Programme Management Case Study with Phil Williams, Managing Director at Team Defence Information
Team Defence Information is a collaborative association that informs defence information policy and pilots new ways of working to transform the defence industry.
As a trusted membership organization, Team Defence Information (TD-Info) brings together Industry and the MOD, collaborating to optimize the value from business information working across Team Defence. As a trade body, funded by Industry with MOD as partner, TD-info acts as a catalyst and facilitator whose activities complement those of fellow trade organisations ADS and techUK.
“We can highlight and expose the weaknesses and risks and capture information around projects or people before it’s too late. SharpCloud cuts out the noise, highlights the areas to focus on and prioritizes the work to be done.” — Phil Williams, Managing Director, TDI
Phil talks about how SharpCloud is solving a number of challenges around Programme Management and Knowledge Management at TDI.
Pain points/problem to be solved
1. TDI brings together around 140 member companies and some non-member ones to enable them to interact with the MOD. We needed a high-level overview of the hierarchy and what that structure looks like and specifically how the different elements (140 member companies, working groups, 40 workstreams) fit together. A snapshot if you like, for each of the 3* MOD General and Director Generals that constitute the TDI Advisory Board, showing how the working groups build the picture from the bottom up to meet the top-down aspirations of the Board.
2. We wanted to be able to continue our conferences and workshops during Covid when only remote attendance was possible. We needed to keep hosting productive workshops to ensure round table discussions for MOD and UK industry requirements.
3. We also helped facilitate a Knowledge Management Support activity looking at the numbers of MOD civil servants and serving military reducing year on year, the need to capture their knowledge and expertise before it’s too late is imperative. We have always known that people leave the military and that we lose that capability, but we needed an easy way of seeing it and capturing it to reduce or eliminate that loss.
How is SharpCloud solving these problems?
· It’s providing a big picture accessible to all
SharpCloud is enabling lots of people from different companies, sectors and seniority from across the MOD and UK industry, to work together on the same team.
It’s a great help having everyone use the same platform and it’s made it easier to control the disparate work groups and enable those behind the scenes to see and have a direct line to the 3* Advisory Board. It’s a really good way for the groups who wouldn’t otherwise have contact with the top-level decision makers, to visualize where their team fits in and know they’re not working in isolation but are instead part of a much bigger team.
SharpCloud is showing all the teams how they fit into the big picture and conversely it shows the 3* Advisory Board just how much work is actually going on and being carried out by the various working groups. It highlights the dependencies and groups contributing to the areas of focus set by the 3* Advisory Board and provides the option to dive down into the details they need, to make the decisions.
· It’s enabling us to run better quality conferences and workshops
We have been able to continue running conferences, utilising SharpCloud to add richness and interactive elements to sessions, and instead of 400 people attending a physical conference, we’ve had around 1000 virtual attendees. This has resulted in more input and more data being gathered and generated a better quality output.
Time spent generating reports from the workshop is probably the same or more, but the depth and breadth of the comments and feedback and the quality of the report and content is so much better.
We have found a way of enabling people to contribute remotely and consequently the workshop takes up less of their time without the need to travel, and we’ve got that richness of the input from hundreds of people which is hugely beneficial.
· It’s given us the ability to support an activity to map, capture and retain knowledge in Defence
Knowledge Management has been a powerful aha moment. With the numbers of MOD civil servants and serving military reducing year on year, the need to capture their knowledge and expertise before it’s too late is vital. We have run an activity which has ably demonstrated that you can use SharpCloud to map out an individual’s responsibilities and specific skillset to track where the knowledge needs to be captured. We need to be a more data centric operating environment. We need to determine what skills are needed and then map it which highlights the gaps and resources required.
Key differentiators of SharpCloud compared to other tools
SharpCloud offers a powerful picture of visibility, transparency, continuity, and accountability and gives the management the ability to actually manage. Not only is this a tool for leadership to see how all the different components fit together in the big picture, but it’s a tool for the different teams to see how they fit into that bigger picture, which is very important.
Benefits
· We can highlight and expose the weaknesses and risks and capture information around projects or people before it’s too late. SharpCloud cuts out the noise, highlights the areas to focus on and prioritizes the work to be done.
· Thanks to SharpCloud, we have a quick and easy way of showing people what’s going on and who’s doing what. It’s a way of making sure the teams are on track. It has improved transparency and accountability and reduced wasted work and time as you can quickly see if the work is worthwhile or needs modifying.
· We have a two-way conversation, with the ability to brief upwards as well as down, incorporating everyone’s expertise and creating a channel of communication and accountability on all sides.
Quantifiable results
· Saving time and money
In terms of time and money saved, our Digital Twin report is a good example. Using Microsoft Teams to host, and SharpCloud to facilitate the workshop, we had 200 people contributing virtually to our report. If the workshop had been held in person, there would’ve been the usual additional hours and cost of travel time plus some overnight stays. This also had the additional benefit of reducing our carbon footprint as contributors did not need to travel to enjoy a meaningful and participatory workshop experience.
By using SharpCloud to collect attendees’ contributions, we were able to manipulate the data collected more easily to produce the report. We increased input by 2 or 3 times by enabling more people to contribute virtually and more easily through a SharpCloud story, so the fidelity of our report has also increased by 2 or 3 times.
· Mitigating silos
The 3* Advisory Board and senior Industry colleagues like SharpCloud’s representation of the way the work is being carried out because it’s easy to see and you can declutter it, yet still know that all the background information is there. It’s made all that data previously held in many spreadsheets more presentable and visible. It’s hard to know what 10,000 pages of spreadsheets are actually telling you, but now we have a clear picture of our nine areas of focus and how they are leading towards a supporting UK Defence strategies.
· Boosting morale and inspiring your workforce
In our industry, people need to be carrying out work that is valid, viable and makes a positive contribution. It’s also important that industry know what MOD want as MOD are their customer. SharpCloud is giving everyone a view of what the end mission is and what their role is in achieving that, with the ability to feedback, and communicate to ensure that mission is achieved. SharpCloud shows people they are making a difference by playing their role.
“The biggest value add for me is that high level overview which in one view shows me exactly how all the pieces fit together.” — Phil Williams
Managing Director at Team Defence Information.
