Category: [bu:st] Whitepaper

Deadlines and costs blowing the defined scope, and quality doesn’t match the defined specifics and requirements of the customer. The project scope seems unattainable. Transparency towards the overall project status and a coordinated approach? Negative! What sounds like the horror scenario of every project manager is pure reality in some projects. A lot of companies therefore use task forces to solve suddenly occurring problems. This guideline explains how to successfully deploy a task force.

Transparency towards the overall project status and a coordinated approach? Negative! Does this sound familiar to you?

A lot of companies therefore use task forces to solve suddenly occurring problems, avert predicted crises, manage through crises, or solve special topics with a high focus efficiently. Used correctly, a task force is not only a chance to solve short-term problems and crises, but can also lay down the basis towards an improved project management in the future.

When do I need a task force?

The need for a task force can occur through proactive and reactive triggers. Proactive triggers are special topics and predicted crises. Reactive triggers occur due to actual crises situations.

Four key factors are important for a powerful and successful task force:

1. Create an independent task force project organization.
2. Enable the task force with the necessary competencies & room for manoeuvre.
3. Use a resilient task force manager with experience.
4. Make a conscious staffing of the task force team.

Watch out for the risks when implementing a task force

The task force should solve their tasks specifically and efficiently. At the same time, the organization must ensure that the task force is not prevented (unintentionally) from completing their tasks and that new problems don’t occur.

Solution modules for a successful task force

• Laying the basis for decisions and agreements with TRANSPARENCY
• Create synchrony and structure trough COMMUNICATION
• Provide stability and security through RHYTHM

Implemented in the right way, a task force can bring a significant boost for projects and organizations. Convert risks to chances and ensure a positive and sustainable change.

 

In the face of the “crisis without a blueprint”, employees are experiencing great insecurity not only in their private lives but also at work – “new work” is real from one day to the next. The people in a team are the ones who let employees go to work, even if it’s not so much fun at times. From one day to the next, you as a manager must be able to trust that team cohesion also functions virtually – for mental resilience in the team and for economic survival. Read in six sections how to maintain virtual team cohesion with empathic leadership and targeted methodology..

• 100% virtual in a crisis situation – Why even power teams are at risk.
• To achieve goals, you have to reach people.
• The three dimensions that are decisive for virtual team cohesion when leading at a distance.
• Use project management methods to show leadership and actively promote virtual team cohesion.Maintaining and building trust through transparency
• Compensate missing, personal encounters through communication
• Keeping the rhythm as good as possible (including an overview of formal and informal communication formats for online mapping and supplementing the otherwise offline formats)
• Agile method example for strengthening virtual team cohesion
• Professionalism meets humanity: Virtual cohesion extends beyond the team and beyond your own organisation.

The principle of networking is accelerating change in society. Information is available anywhere, anytime. Digital communication technologies are increasingly determining our working environments. Virtual teams are working from all different parts of the world. People have the freedom of choice – to meet up in person or virtually sitting in their home office. Megatrends such as globalization, digitization and mobilization are fundamentally changing our private and working lives. New solutions are required – for your own work and for virtual collaboration.

Use Cases

1. Remote workshops with people or teams in the same organization
2. Remote workshops with an open group of participants or with people or teams from different organizations

Which Methods and Approaches are Helpful for the Successful Implementation?

First of all: Everything you have learned about the design of workshops remains valid. Structured preparation and interactive implementation remain key enablers. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact our Communication Management Team (David Leu, david.leu@bu-st.de).

In our experience at [bu:st], four building blocks are crucial for a successful remote workshop:

A. Target
B. People
C. Process
D. Methods

We wish you much success with our tips for your remote workshops! Stay healthy!
If you have questions, we would love to help. We are happy to share our experience!

An unexpected situation like the shutdown due to the corona virus (COVID-19) forces you and your project team to work 100% remotely. These three basic principles will help you now: Transparency, Communication and Rhythm. We have summarized in 12 steps how you can continue to manage your projects successfully, just now „remote“.

These three basic principles will help you now

Transparency

Helps you explore the situation.

Communication

Helps you to recognize and understand.

Rhythm

Creates structure and therefore safety.

