CPS ran an in-person event at Microsoft’s Paddington offices on the 2nd February. The event brought CPS customers and potential customers to talk about the employee experience in the context of project management, how organisations deliver and execute their strategy and how they understand how they are progressing with strategy delivery.
We were fortunate enough to have scheduled the day between rail strikes.
For many people, it was their first in-person event for some time, and it was great to see people swapping stories and gaining insight from organisations in different sectors.
The morning started with an introduction from Andy Willis of Microsoft about the approach Microsoft is taking to project and portfolio management (Project) and how this links to employee engagement via Objectives & Key Results through Viva Goals.
I spoke about the value of understanding employee engagement and how this fits into employee life. I discussed two main areas, one being that employees want to understand how their work impacts the objectives and strategy of the organisation. Secondly, employees want to come to work and use tools and technologies that simplify their job, give them time to do more interesting things, and add value to their day and the company.
Let's think about tooling first. For example, many organisations continue to use Excel, manually aggregate data from multiple systems and perhaps push it into PowerPoint. There are various ways that CPS help organisations improve and simplify working so that people aren't doing manual process and employees can use their abilities to do more and achieve more.
Secondly, I spoke about Objectives and Key Results framework (OKRs) and how tools - Viva Goals – make it possible to take objectives and communicate those through the organisation so leadership, managers/teams and individuals can create their own OKRs. This approach then enables the key results to roll up, so the organisation as a whole understands how they are progressing and improving. That’s an oversimplification of OKRs and Viva Goals - and you can read more in my previous blog, Introducing Microsoft Viva Goals
My colleague, Lester Lovelock, spoke about how Project for the web, the Power Platform’s Project App, and Power BI can provide organisations with a single location to capture project-related information and then use this information to make informed decisions with up-to-date information. This can remove the manual labour that the use of Excel and PowerPoint entails, providing an improved user experience and engagement.
The morning was super interactive, with plenty of questions from the audience. These conversations continued during the coffee break and post-session lunch. It was great to meet a broad category of people, understand their situations, and speak about how new ways of working could help their organisations reduce costs, improve profitability and actively manage risks.
Event Images
Author
Christopher has close to over 25 years of experience in Project Portfolio Management. His experience ranges from advisory services to deployment and training. He now focuses on delivering CPS' objectives to help customers of all sizes innovate and transform their business.
