Entries by Aamir Dawawala

Digital Transformation of Management Operations in Banking Industry

Digital Transformation of Management Operations in Banking Industry

Problem Statement

Our client being one of the biggest bank in Qatar had a high demand for digital transformation from the internal units.  They were seeking an enhanced way for managing their projects with Agile practices. They explored many tools with Agile capabilities but were struggling to find the right enablement of traditional waterfall method with Agile practices in a single tool. They wanted a tool which could easily transform their existing project processes towards Agile way of working and not distract the current business operations and existing development work.  

Solution

The Bank approached PMObytes for demo on Jira Software for Agile Scrum Framework enablement in their development process. We analysed their situation and identified their needs to have a smooth transition with an effective result. The approach we decided was to implement Jira software in phases and apply two initial projects with the desired methodology. 

Through conversation with our Atlassian consultant and Solutions Architects, we agreed to implement the Agile framework in overall 3 weeks time frame with implementing the Atlassian best practices for at least two projects. We also decided to provide training to the Project Management Team and Scrum managers to manage Scrum and Kanban boards to manage their projects efficiently.

To further smoothen this transition and enable a hybrid environment merging the classical and new way of working. We implemented the following marketplace plugins:

  1. Implemented BigPicture
       ○ Plan and manage your initiatives,
       ○ Lead teams and set priorities,
       ○ Supervise performance and track progress,
       ○ Coordinate resources and distribute workloads,
       ○ Detect and respond to risks, and much more
  2. Implemented ScriptRunner in Jira environment
  3. Implemented Tempo Timesheets – Time Tracking & Reports
    ○ Embedded Time Tracking Saves Time via Automation
    ○ Create Automated Reports Based on Reliable Data
    ○ Make Fact-Based Decisions

What we Analysed?

We took a deep dive into their corporate workings and have thoroughly gone through all of their management practices. While they are achieving what they wanted in the end, we identified numerous problems that are increasing the costs for them and making their employees do a lot of manual work.

Here’s what we have analysed in a nutshell:

  1. Project planning was tedious and was involving manual collection of information from many stakeholders.
  2. Assignment of tasks and tracking progress were slowing things down and even involved some manual work.
  3. Project Progress and estimates are also being tracked similarly.
  4. Changes to issues were managed manually through done on spreadsheets.

How did we figure out the right technology?

Right technology is nothing but that solves the current problems with full effectiveness and efficiency. So, while brainstorming the right technology for our client’s problems, we decided to have a flexible solution that would cover all the client’s problems and accommodate any future changes too. As much of the problems here are related to project management, our natural foray would be the JIRA Software.

Jira Software

Jira is highly configurable and flexible to allow for usage in a wide variety of environments and processes. The Jira workflows, issue types, and screens enable tailoring for almost any scenario and can easily be changed via the administration GUI.

Atlassian developed this software and it works on a Kanban board system and supports by default SCRUM Framework to enable Agile Practices.

What problems can JIRA solve?

Jira provides an easy to grasp and effective way for project management using the central concept of issues.

JIRA can help in:

  1.  Easily implementing agile methodology by using Kanban and SCRUM boards
  2.   Creation of multiple issues, assigning them to the right people and keeping all the required information in a single place which can be dynamic.
  3.  Fully customizable issue, in which one can add almost any kind of information plus providing relevant tags.
  4.  Highly functional search mechanism, which lets its users efficiently filter through various issues in Jira. They even have their own Query language for advanced searches which can be stored as unique filters.
  5.  Maintain confidentiality by letting its administrators provide granular access to information to users.

Basically, JIRA helps in efficient management of almost any project and lets the team follow and implement agile methodology.

Now, while JIRA is very powerful, it can’t provide every needed feature. This is where its extensibility comes into the picture. There are lots of plugins we can use with JIRA which can enhance the JIRA and make it more powerful.

These are some of the features JIRA does not give out of the box efficiently:

Gantt Charts, Cross portfolio work, Supervision and some more advanced project management methods.