In this manual we have summarized the 12 most important steps:

1. Self-organization
2. Ensure the communication skills of all project team members
3. Conduct a kick-off meeting for „remote work“ with your project team
4. Hold your first rule meeting with your project team
5. Create checklist for all following virtual rule meetings
6. Assign how each individual deals with assigned work packages
7. Establish culture and atmosphere
8. Determine the project controller’s special responsibility in the remote team
9. Communicate
10. Obtain communication and collaboration tools
11. How do you delegate correctly?
12. Are you an executive?

Many successfully implemented remote projects [bu:st] wishes you!

This combination of Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity is called VUCA. In today´s VUCA world, conventional project management methods that have been proven for complicated system reach their limits. Agile project management offers a much-discussed and prominent solution in many areas.

What are the goals of agile project management?

In our fast-paced world agile project management methods are set to…

• Carry out a development process in an ambiguous and changing, complex environment
• Be more flexible and lean than traditional process models
• Adapt quickly to changes without increasing the risk of error
• Identify errors earlier and fix them at a lower cost

What are the characteristics of agile project management?

Agile project management contains:

• Self-organizing teams
• The assumption of high responsibility for the product
• Iterative Practice
• Increments – Conclusive results that are reviewed by the customer regularly and build on each other

Iteration and feedback as the key to success to agile project management methods

Agile project management essentially consists of two key elements: Incremental output and feedback. They form the basis of a much higher communication density than in classic project management. Agile project management allows mistakes and path adjustments and even thinks they are good. Every change in requirements can be seen as an opportunity to better understand the customer’s desires, potentially returning a higher customer satisfaction in the end. Agile project management uses feedback and iterations to create transparency, embrace inevitable change, and ultimately create a more valid end product.

Agile project management requires case-specific adjustments

Agile project management originates in software development and reaches its limits when it comes to transferring it to the development of physical products. Agile project management has its roots in certain premises. Often, the premises of agile methods clash with classic product development processes, which prevents the adaptation of agile methods as a blueprint. If these premises cannot be fulfilled, but the organization is well grounded in the agile mindset and already uses agile methods and practices, case-specific solutions can be developed.

The innovative approach: A hybrid project management method

How can agile and classic project management be used together even though agile methods are not 100% applicable due to limiting factors? How is it possible to interweave agile and classic project management methods if these two project management approaches have to work side by side? How can we combine structure and agility to create both stability and flexibility in an organization?

A first step in this direction is the hybrid model developed by [bu:st], a Munich based project management service company, which combines classic and agile methods. Our white paper gives a detailed insight into this contemporary and appropriate project management method.

One of the main tasks of project management in complex projects is to master the complexity. Our project management method helps with three steps.

Complexity in Project Management

A complete project management method distinguishes excellent project management from good project management. Planned or unscheduled and desired or mandatory changes in the company can be implemented only with the right combination. Often, the best starting point is specification of the problem. Important terms here are “complicated“ and “complex“.

Complicated and Complex Problems in Project Management

We at [bu:st] – the project management specialists from Munich, Germany and Upstate South Carolina – developed an agile method which considered to distinguish between a complicated or complex problem. But what is the difference?

Simply put, complexity always refers to the individual parts of the system or their logical connection, and it always affects the system as a whole. Complexity refers to the system as a whole.

Complicated tasks can be handled through knowledge, methods, and tools. But only with ability, sense, and experience can complex project management tasks can be mastered.

Problem Domains to Categorize Problems

To comprehend if you are dealing with a complicated or a complex project, it helps to categorize it into one of five problem domains. Of course, there is no 100% selective demarcation between the domains – but usually a problem domain dominates in most situations.

The complexity of a system increases with the number of elements, the number of links between these elements, and the nature and behavior of these links.

Depending on which domain the problem is placed into, it has to be tackled with different methods. The more complex the system, the more experience and sense is needed. In the chaotic domain it’s most important to act.

Important Means of Our Project Management Method: Transparency, Communication, and Rhythm

One of the main tasks of our project management method in complex projects is to master the complexity. These three steps help: transparency, communication, and rhythm.

In the first step, it is useful to show the complexity of the relationships in a transparent way.  Communication is the key to recognize and understand the situation. An important factor is the relationships between the persons involved. Last but not least, a good rhythm is needed to work through complex problems. That’s how we create structure and thus, security.

No matter how complex a project is, the [bu:st] project management method brings order to chaos. Because the world is seemingly chaotic, but ultimately it is only complex.