Agile Project Management and Workforce Management

Agile project management is extremely important for the successful implementation of a digital workforce management. We talked about this topic with our Executive Director Customer Services & Support, Dieter Luber.

Dieter, why is professional Project Management so important for the successful implementation of a Workforce Management solution?

Our high-performance product suites always have to be adapted in line with our customers’ specific demands and requirements. We want to get the best performance we can out of the solution and generate a quick return on investment for our customers. Whether that’s in the cloud or on premises. A crucial part of any project is focusing rigorously on the customer’s business objectives and mapping them onto an ideal solution design. Among other things, this means a high degree of functional coverage, a user-friendly interface, good performance and low maintenance costs. These are all key requirements for increasing the solution’s acceptance within the company and delivering the project with the top-notch level of professionalism that we aspire to.

And how do you do that?

Well, we certainly benefit strongly from our high-quality staff. Many of our 150 or so consultants have been working with us for well over ten years and are genuine experts in their field. Not only do they boast extensive ATOSS expertise, they also know industries inside out and come armed with a wealth of experience from many successful projects. Many of them are Prince2- and/or IPMA-certified project managers who are also trained in agile techniques such as Scrum. Thanks to their expert knowledge, coupled with the iterative and agile methods at their disposal, they are ideally positioned to deliver customer projects on time, on budget and on quality. Both at home and abroad. After all, these certifications represent global standards.

How does such a project unfold at our customers?

We usually start with a workshop, which is focused squarely on the company’s business objectives and led by an experienced architect. Together with the project team, he or she elicits the customer's requirements, prioritizes them and takes responsibility for coming up with the best solution design for the project. The priorities are set depending on whether a certain requirement will genuinely help achieve a particular business objective. Everything that contributes to the goal will be implemented following the 80/20 rule. As we are working in an agile process, we can respond quickly to any changes in requirements and revise our priority list if we need to. We always work closely with our customers in a process of co-creation.

How does this agile approach benefit customers?

First and foremost, they get a lot of transparency about project progress at any given time: The customer is provided with a steady stream of prototypes and can test them out to their heart’s content. The intensive dialog with the decision-makers on the customer’s side means that they’re actively involved in the process rather than just being impacted by it.

Naturally, that significantly boosts the acceptance of the new solution and the project as a whole. It also minimizes the risk of anything going off track during the project. After all, the focus always has to be on the business objectives the customer wants to achieve. In a nutshell, an approach as structured as ours saves time and money for both parties and makes for a much more successful project.

Do you have a real-kife example for us?

Of course. Our customer BUTLERS is a very recent example of our agile project approach: Their solution went live in just under 30 days. And we’re currently working with the City of Munich to develop an ideal solution design for their major digitization project.