if you should be tracking more things is engaging with your data.
- What does it mean that this project is not using the projected budget?
- What are the reasons that this project is stalling?
- Will the progress of this project create a bottleneck for others?
The more you understand – the more you can do about it.
Power PPM is designed based on 20 years of experience in managing projects and portfolios in large enterprises. It’s designed to handle multiple workflows, integrate with agile solutions, and fully configurable to your organizational need.
- Manage projects and porfolios, such as finance, risks, idea intake, progress, OKRs, KPIs etc.
- Get interactive portfolio overviews
- AI assistance and analytics
- Manage resources across teams and departments
- Track time and integrate data into other reporting
- ..and much more
