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Expert Briefing | Association Insights

An aircraft depends on many connected processes. Its
commercial purpose is to regularly and safely fly from A
to B. The pilot has one view of its operation; the service
engineer has another; the airline marketing department has
yet another. Three very different views, all interdependent.

Example:

Example:
Agile models for producing improvements in software
use a series of short iterations (over a period of
months). They achieve change in small manageable
steps, each of which is tested, and delivers some clear
form of business value at each step. There are clear
consultations with key stakeholders between each step
.

It helps to think about your organisation as running a
huge set of joined-up processes, which deliver each of
the services which your members require. In a factory,
at the core of these processes is usually an obvious
“production line” which takes in raw materials and
produces saleable products, and connected to it will
be sub-processes which source the raw materials,
handle the purchase orders, raise the invoices, and so
forth. In a professional association, the core processes
are often about handling information and feeding it
out to members, perhaps through newsletters, events
or training sessions. There will probably be many
small processes all running in parallel. Helping your
organisation to work effectively is about streamlining
and tuning these processes, a few at a time, so that
they run at their best.

What does the Board want?
The Board or Executive want the organisation to meet the
needs of its customers, and to remain financially viable. Of
course, this is all happening in a rapidly changing world, so
the organisation also has to be resilient and adaptable to
cope with change.
This is underpinned by investment in IT, and whilst IT is
often brought in to assist with resilience and adaptability,
its rapidly evolving technology also becomes an extra
factor in causing continuing change.

What does the business need?
The organisation depends on people – its members and
its staff. Both sets of stakeholders need to have faith in its
ability to deliver its services appropriately, with clarity and
reliability. Keeping stakeholders informed and consulted is a
key part of managing change effectively.

Keeping control of quality
Maintaining control of quality during a project is a
balancing act between three primary forces, Time, Cost,
and Scope. Time is the available time to deliver the project,
Cost represents the amount of money or resources
available and Scope represents the range of features that
the project must tackle to be a success. These act together
to influence the Quality of what the project delivers. Each
iteration of a project is an opportunity to examine each of
these three, to achieve the quality you want. Being able to
make informed evaluations and decisions at each iteration
requires the project manager to maintain good contact
with relevant stakeholders and with the “business owner”
for the project.

Example:
Time, Cost, Scope – “Adjust for quality”
In the Agile approach, a “backlog” of desired features is
drawn up, and then, for the start of each development
cycle, a number of the highest-ranking features is
selected to be developed in that cycle. These are
usually chosen on the basis of providing the greatest
business value at the time. This ranking of the next
desirable features to work should be decided with
the development team on the advice of the “product
owner”, who in turn makes sure that the needs of all
the necessary stakeholders have been considered.

For this reason, at the heart of the “ITIL” good practices
for delivering IT service is “change control”, and similarly
at the heart of AGILE” good practices for IT development
is “stakeholder engagement”. Professional IT contractors
and service providers use these methodologies to handle
expectations, and to deliver change in manageable chunks.
This helps to keep a manageable balance between stability
and agility.

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