Page 14 - Straight Talk On Project Management IV

A number of Stoneseed’s clients have shared stories of how they have brought back some the things
that worked for them before the pandemic but applied new ways of delivering them.

“We realised that we’d thrown the baby out with the bathwater,” one client told us, “when we
abandoned a staff training programme that had really delivered results and benefits because of
Covid. The short-term saving, although necessary, would have a long-term negative effect in terms
of development. Plus, at a time when our staff were looking for security, here we were taking away a
huge tool that had helped them progress – what kind of a message was this sending out? Morale
was low enough!”

An IT Project was initiated to create an online version of the development scheme, Project teams
and Business Analysts were able to work together to create value propositions for the existing
scheme, distil them to their essence and replicate the deliverables in a safe virtual space.

It may be that you paused something that used to deliver results to your business because you had
to cut your cloth accordingly. IT Project Managers and Business Analysts can help you cut your
vintage cloth with more contemporary scissors!

Getting back to normal or coming back better?

Moving forward, business agility should be less about getting back to normal and more about
coming back better and stronger than before. I shared just three ways here that IT Project leaders
and business analysts are helping to make this so.

Economist Mariana Mazzucato said it best in a recent TedTalk, “Really, my view is that we need to
do everything we can, not to go back to normal, because normal was part of the problem.”
She catalogues the issues that dogged the old normal and urged governments to rethink
investments and not to waste the opportunity that this pause offers and that is a call that we would
all be wise to heed.

In the context of organisations and business structures, project teams and Business Analysts are best
placed to sense and respond rapidly to the changes in market conditions.

Business Agility is not a new thing, how we best achieve it may be changing, but those best places to
deliver it in your business are the same. If you have IT Project Management talent and Business
Analysts on your team, now is the time to call on their services and, if you don’t, now is the time to
call on ours.

Sources:
https://www.fastcompany.com/90519639/the-coronavirus-recovery-is-an-opportunity-do-to-
everything-differently-not-go-back-to-normal