Cross Functional Teams

Spotlight: Building a different kind of team

A simply truth that's become more apparent as procurement has developed beyond a simple cost-saving mandate is that category management as a basic structure has limitations. For a procurement function looking to deliver strategic value to business partners, there's a series of potential skills gaps in any organisation and there are those that think it's time to address that.

Food manufacturer Heinz is a notable example of a business that in recent years saw the advantages in rethinking its approach to category management. John Hans, then VP of purchasing for Heinz, told Procurement Leaders last year about a shift in structural organisation that had a great impact on the organisation.

Part of his move was to break down the European function into four regions and operate under a pan-European portfolio structure.

As the article ran, "the new group has seen four senior manager-level individuals, two from the procurement side and two from the commercial side, appointed to organize the procurement integration in each region. The new structure allows procurement people across the portfolios to have clear interaction with a manager who coordinates with the European strategy."

"It's a matrix model, it's not a hard-line centralised model," Hans told Procurement Leaders. "We want to really understand each piece of the portfolio and put our best people up against our best categories to understand the value chain as well as what it takes to optimize quality and cost to Heinz as it comes through the door."

Jonathan Webb, research analyst for the Procurement Intelligence Unit, wrote a Thought Leaders post this week, noting that in his view category management has some way to go in many companies before it fulfils the strategic goals of the business."The key finding was that the behaviours necessary for strategic category management are not common," he wrote.

"We found that the ability to engage with multiple key stakeholders in key functions was vital in securing the organisational buy-in required for effective sourcing. Moreover, the resources dedicated to planning and strategic activities are a key differentiating factor between those leading the pack and the rest.

Scrum Vs Extreme Programming | Computer Programing

Agile Process

The Agile Process or software development refers to a set of software development methods which are based on iterative development. In this process, the solutions and requirements both evolve mutual collaboration between cross functional teams. These teams are self-organizing in nature.

The Agile software development approach usually promotes a regimented kind of project management process which encourages: It is a software development methodology with an intention to enhance software responsiveness and quality to the volatile requirements of customers. Being a type of Agile process, it promotes frequent releases in small development cycles. This introduces checkpoints and improves the productivity in a way that the new requirements from customers can be adopted. 7. Requires excess of cultural change to adopt

Scrum

Scrum is an incremental, iterative framework for agile software development and project management. The word “Scrum” is not really an acronym. However, many companies using this methodology spell it with capital letters. Initially Scrum methodology was focused for management of software development projects, but in recent times it can be used to run general program/project management approach or software maintenance teams. Scrum, which contains sets of predefined roles and practices, is a process skeleton. Main roles in this method are:

1. Product Owner – Represents Stakeholders 3. Team – A cross functional group of about 6-8 people who do actual design, testing, implementation, etc.

Each of the iteration is called a “sprint”, typical time frame for which is normally about two to four weeks. The length of each sprint is decided by the team. The product “backlog” pushes the set of features into a spring. These features are prioritized set of higher level requirements for the task to be carried out. Based on this product “backlog”, the team determines how many of the items can be completed in the next sprint. Once the sprint begins, nobody is allowed to alter the sprint backlog, which means that the set of requirements are frozen. On successful completion of a sprint, the team demonstrates the usage of that particular software.

This methodology should be encouraged in organizations since the major advantage of using the Scrum is that it enables the creation of teams which are highly self-organizing in nature. This is achieved by encouraging verbal communication amongst the team members, co-location of all the team members and disciplines which are involved for the project.

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