Building an Agile Organisation : Strategic HR is key to success!

It is extremely critical to manage the most basic asset of a company, i.e.  people; and HR plays a major role in that.  In an Agile organization there is a need to connect with the team mates on a regular basis to keep them abreast of things within the organization and around it.

The word “agility” is complex:  it refers to strategy, leadership, management, and learning.  As the world becomes increasingly volatile and unpredictable, organizations that are agile will outpace their competitors. To become a critical driver of agility, HR must fundamentally reshape itself to enable a new type of organization—one designed around highly nimble and responsive talent.

Agile organizations evolve their strategy but deepen it where they have strength. Their leaders drive execution but they also empower people. Management is thin, hands-on, and highly engaged. And people and teams are constantly learning.

Concerns like Job Security, loss of privacy due to the open work environment, Fear of loss of individual identity etc.; arise among the team members amidst transformation to Agile.

The Human Resources department of the company can play an important role in addressing these concerns. It can be a strategic, innovative partner in the company’s Agile-adoption journey.

• An HR department can start with redefining or enhancing their recruitment engine – Hiring a team member with right attitude and mind-set is the first step toward building an Agile organization. The focus should be to get the right individual, one who fits the organizational and team culture. Hiring a good manager who has an Agile mind-set is as important as hiring an Agile developer
• The next important thing on the HR’s task list should be – to define the structure of the new, flexible roles and responsibilities and to address any problems team have during the transition
• Further comes an important task of performance management. Moving from Individual performance reviews to team based performance reviews help team members gain confidence

Many such things can be listed down and would detail out in the blogs to come!

At AnAr we all connect on every Monday Morning and share our experiences to have a rock-solid start for the week.  It is at the heart of all communications within the organization comes across – Be it team member specific information or company news everything discussed here!

After all happy team members translate into delighted customers!

http://www.anarsolutions.com/building-an-agile-organisation-strategic-hr-is-key-to-success/utm_source=Blogger.com 

Empowering women!! – Navratri Special

Respecting women for the entire year would be a greatest Pooja this Navratri!

We at AnAr empower women by focusing on their continuous learning and help in their career development. To honor the determination and dedication of our female team members we make sure we enable them to tread the career path by equipping them with necessary skills, facilitate their quest for a better ‘work – life’ balance.

We are Proud of the direction laid by our Director and founder Rupashri Gulawani. Rupashri’s guidance motivates all the team members in today’s world. Today’s women, as told by Author and researcher Rashmi Bansal are a perfect example of being: Lakshmi (entrepreneurs who enlisted family support), Durga (women who overcame hindrances and victimhood and battled hard for success) and Saraswati (educated other women team members). The atmosphere at AnAr definitely helps in being a better individual!

Shilpi Dua has been working with our testing team and hats off to her dedication and skills in maintaining the work- life balance. Her determination to get the ball rolling in difficult times is definitely worth a mention! Devashri Laxne, at a young age, is taking care of all the HR and administration responsibilities.

We make sure we take on relevant projects that would facilitate women to pursue their careers and senior development team members like Yogita Bhole are managing them along with doing the social cause of funding underprivileged girls.

Team Members like Yashashri Vankudre, Sheetal Shelar and Mili Yadav are proving to be a perfect example of self-responsibility and self-determination. Their commitment to work is fostered by the able leadership at AnAr. With leaders like Priyanak Kolhatkar and Priyanka Joshi we make sure we establish high-level corporate leadership for gender equality. They make sure we impart trainings, implement enterprise development practices, which empower women.

We strongly believe that women should have equal socio-economic, cultural and political opportunities as men. With this ideology in mind, we are attempting to achieve a 50:50 ratio for both genders, at AnAr.

Choosing IT as a preferred career choice, Supriya Charapalle and Nikhila Nimbalkar, the campus selected girls at AnAr – are happy with the decision. We are providing hands on training programs to enhance soft / leadership skills to make them more effective and enable them to take on higher responsibilities. Team members like Geeta Ingale and Ulka Sutar are also glad as they are provided with mentoring / counseling by team AnAr.

http://www.anarsolutions.com/empowering-women-navratri-special/

Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a methodology to solve complex problems, and find desirable solutions for clients. It draws upon logic, imagination, intuition, and systemic reasoning, to explore possibilities of what could be, and to create desired outcomes that benefit the end user (the customer).

