The best business decisions, and the most innovative ideas, aren’t going to deliver anything if the work can’t be carried out effectively and efficiently. That’s more than simply executing on a plan, or working through a set of prioritized backlog items. It means the ability to adapt and adjust to shifting circumstances, responding to new challenges and opportunities, and embracing the changes that are an inevitable part of any discretionary investment today.
That flexibility, that need for teams to shift in response to evolving environments, is at odds with the accepted standard approaches to work execution. Whether it’s traditional, plan-driven project delivery, or more recently agile approaches, discretionary work has always been viewed as a fairly structured approach, supported by repeatable processes and work methods.
To succeed today, organizations must move away from those standard methods, empowering their project managers and teams to deliver work in a way that works for them. That requires those teams to be given the confidence and competence to adjust and adapt not just the work that they are doing, but also the way that they are delivering. This is resulting in the rapid growth of hybrid work methods.
Hybrid combines elements of traditional approaches with aspects of agile, and crucially, it allows each team to decide which approach works best for the situation that they are dealing with. Hybrid benefits both the organization, and the individuals doing the work:
- For organizations, standard processes and methodologies can still be used as a framework – a set of guidelines and constraints that define the boundaries of the freedom teams enjoy. This helps ensure regulatory and governance compliance, and eliminates the risk of "rogue" teams.
- For individuals and teams, the freedom to adapt and adjust approaches within those boundaries allows them to focus on delivering the best solutions. This gives them the best chance of achieving business goals, rather than being restricted to predefined work methods that may not be optimal to the given scenario.
It’s no wonder that hybrid is becoming more popular. In the recently concluded ServiceNow World of Work survey, 51% of respondents said that they felt it was the most effective approach to work delivery, up from 46% the previous year. But there are still barriers to its adoption, largely around the inability of organizations to track and manage work in a hybrid fashion.
Unless organizations have an effective strategic portfolio management (SPM) solution that allows them to track all work, regardless of how it is being delivered, and unless that solution can consolidate all work in one place, leaders are going to struggle to understand what is happening in hybrid environments. As a result, many business leaders are reluctant to embrace hybrid, no matter how much it can potentially strengthen their performance.
In the next blog, we’ll look at how ServiceNow SPM allows organizations to provide their work teams with the freedom and performance enabled by hybrid, without sacrificing anything in terms of management and control. To learn more, check out the latest podcast and be sure to register for the webinar, "Elevate your digital strategy with ServiceNow SPM and hybrid project delivery." This webinar will be held on Tuesday, March 26 from 8-9am PT (11am-12PM ET). You'll hear first-hand from industry leaders about their journeys in leveraging ServiceNow SPM to foster an environment of continuous improvement and strategic agility. We’ll also recap the results of our 2nd Annual World of Work Global Survey. Register now!
