Business Agility and Project Management
Blue stands for the sprints in which thinking, planning and revision takes place, while red represents the work phases. What is striking is that at the beginning there is no work at all, only planning. Roughly summarized, Agile boils down to realigning priorities: It is about continuous improvement (of processes and products alike) instead of mindlessly working through set processes, about giving people priority over processes and about adapting a plan if necessary. The method comes from IT and is widely used in software development.
As an analyst, I feel a little out of place here. Not only does my job set me apart from the programmers, project managers and founders around me, I am also small, female and young. So young that I am probably one of the youngest participants. I quickly practice a serious facial expression in front of the mirror, because smiling too often can also appear incompetent , straighten my shoulders to look a little taller, and tie my hair into a cool bun. My name tag says Gartner and I want to avoid my lack of technical understanding distracting from the brand at all costs.
So I approach the conference equipped. I can't code, but I've been writing about project management as an industry and about project management software for years . And I sincerely hope that my lack of programming experience won't prevent me from identifying new trends and their impact on the tools of the Agile movement.
A concern that fortunately turns out to be unfounded.
This conference participation is the basis for this article, in which I want to explain not only how project management and its tools are changing, but also what triggers these changes. The most important factor is the fact that the agile management methods that were previously reserved for IT are being transferred to entire companies and all their structures. This has massive effects that I want to examine in more detail here.
The Future of Project Management Software
Project management is changing rapidly. Software codes are becoming less important, while those involved are becoming more important. Psychology, anthropology and philosophy are replacing important cornerstones such as classic management training, tried and tested processes and key figures.
These are good times for career changers.
Today, there are new – unspoken – drivers of innovation for projects and development tools: sensitivity to humanity and fallibility, as well as knowledge of the importance of communication, of how individuals position themselves and find themselves in teams of colleagues or in relation to competitors.
Stories are more important than storyboards, living people more important than robotic roles, long-term visions more important than short-sighted actionism. And not only projects, portfolios and product management are becoming more and more human, the associated IT industries (project management software, project portfolio management software and product management software ) are following them at every step.
The merger of VersionOne and CollabNet reveals many changes
“Our customers have been asking for this long before the merger.”
VersionOne CEO Robert Holler sits on the conference podium on Monday evening, with Thomas Hooker and Eric Robertson (both of whom are senior executives at CollabNet) nodding in agreement to his right and left. Although the merger was announced just hours earlier, Hooker has already received feedback from customers. "They're excited because now they finally have a comprehensive solution."
The merger of VersionOne and CollabNet shows a change in project management: fewer silos, closer integration of internal teams. Basically similar to the meteoric rise of DevOps in the last ten years (yes, DevOps has actually only been around since 2009!) .
What were the customers concerned about - and what do they now like about the merger? That there is finally an end-to-end tool for software strategy, delivery and deployment, a unified system in which every decision from ideation to completion is placed in a coherent context.
The “comprehensive solution” that Holler refers to is the resulting synchronization of different tools.
The functions of CollabNet and VersionOne complement each other. Tgether they offer a holistic solution for software development.
This merger is significant. It embodies a clear trend in the area of project management software, and in the area of business tools in general, where more emphasis is being placed on giving the software user the choice. But none of these shifts is as clear as the fact that Agile methods are now also finding their way into classic business processes, instead of continuing to be limited to IT departments.
In other words: Not only is project management becoming more agile, the malaysia telegram data entire economy is becoming more agile .
The future of the economy is agile. The result: a friendlier economic environment
To understand the significance of this merger, one must briefly consider the background to this merger.
We know,
that customers of both products had already asked about features of the other.
So there are already companies that would invest in a merger of IT departments. And that is a fundamental feature of DevOps. Just as Agile supporters demand, it is where the right teams communicate with each other, rather than focusing on formal strategies, development and delivery processes.
Until recently, IT departments have primarily served internal business goals. But in a truly agile, customer-focused business world, the end product must be the focus of the entire team, not just those directly involved in delivering it.
Accordingly, the silos we have today are disappearing. VersionOne and CollabNet are doing nothing other than reacting to this market development.
And they are by far not the only ones.