This is an exciting article describing the 5 ways in which organizations are cultivating their next practices. The article lists 5 ways in which organizations are doing this. They are Design Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, Organizational Agility at Scale, Dev Ops, and Cognitive Computing.
Design Thinking refers to the practice of learning exactly how a user interacts with a product. This method has a developer or designer ask the question “What challenges them in their daily work”. There are 5 steps to Design Thinking. The first is empathy which requires a developer to gather information about how the user works by conducting interviews and watching how they work.
The second requires them to define the problem that needs to be solved. Thirdly, we should “Ideate” by which is meant that we should come up with ideas to solve the problem. The fourth step is to build a prototype. Lastly we are to test our solution and refine it as necessary. Watching how the user works and understanding the problem to be solved are two of the main points to be gleaned from this section on Design Thinking.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to taking advantage of the new uses being developed in the area of AI. Human error can be reduced in the process of gathering data. This can assist the project manager in managing costs, budgets, and schedules. There are already AI chatbots available which help in providing advance to user questions.
Organizational Agility at Scale discusses how agile organizations move quickly to anticipate change.
The organization is able to adapt to challenges more quickly and keep in touch with customer needs. There is an example given related to this item which discusses how ANZ, a bank in Australia, is using the agile process to deliver their technology and digital project. One project mentioned is Apple Pay. ANZ will establish squads of about 10 people each to improve response and efficiency of delivering products. One issue that ANZ noted is that they have been successful at the project level but now need to apply their changes across the organization. One other example, which was given, is Spotify. They came up with a radical way of applying agility by using what they call autonomous squads.
DevOps is a term they discussed. It is derived from the development and operations of the word. This is a way of bringing the design, development and deployment functions together during the product life cycle. The benefits are faster deployment times and problems can be addressed more quickly. One facet of DevOps which was mentioned in the article is that DevOps helps to find problems earlier in the schedule and to get them fixed quickly. This will ensure a better customer experience. DXC, an IT services company, was discussed regarding how they are using DevOps. They focus on quality, testing, automation, and collaboration. Their latest project with Zurich Insurance Group, resulted in reducing costs 30% by using cloud services.
The last important item discussed is Cognitive Computing. There is a list of capabilities in the article regarding cognitive computing. Cognitive Computing is known to be a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) and is helping to bring the project manager visibility related to business strategy. It will take much of the time-consuming work away from skilled workers allowing them more time to devote to analytical and judgment which is more difficult for machines. A company called Woodside Energy is partnering with IBM to go this route. One example of how they are using Cognitive Computing is by using it to analyze tens of thousands of project management documents. It takes the system only seconds to perform this function, whereas it would take human 5 years to do. So there is a proven track record that this technology works.