High Tech

Be More Than Just a Status Quo PMO

As Fast as You Should

In the technology world, time to market is king, but it’s not everything. You need the ability to minimize the time between concept and delivery without compromising security, privacy and performance considerations. You don’t want to go as fast as you can, you want to go as fast as you should. Creating an environment where that can happen consistently isn’t easy.

It requires alignment across all departments and business areas, it needs a shared understanding of the strategic priorities and how individual initiatives contribute to those priorities to deliver value, and it requires effective and efficient management of the entire portfolio. That only comes with the right PPM solution, ensuring work is proceeding as rapidly as possible without unacceptable levels of risk, and delivering disruption free adjustments when change is needed – and in the high-tech world, change is always needed!

Embracing New Working Models

Nowhere has there been more dramatic change in how work gets done over the last few years than in the high-tech sector. Everything from DevOps and Continuous Delivery, to the evolution from projects, to products and now value streams, is redefining how work is structured and delivered. Organizations must ensure that the continuous delivery of new and improved features is also a continuous delivery of value, and that requires the ability to connect strategic planning and execution with work level execution tools.

To do that, a company’s PPM solution must be flexible enough to integrate with multiple team tools, allowing those teams to work how and where they want while still providing leadership with a single, integrated perspective of all work in the context of the strategic priorities. That requires the ability to track and manage value-based metrics around business outcomes, not simply work execution metrics. And it must be done across various Agile approaches that are common in the technology world, as well as traditional, plan-driven delivery, hybrid and informal work methodologies.

A Strategic North Star

In an industry as dynamic and fast moving as high-tech, it’s easy to lose sight of the need to have consistent strategies. While ever evolving technological capabilities redefine what’s possible, companies must remain focused on delivering a strategy that delivers and grows value for themselves and their customers. That means setting, understanding and delivering against a strategic North Star – a vision for a successful future.

The right PPM tool allows you to do that with roadmapping capability that supports planning and replanning of priorities and the communication of those priorities to all stakeholders. As plans evolve so adjustments can be made to the roadmaps with understanding of impacts on dependencies, schedules and benefits. But at all times, everyone can understand what is being done, why, and how it helps the company deliver on strategy.

Eliminating Barriers

As the old saying goes, you’re only as good as your weakest link, and for technology companies, that often isn’t the technology itself. Instead, it’s those support elements – the ability to secure and retain highly skilled staff, the compliance, legislative and regulatory approvals that may be required for certain solutions, the financial and accounting processes, the customer support function, and so on. Unless every area of the business is aligned, you’re trying to go as quickly as possible while the brakes are on.

High-tech companies must be able to break down siloes, ensuring alignment and integration between processes, systems and workflows. It’s an unfortunate reality that many high-tech companies are focused so much on the technology solutions that their clients need, that they ignore the need for powerful, integrated technologies to run their own operations.

With KeyedIn Enterprise, that can be avoided. Integration with HRIS and finance systems, integration of all work tools into a single platform, and powerful reporting to give real insight into what’s happening. KeyedIn gives you that common perspective on what’s happening, what needs to happen, and how to deliver.