July - 2019CONSTRUCTIONTECHREVIEW.COM8It is 9:20 am on a Monday morning and I have just partic-ipated in the daily stand-up for a major digital channel initiative that we are delivering to market in two months' time. The Release Train Engineer ran the stand-up, which included all the Scrum Masters, Product Owners and the Sponsor. We ran through the Kanban board, which the RTE had built in Jira; focused on the key block-ers, assigned resources to critical issues and had a quick discussion about organising the launch party. Only four Sprints to go! As the ProjectManager, I wonder about the relevance of my role going forward.Does this scenario sound familiar to you? In today's modern workplace where `Agile' is the dominant paradigm for delivering change, we are surrounded by these relatively new activities and roles and we are starting to reflect on the value of project management and specifically the role of the Project Manager. It is my contention that project management competencies are still highly relevant and necessary in today's environment; however, `Project Manager' as a role is being disrupted.Our work environment and context has changed significantly in recent times. Technology has underpinned exponential changes in our personal, community, and workspaces. Computing power in our hands is enormous, interactions are most often real-time online, and we are rapidly digitising and automating products and services. Technology has enabled our ability to design, create and deliver new services to market in record time. Our delivery and value realisation approach is defined more by iterative or continuous development of initiatives as opposed to monolithic projects with a defined start and end (and uncertain outcomes!).Customer expectations are also changing rapidly, the market is shifting quickly and the traditional approach of locking in scope within a defined schedule and budget is fraught with the danger of not delivering timely and valued outcomes. The Standish Group Chaos Report continues to identify that the vast majority of initiatives fail on traditional measures and only 29% of IT implementations are considered successful. For the past two years, I have been the accountable executive for the design and delivery of a $300m digital and customer experience transformation. At peak, the program of work contained approximately By Craig Lauchlan, Ex General Manager, Customer Experience Transformation, AGL EnergyPROJECT MANAGEMENT AND THE ROLE OF THE PROJECT MANAGER IN AN AGILE WORLDCraig LauchlanIN MYOPINION
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