by John Parker | Dec 1, 2014 | Agile, Project Management |
You guys did it again! Our last webinar, Enterprise Agile Project Management, was an incredible success. There were many thoughtful questions asked that I unfortunately didn’t have the time to answer. The Webinar Q&A can now be downloaded alongside the rest of the webinar resources, including the recording and slide deck. Here are a few of the questions asked during the webinar: Q: Today, the role of scrum master is the same as Project Manager in traditional projects, they just use different terminology and PDM process. Is this correct? A: A Scrum Master and a Project Manager are not the same. Organizations that have made this assumption have seen disastrous results. The traditional Project Manager is a leader, a decision maker, and a planner who manages the project and his team, and is the person accountable to the business for accomplishing the project objectives. The role of the Scrum Master is more of a coaching and facilitation role, a role that sits between the project and the customer. Q: Is Project Manager role the same as Product Manager role in this presentation? I’ve just submitted for a position that states the role as a PO and went on to state tasks as a PM. I personally don’t think this is a successful set up. Please advise. A: No, the project manager and the product manager are not the same role. The project manager is responsible for managing releases and associated business change. The project manager also manages assignments among multiple teams when multiple teams are involved. The product manager is responsible for determining what new features are needed in...
by John Parker | May 16, 2014 | Agile, Uncategorized |
There were a few great questions asked at the end of our webinar yesterday, Agile Business Transformation. While I didn’t have time to answer them in the information-packed webinar, here are your answers. Q: Does Enfocus know of publications on Agile transformations for business with products with HW as well as SW products? A: –Agile Development has been used for both the development of hardware and software products. One of the best-known examples is the development of Nokia phones. In Enterprises, many infrastructure groups are also starting to use agile. Many organizations are starting to adopt DevOps which is an umbrella concept that refers to anything that facilitates a smoother interaction between development and operations. The best information for large agile transformations is at www.scaledagileframework.com. There is also a major movement toward integrating Lean with agile and there are several good books on this subject. A very good book on this subject is Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash by Tom and Mary Poppendieck. Q: I find it challenging to differentiate a Feature from An Epic! For example, how would you determine if a BR is a feature or an Epic? A: — Great Question. A feature has to be small enough to fit into a Release. An epic spans multiple releases. Epics are approved by Portfolio management, whereas Features are defined by program management and are used to decompose an Epic into manageable components. View an epic as a project and a feature as a component of a project. Q: Most of the time, we find the stories changing to be a Feature or Epic! A:...
by John Parker | Mar 31, 2014 | Business Analysis, Project Management, Uncategorized |
Simply put, cloud computing is computing based on the Internet. In the past, people ran applications on a physical computer or server in their building, cloud computing allows people access the same kinds of applications more easily and anywhere through the Internet. Cloud computing is growing rapidly because it just makes economic sense. So why are so many businesses moving to the cloud? It’s because cloud computing increases efficiency, helps improve cash flow and offers many more benefits. Let’s explore some of these benefit: Automatic software updates Many organizations that have implemented an on-premise ERP or CRM system know how painful it is to upgrade the software. With Cloud computing, updates are applied automatically — this is part of the basic service and often saves organizations millions of dollars per year. This frees up customers’ time that can be used on other important tasks. Flexibility The Cloud provides much more flexibility for increases and decreases in demand. For example, if a company needs more bandwidth than usual, maybe for some special promotion, a cloud-based service can instantly meet the demand because of the vast capacity of the services’ remote servers. In fact, this flexibility is so crucial that 65% of respondents to an InformationWeek survey said “the ability to quickly meet business demands” was an important reason to move to cloud computing. New users can be added or removed very easily adjusting to business demand as needed. Disaster recovery Disaster recovery is often much easier for cloud based services as this capability is a standard part of the service. Cloud computing providers take care of most issues, and they...
by John Parker | Mar 24, 2014 | Business Analysis, Uncategorized |
In the most recent VersionOne State of Agile Survey released in 2014, Business Analysts are considered the least knowledgeable about Agile. Please see the diagram below. Working with many Business Analysts, I am not surprised by this statistic, but it does concern me. In the Scrum world, there is no official role for a Business Analyst. We don’t write the functional requirements the way we did in the past and a Business Analyst is not required or needed to write or draft user stories. Business Analysis skills are very much needed, however the traditional BAs that simply write functional requirements will either need to re-skill or retire. Recently Forrester research shows that more than 90% of organizations are actively pursuing Agile. If Business Analysts do not learn and embrace Agile now, and they plan on continuing writing functional requirements in the ways they have in the past, then they should start planning a new career as their positions will soon be eliminated in a future downsizing effort. If the BAs in your organization have not made the transformation to Agile, please call us at Enfocus Solutions; we can help. We can provide you with the education, knowledge, and tools to transform you business analysis function to the Agile world. Please attend the Webinar tomorrow to find out more. [cta...
by John Parker | Mar 19, 2014 | Business Analysis, ITIL and Service Design, Project Management, Uncategorized |
Lately, Marketing has been purchasing a significant amount more of marketing-related technology and services using their own capital and expense budgets. Some of this purchasing is being done outside the control of the internal IT organization and some is being done in conjunction with IT. Gartner has made the bold prediction that by 2017, the CMO will spend more on IT than the CIO. Let’s look at some of the facts from the Gartner 2013 US Marketing Spend Survey: The average percentage of revenue spent on marketing is 10.4 % Digital Marketing represents 1/3 of Total Marketing Spend Up to Half of all Digital Marketing is Outsourced Search Marketing topped the CMO’s list of Outsourced Activities Over 40% claim that the keys to Marketing success are 1) Corporate Web Site, 2)Social Marketing, and 3)Digital Advertising Now, let’s look at some trends of why marketing is spending more and more on technology. First, we are living in the age of the customer. Customers now have real-time information about pricing, product features and competitors. As a result, they hold the advantages, and one of the few competitive advantages remaining for businesses is to concentrate on the knowledge of and engagement with customers. Josh Bernoff, a Forrester Research analyst stated in a recent report that companies must not only be customer focused, they must be customer obsessed, focusing their strategy, energy, and budget on processes that enhance knowledge of engagement with customers. Implementing a customer based strategy falls under marketing for most companies. For the last 10 years, many organizations focused on Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Now the focus is on marketing...