For these issues, we have decided to use Big Picture. Big Picture provides all of these features and also provides an easy way for creating safe compliant Roadmaps and more efficiency in planning, leading teams, and setting priorities.

Technology Deployment

Once we choose the right technology, we then work on deploying and configuring the technology to be suitable to the client’s needs. The Bank has its own data centers which it uses for multiple purposes. We deployed the JIRA software to their own data centres and made it accessible to all the required people.

PMOBYTES SUPPORT SERVICES

Post implementing the Atlassian best practices for the initial 2 projects with our Atlassian experts. The results drove tremendous efficiencies in the existing business processes and solutions. We then deployed our Atlassian Administration Consultant onsite for 12 months to onboard rest of business projects and follow the best practices for all the remaining projects.

Result

As a result of implementing JIRA for project management we were able to achieve:

High Efficiency: The Bank was able to complete more work in less time without much manual work.

High Security: With granular access and robust security of data, Bank’s data is now more secure and safe from malicious threats.

Ease of Access of Information: With the power of JIRA and Marketplace Plugins, information is now easily accessible from their huge collection of data.

Productive and Happy Employees: With a heavy load of manual work lifted off their shoulders, employees are more productive and happy.

Reduced Cost: Finally, With such automation and improved efficiency, Bank was able to significantly cut costs and increase profit.

Conclusion

 

We analysed all of their operations and implemented JIRA along with Big Picture that has improved the efficiency of their operations

Post implementation, we are providing additional support services and regular reviews so that their project environment is ever evolving with the current demands of the time.

Talk to our experts today! [email protected]

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QPunch for Demand Management within Telecom Industry

QPunch for Demand Management within Telecom Industry

Our client being one of the leading international Telecommunications service providers had a challenge of huge number of demands from business units to the software unit for new releases, bug fixes and updates with constraint resources. Their existing systems were missing complete visibility to understand productivity loss and measure ideal response times. They are already using Jira to create Sprints, Stories and Demand Management issues on a management level. Scrum teams consisting of people with different skillsets such as non-technical roles who found the existing systems not simple. It required more enhancement towards user friendliness and visually appealing reports to be used effectively. Our tool QPunch Smart Project Management was introduced and was integrated with Jira to simplify the processes and get the resource planning optimized for an easier interface.

Requirements:

    • Integration with multiple communication platforms across multiple teams.
    • Activity Team Boards and dashboard building.
    • On Premise implementation.
    • Process mapping: Demand Management core processes and workflows.
    • Resources time planning and control
    • Issue and Risk management

Solution:

The client wanted to explore more efficient ways of working to achieve better results. They are having a large business unit with numerous teams who are technical and non-technical, dependencies, and complex workflows. Management wanted all of them to work together on one platform, so they could track milestones and see a collective view of their work while keeping the sensitive information and access between management.

As Jira was used only at the demand initiation level to create the feasibility, other employees preferred to use emails, scattered documents, and other tools of their choice. This made it difficult to keep information organized and easily accessible. We solved these problems by unifying everyone on a central, integrated platform where teams could communicate with each other, document information and manage projects. QPunch helps them to improve communications, collaboration, efficiency, and decision making. It was super easy to switch to our tool and migrate their legacy data, documents and spread sheets. Our tool and expertise helped them to plan new demands and deliver on them within time and budget. Management got the visibility through reporting of each demand forecast and when the resources will be free to take more demands based on business priorities.

Adopting QPunch practices leads to better collaboration, speed, stability, and other significant benefits. But it also created new challenges such as more meetings, manual updates, and context switching. To minimize the cons and maximize the pros we integrated our tool with Jira and pulled the data from there to our tool and breakdown into minor tasks, also integrated with Microsoft Teams, so that employees get notified when the tasks get created, updated, commented on, deleted and more without actually going inside the QPunch all the time. We provide with real time reporting of all action in the system and powerful security and privacy to ensure the data is secure using their Enterprise Active Directory single sign on (SSO).

Solution Customization to fit the requirements:

Sudden turn arounds in strategies, project scope swings, variation in constraints and shifting project demands based on other business priorities are the main challenges in any telecom provider’s enterprises. Complexity and mutual interdependencies among systems together with budget compression, cause several rework cycles in order to finalize project scope and requirements. Team management is time consuming and efficient communication between distributed stakeholders is required. So, our team closely worked with them and took suggestions from the management and customized our application in such a way we provide all the information on their fingertips and they can easily understand the status of the team members and he project immediately.

QPunch allows to better distribute everyone’s workload and by using features such as Gantt view as well as outlook type calendar view, it helped to have an overview of the entire roadmap and task dependencies . Each project has a dashboard that summarizes all the information regarding the project into a comprehensive, easily understandable form that provides all in one service for people who interested in understanding the overall status of the demand. It contains summary level information for all type of artifacts (tickets, demand initiation details, Categories, labels etc.) that can use to drill down into the appropriate section of the application. It helps them to visualize the data in donut, pie  and line chart formats, as well as display the underlying data and export to Microsoft excel for further analysis.

We introduced dynamic report in subscription level as well as in project level that contain user defined data queries which gives the ultimate in flexibility in designing reports that meets the needs of the organization.

 

              Dynamic Report Query Builder

We created Demand view / Compass view to fetch and view epics/issues from Jira. When we click on the Demand view icon, it navigates us to the page where we can search the issue number.

The above image is the screenshot of one of the demands and the information such as demand name, status, Software release, VAT release date etc.  are the other details fetched from Jira and displayed in QPunch. Below that we can see different projects and selected developers involved in this demand.

 

 

Calendar view

 

Gantt view

If we click on the “update plan” we can see the calendar view of those developers listed under the demand number. It displays a quick view of resource capacity and we can assign new tasks based on that. Similarly, if we click on the “Show in Gantt” we can see the Gantt view of that particular demand. We get a clear picture of number of demands involved, including the critical tasks and use milestones to visualize deadlines or baselines to compare proposed schedules to actual progress. This helped the management to do cross project planning, tracking and more.

Conclusion:

With the customization of QPunch, management was able to use them to drive their strategic decisions and monitor business growth with real time data. It helped them to identify any trends and irregularities that may need further investigation. We took care of their process, allowing them to make decisions better. We continue providing more customization based on their requirements in every consultation for a better output.

 

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Smart City ELV Building Systems

Smart Project Management System to facilitate coordination for data collection

Problem Statement

One of the major Smart City development Project had a challenging requirement to collaborate effectively between multiple site contractors and then get all their relevant component’s I/O details into a central system.

This development project had around 110 buildings in different sites. Each of this building had multiple ELV systems like CCTV, Access Control, Fire Alarms etc. from different brands and types. Moreover, there were many contractors working in every building, and the coordination between them was crucial to ensure right set of input / output data is provided for the central system to Go-live efficiently.

Pain area was that the whole thing was unorganized and there was huge lack of communication between the contractors. Management was doing daily meetings to organize the synchronization but there were lots of efforts required to have an appropriate alignment. They were using manual excel sheets to follow-up, track and monitor the progress over the data fed in the central system. Later, the project milestones started getting missed out which made the situation highly complex for the client to manage stakeholder’s expectations and overall deadlines.

Requirements:

  • Centralized cloud based SAAS platform
  • Intuitive and user-friendly interface for easy adoption.
  • Transparency of the work between all parties.
  • Customization based on the unique requirements of the business.
  • Improvement in the collaboration of the site contractors.

Solution:

They started working with our team to discuss their pain areas and explain all the requirements which were clearly documented with several sessions to understand and optimize the work process first. Based on the requirements understanding, the team then customized and created a proof of concept based on our QPunch application. The POC was presented and fine tuned to perfectly match the business process which would effectively manage the data correction process and collaboration between the contractors.

Finally, their entire team got onboarded and a significant portion of the company and contractors were using QPunch to collaborate and track their progress and data inputs. All communications and follow-ups started commencing inside the platform seamlessly. They maintained data collection and data rollout on the digital boards enabled by QPunch. This way they were able to have the history and all data communication in one place. Management was able to track easily overall progress on data collection, correction, go live and these updates were accessed anytime and anywhere.

Solution Customization to fit the requirements

From the feedbacks, the system was further configured for additional tables, user friendly interface to ensure all business requirements were successfully implemented. We organized all the client projects in a simple manner with configurable dashboards. There are around 110 buildings. We have divided it into different phases. Each phase has their set of buildings.

There are many contractors working in each building, and they had to coordinate with each other’s work. They collected the input / output data and punched the data in the QPunch. We have maintained a data collection table. So, this table can be used to provide reports. The contractors collect the data first then they review the data, then there will be a correction based on the review. Once the correction is done there will be asset generation and asset mapping for each device. So, we developed an interface which helps to keep punching the data and collaborate with the central system and fetch the data which are in correction and review.

We brought different phases in an easy drop-down menu where users can switch between the phases and work on different set of data smoothly. If we select a particular phase, it will have the collection and roll out of each building as a different project in the dashboard.

The above image is a screenshot of the one of the project’s phases. In this, RO2 is one of the buildings. Its collection and roll out is maintained as different data sets to further organize and ensure we are monitoring the right set of data. Similarly, they have different buildings and their collections and roll outs are maintained separately.

This is a digital board view of RO2 Collection project. They have a fixed number of tasks in each lane. Each task is a security system such as CCTV, SIS, GBS etc. Each security system task is repeated in every swim lane. These lanes in the Kanban board shows what status of the data collection, review and verification we are currently in.

For example, GBS is present in all swim lanes such as Data Collection, Data Review, Data Correction, Asset IDs Generation, Asset IDs Mapping to update the data in different stages.

Each task maintains a table inside it for the data collection.  For the 1st pass of data collection contractors visits the site. They go to the site multiple times and keep collecting the asset data. We customized this table mainly for them to do this collection process and correction process effectively.

Our system was generating live management reports that showed the accumulated view of overall data collection and how many points are there and what is the progress at present and what is the percentage of progress.

Management had the capability to easily search a particular building name and it shows the report of a specific building. In this we searched for the building RO2. It shows all the tasks, and their details present in the RO2 collection and RO2 roll out.

This is another phase called Site Wide. It had data sets to populate and completion for all the building external system which are common all over the full site such as car parking, Automatic waste collection system etc.

Conclusion 

With the entire team now using the QPunch tool, all communication happens inside the platform. QPunch has eliminated the challenges associated with being a globally distributed team with everyone having one central place to get work done.

We have completely simplified the entire traditional workflow with one click automation. It has allowed teams to operate at the highest efficiency, also reduced the time spent on the follow-ups.

Talk to our experts today! [email protected]

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Atlassian Product Implementation in Government Entity Case Study

Problem Statement

Government Entities had a huge pressure to have all FIFA related projects delivered and completed on time. Our Client being one of the biggest Government entities had the similar pressure and were seeking a solution to organize all their FIFA related portfolios, programs, projects in a central location where all dependencies are tracked for efficient completion through simple management dashboards. 

The Ministry was in search of a professional services provider to access their current Atlassian products and guide them on best practices for optimal configuration, as well as best practices for IT and SDLC processes. 

Solution

To address these concerns and to advise our client on next steps, we proposed a four-weeks POC(Proof of Concept). We took into consideration the Atlassian Stack, which the client utilized and owned, to determine a holistic approach and build a complete value proposition to achieve the requirements. 

We provided a process assessment examining not only Jira Software, but Jira Service Management, BigPicture Plugin and Asset Management capabilities as well as the additional data provided by other systems to help establish best practices. We presented recommendations that, if implemented, will improve overall management dashboard capabilities regarding Portfolio, Programs and Projects.

We also presented importing MS Project existing client based schedules in a Jira Software online Gantt format to track critical timelines to have the projects completed on-time.

How did we figure out the right technology?

The Ministry was given hands-on training and access to the Proof of Concept to ensure the related solution is the right technology stack for them. We worked together for 4 weeks post the solution configuration to demo the management dashboard capabilities to multiple stakeholders. 

From the feedbacks, the system was further configured for additional fields, workflow, scripts to ensure all business requirements were successfully implemented.

