Tag: IT Project Management

In 15 years Stoneseed has revolutionised the project-resource-on-demand market with our Project Management as a Service (PMaaS) resourcing model and our P3MO platform (which appropriately leans heavily into Microsoft’s project tools that are, arguably, direct results of Nadella’s change of culture).

Do you find that you don’t have or can’t find talent with the exact skills to deliver your IT Projects? As projects become more complex are you struggling to juggle relationships with an ever-snowballing cast of stakeholders? Are the Projects in your portfolio increasingly outside your core expertise? Are your IT Projects now driving business change to the point that YOU now directly influence the future of your business? Are your budgets and deadlines tighter and yet stakeholder expectations greater than ever? Are you finding that your IT Projects necessitate pulling talent away from already assigned duties?

We invest a lot of time, energy and budget on the “self-care” of our IT projects, in terms of robust governance, strong PMO (Project Management Office) and world-class processes, etc – but do we pay enough attention to our individual or team’s self-care? Given the anecdotal stress, work-overload and burn-out in our industry, I’m thinking – NO.

A Stoneseed BA’s day will vary depending on the client’s requirements and project type. Whether it’s an Agile, Waterfall or Hybrid environment and whether its product, Infrastructure, software or digital transformation project for example. The life of a Stoneseed Ba is very varied, on this particular day, it is a for a client who is delivering an Agile software upgrade and development project.

There are unexpected parallels even if, at first blush, horse trials and IT Project Management may seem worlds apart – I was struck by many similarities in the principles, the methods and the challenges. WORLDS APART Quickly, let’s compare the two.

If you’ve ever trained a puppy, you’ll know the value of a “treat” to reward good behaviour, like sitting or staying on command. I think most dogs know the word “biscuit” before they learn their own name, mind you, I know some PMs who are as partial to a bourbon or chocolate malted milk, she writes dunking a digestive! At Crufts I saw a lot of treats passed from owner to dog with a “good boy” or “good girl”. Rewards are vital to the process.

Experience and anecdotal evidence suggest that Bex isn’t alone in seeking a little bit more. In many organisations now, IT project teams feel that the necessary fixed scope, set budgets, tight deadlines, limited resources and defined roles and responsibilities, leave little or no room for experimentation and innovation. The thing is, if you’re getting the results, do you need the added sizzle of innovating? I think that you do.

This is one of the things I love about Stoneseed, our team, and the culture we have evolved. When we talk about someone behind their back, it’s always positive and hugely complimentary!  If you haven’t yet had the pleasure, Dale Beeton is Stoneseed’s Head of Client Engagement and, as our clients will attest, he is one of those “extra milers” that make a real difference – and not just from a business perspective.

The trainer was explaining the team’s fairly unique binary approach to scrum sprints, which effectively boils down to them having two duration categories – A) one week long and B) three weeks long. The new hire found this interesting and enquired about the reason behind this approach. In her last job, length and number of sprints would be decided at a goal setting meeting, a twelve-week scrum project could have 15–20 Scrum sprints, which could be as short as a handful of days and as long as a month. So, “Why?” seemed a reasonable question but it was met with either blank expressions or an unsatisfactory explanation. The trainer did not know, nobody on the team could answer either.