| | October 20178UTLOOK Healthcare Tech `Radicalizing' Agile for Strategy and ManagementBy Wes Williams, VP & CIO, Mental Health Center of DenverIN MY OPINIONPeople are rightfully skeptical of buzzwords and facile trends in organizational management. For every successful launch of a Six Sigma campaign, there's a workforce somewhere groaning about another mandated management "retreat," or a cosmetic rearranging of office chairs with no fundamental change in the way things get done.I want to share my experience with using agile project management to manage an entire portfolio of work, because the positive results may go a small way toward restoring the good name of institutional self-reflection. The principles of "agile" have moved far beyond their origins in efficient software development among teams, and deeper into questions of business workflow management, productivity, and customer responsiveness.Some of the key features of agile are increased transparency, the ability to shift directions, and measuring productivity. Before undertaking work, we estimate how long it will take, and at the portfolio level, I can see quarter by quarter how much we complete. I can give the rest of our leadership an accurate picture of our true capacity. How does this work in specific examples? This year's organizational strategic plan placed a heavy emphasis on data-driven decision making. That's a great objective, but it also meant they were asking for a lot from IT. Using agile project management techniques, I had good data on what our capacity was to do the work. My management team estimated the work required under the new plan and compared it to prior years' work. We made a solid case for adding a position in data sciences to meet the increased demand. It's important to align how I spend resources with the organization's strategic objectives. By tracking the work this way at the high-up, portfolio level, I can say here's how much we're spending on different organizational priorities. And it is lightweight: instead of estimating individuals' hours spent for each feature, we estimate at the team and project level. Managers get feedback on their estimation by comparing historical estimates against the amount of work each project required to complete.Agile works well in our environment, a multi-location mental health organization with various IT components that face administration, providers, and clients. There are some kinds of business projects where work is commoditized­project management for residential construction comes to mind. How to build homes generally comes with a lower degree of Wes Williams
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