Jira software.

Here is a short description of how Jira software and service management was helpful in the success of the Proof of concept. Jira software out of the box was able to quickly organize all client projects in a simple manner with configurable dashboards. Dashboards were configured on the instantly based for the client feedbacks. 

 

Jira Service Management organized all the support tickets and seamlessly integrated with Jira software to provide the users single access to both functions. 

Agile boards from Jira Software further helped the teams gain visibility and enhanced collaboration.  Also, the workflow engine and Script Runner assisted in getting business processes aligned to the solution for a  better service. 

Result

With our analysis and recommendations, our client is ready to more efficiently utilize their Atlassian applications to automate and accelerate processes across their company. By configuring the software to reflect their workflow and leveraging additional add-ons and training, our client gains the tools necessary to increase throughput and see an exponential return on their technology investment. 

Working with us on the POC, our client got not only the roadmap, but also the validation they needed to standardize their Atlassian processes in a sustainable, measurable, and profitable way. Client gained the required visibility into their projects, programs and portfolios in an effective manner.

Talk to our experts today! info@pmobytes.com

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Team workload optimization for a client in Qatar Stock Exchange industry

Problem Statement

Our client is one of the leading online trading platform established for more than 5 years part of the stock exchange brokerage management in Qatar.  They were seeking to improve the shortcomings in traditional style of IT Software Development life cycle (SLDC) management and also to achieve optimum team workload utilization. They had already implemented Atlassian products like JIRA software but were seeking further consultancy to improve their resource management and their employees performance rewarding system. 

It was a clear fact that the traditional way involved more human involvement to assign and calculate overall team performances. The team workload wasn’t balanced and client was lacking an automated rewarding system for the high performers. They wanted the system to measure the work performance and then managers are able to validate the developers efforts in terms of number of issues resolved and enhancement worked during a particular period to reward them.

Solution

Our Atlassian team got involved with a number of sessions to understand and optimize the work process first. Each developer’s capacity was analysed based on the work load to find the right balance for an appropriate utilization. 

Automated system scripts were discussed to define a logic for a reward system based on better team performance.  

Atlassian team of consultants and solution architects undertook the Agile Framework with Atlassian Best Practices with some of the Marketplace plugins to formulate the overall solution. In addition, we also trained Project Management Teams and Project Owners to run projects more efficiently and effectively than previously. 

 

Discovered:
With the current stack of Atlassian products, it was discovered that more plug-ins were required to get the resource management from a manual to an automated way that is integrated with the work processes. Team implemented plug-ins like Tempo planner, Big-Picture and Tempo Timesheets to enable better resource optimization and team rewarding system.  

Tempo planner

  1. Helped in identifying capacity problems early in the planning process.
  2.  Assisted in accessing a snapshot of all resources’ statuses, plans, commitments.
  3.  Streamlined communication via centralized workspace.
  4. Allocated resources for high-impact initiatives while ensuring workloads are balanced and realistic.

Implemented Big-Picture

  1.  Identified interdependencies to smartly allocate resources, and automate laborious tasks
  2. Analysed the availability of the resources (teams and skills) 
  3. Assigned and scheduled particular tasks, and update capacities automatically.

Implemented Tempo Timesheets

  1.  Tempo’s embedded time tracking and planning solutions in Jira provided the insights client needed for planning, allocating and adjusting their team resources.
  2. Resource Planning views were generated to quickly see the current and future state of all projects and resources
  3. Enabled the client’s manager to review and approve their team’s timesheets, in bulk or individually.

PMOBytes support Services

The plug-ins were further optimized with the support services to ensure the rewarding logic was integrated and automated for the client’s management team. Post the implementation, stabilization period of three months was defined to regularly review the entire was working as expected and all defined problems were effectively resolved.

Final words

Implementation was a great success with client fully satisfied with our team’s consultancy. It gave them great benefits from the solution implemented that enhanced overall client’s team performance. It also provided them an efficient way to manage the developers to deliver the company’s business applications faster with maximum value.

Talk to our experts today! info@pmobytes.com

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