When there are many organisations involved in a project, the danger is increasing bureaucracy and unnecessary work performances. The N4S Program utilises the principles of good software design also in the management of the entire project.
In software design, it is essential to grasp the factors that hinder the project’s progress. The aim of agile and lean methods is to quickly obtain concrete and usable intermediate results, to reduce futile bureaucracy and improve the quality of the work. The aim is that the software and its sub-areas gradually change to become more correct and complete during several rounds of implementation, i.e. sprints.
N4S Program Coordinator Dr. Tua Huomo was involved in the 4 -year Cloud Software Program, where these principles were tested for the first time in the management of a research project.
“We discovered that the research projects cannot be isolated from the ever-changing business environment. Therefore an agile approach was integrated into project management. The aim was the quick utilisation of the research results in business operations, as well as an iterative manner of disseminating the results to the entire consortium,” says Huomo.
Nowadays, a similar model is utilised also in other DIGILE programs, as well as in the new N4S Program, which was launched in the beginning of 2014. Huomo believes that the agility of large projects can and should be increased.
Read rest of Tuo Huomos’s (N4S Program Coordinator) here: