Engagement

The Tech Holding Agile Project Management team collaborated with Westfield leadership to identify pain points in the previous process and recommend best practices to establish a new portfolio workflow. Our specific objectives were:

• Bring organization to a global workflow.

• Identify and document owners for each stage of the process and establish guidelines for transitioning through the workflow.

• Document and publish the new portfolio workflow and educate the global team on the new process.

Our Approach

While the Westfield Digital team had been meeting to review projects on a weekly basis, there was no defined process which led to shifting priorities of initiatives that were not fully approved or ready to be addressed at creative or engineering level.

Tech Holding firmly believes that for any framework or process to produce maximum results, there needs to be proactive ownership and a ‘quarterback mindset’ around the delivery of the projects. Tech Holding program managers championed and oversaw the process from project proposal to development kickoff to project delivery. Deliverables were determined for each step and an owner responsible for that milestone was identified. Upon completion of a milestone deliverable, the portfolio team reviewed and approved or rejected the deliverable for transition to the step.

The diagram below outlines the portfolio process that we established in collaboration with the Westfield product and engineering teams.

Core Project Philosophies

Efficiency and Result focus: We are dedicated to instilling project management’s best practices to make software development and other aspects of business more flexible and efficient, deeply rooted in keeping the entire team engaged in producing KPI driven results for each project

Transparency and Visibility: We strive to preserve the project transparency at all levels, by providing a cross-functional overview of all existing projects enabling optimized decisions. Creating visibility into the key areas such as project scope, resources, risk and performance metrics is absolutely essential to the spirit of Project Management

Communication & Understanding: We place a high value in communication and a better understanding regarding the status and progress for each project. We are committed to fast and clear communication across organizational boundary lines, which is essential to the promotion of collaboration, performance, transparency, and continuous evaluation of each project

Risk Management: we strongly adhere to effective risk management strategies which will allow us to identify the project’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. This will be done by planning for unexpected events identifying preventive measures, we can be ready to respond if these threats arise

Agile Development: Agile and Scrum philosophies bring a more flexible and malleable approach to managing a project by creating a working product at each iteration where every sprint forms an important step on the road to success

Leadership: We are committed to the approach of breaking down the barriers, taking ownership, and quarterbacking each initiative which brings various functional groups together, changes attitudes and methods in dealing with risks and challenges with the project

Case Outcomes

Tech Holding successfully integrated an Agile portfolio methodology for the Westfield Digital organization, where none previously existed. They now have portfolio workflow processes that guide projects through proposal and approval and beyond, and transparency across the organization.

Executive management has praised Tech Holding’s Program Management team for the visibility and alignment we’ve provided for sprint objectives for each scrum team and the organization’s product roadmap. Likewise, the teams are thankful for improved communication and clarity of their roles, requirements, and workflows.

Trusted Advisor

Tech Holding has established strong credibility by being able to help and offer good advice across a broad range of issues through open discussions with the Westfield Digital executive management team. By initially demonstrating competence in the areas for which Tech Holding was hired for, we were able to establish trustworthiness with proven results which has allowed us to give valuable advice by sharing our general business and industry specific knowledge.

• Credibility: Define your reputation by what you say; Build trustworthiness and reliability

• Problem definition v. solution: Add value by helping the client to identify the problem

• Reliability: Create opportunities to deliver on what you have promised; Always be on-time

• Emotional connection: How you make others feel; Get to know each client on a personal level

• Low self-orientation: Focus your attention on the client

• Authenticity: Be genuine