A design mindset is not problem-focused; its solution focused, and action oriented. It involves both analysis and imagination.  At AnAr, we see design as strategy in action, focused on results. We help our clients envision a better future and get there successfully. We help them leverage design’s power to generate innovative solutions that effect real transformation.

What are the distinguishing characteristics of Design Thinking?

• Finding simplicity in complexity
• Beauty as well as functionality
• Improving quality of experience
• Creating elegant solutions
• Serving the needs of people

Design Thinking is human-centered – so focus on people / customers and their needs and not on a specific technology or other conditions. It is an iterative learning process and it enables a higher expertise in the field of human needs and supports variety of results. Basically, Design Thinking projects consist of diverging and converging phases. It enables team members to think diverse which build the base for the converging finalization. Tangibility, experiencing and testing of results are essential basics of design thinking. The Methods therefore used are observations, interviews, brainstorming; prototyping…Prototypes allows end-users to participate early in the innovation process.

Empathize

Understanding is the first phase of the design thinking process.  The goal is to develop background knowledge through these experiences. They use their developing understandings as a springboard as they begin to address design challenges. Watch how people behave and interact and then observe physical spaces and places. The understanding and observation phases of design thinking helps develop a sense of empathy.

Define

In this phase of design thinking, the focus is on becoming aware of peoples’ needs and developing insights. The phrase “How might we….” is often used to define a point of view, which is a statement of the:

user + need + insight

This statement ends with a suggestion about how to make changes that will have an impact on peoples’ experiences.

Ideate

Ideating is a critical component of design thinking. We are challenged to brainstorm a myriad of ideas and to suspend judgment. No idea is to far-fetched and no one’s ideas are rejected. Ideating is all about creativity and fun. In the ideation phase, quantity is encouraged.

Prototype

Prototyping is a rough and rapid portion of the design process. A prototype can be a sketch, model, or a cardboard box. It is a way to convey an idea quickly. We can learn that it is better to fail early and often as they create prototypes.

Test

Testing is part of an iterative process that provides us with feedback. The purpose of testing is to learn what works and what doesn’t, and then iterate. This means going back to your prototype and modifying it based on feedback. Testing ensures that students learn what works and what doesn’t work for their users.

Thus, if you have to develop new products or service prototypes, have to establish new business models, Change actual structures, Improve of innovation culture – Design Thinking is the most suited.

4 Estimation Tips for Building Self Managing Teams

Offshore Team has committed the deliverable for Friday morning and it is Monday still team is struggling to deliver. They have been working late nights, on weekends and still deliverable is not yet ready.

Does this sound familiar?

Here are some tips for building Self Managing teams, improving their time commitments. We conduct following activity for every technical task assigned to the team.

• List Sub-task

  Team member comes up with detailed list of sub-tasks for each task.

• Estimate

  With this list of small sub-tasks available, team member associates time estimate with each sub task. Each sub-task should be small enough to be completed in 1 to 2 hours. If there is a sub-task which is going to take 4+ hours to complete then one more level of task breakdown is required.

• Review

  Review is integral part of the estimation process. Either it can be a peer review or by lead in the project team. When team member explains the tasks, sub-tasks and estimates to another person, most of the times she herself can identify loopholes in her plan.

• Share it with Product Owner or Client

  Share these sub-tasks and estimates with Client. Product Owner/Client’s review can be helpful to surface any misunderstanding by team before start of actual implementation.

This activity is in line with agile practices and it is in addition to other project planning practices in the life cycle. When you want to build Agile, Self-Managing teams, such activities can come handy.

When Clients are working with Offshore teams, it is like building their extended teams by sitting miles away from them. Many of offshore teams and Onsite teams are using various practices for meeting delivery timelines.

I hope this helps you and would love to hear, how you have addressed it.

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