Accelerate Technology Development, Information Sharing, Organizational Improvement
How we grow
ACTIO aims to maintain and grow a culture in which technical development, information sharing, and departmental optimization happen swiftly and do not linger for extended times, leading to dissatisfaction and frustration.
Take the reins!
DBMI Leadership commits to empower those entrusted with a task or with leading a project to make the relevant decision for this task or project. If we put you in charge of a job, we have all the confidence that you are able to make the necessary decisions for that specific job. Take this leadership! Make decisions!
- Act on your responsibility! – Along with the decisional empowerment comes the power to move forward your function and task, report on it and share news about it on your own timeline. Do not wait with actions like that to be triggered by higher-ups, but be proactive in moving on to next steps and in speaking up when you have something to report.
- Don’t tarry! – We sometimes see decision making and the execution of great ideas hindered by pondering over detail, formulating the need for increasingly more input. While knowledge is power, deferring decisions and implementation to ever later time, because there is more information to be uncovered is not a good strategy..
- Leadership reviews results, not processes. – Those charged with a task are trusted to find the best way to move the task towards resolution in the allotted time.
- Be prepared! – If you are leading a team, prepare for every meeting of your team. At minimum, there needs to be an agenda. If you need project managers to lead a meeting or coordinate your project, please coordinate that with the Associate Chair of Finance & Administration.
- Agree on timelines! – Agree on realistic timelines with those who work with you on a task or project. Agreement on when deliverables are due helps adherence and actually increases motivation. Timelines need to be realistic, but they also need to be ambiguous.
- Be Agile! – Implement the amended principles of AGILE software development into your workflows.
- Be an Agent of Change – We can’t do business as usual, because the business has changed. As Agents of Change, we will 1) acknowledge our hesitancy and 2) embrace the change in a way that benefits you, the department, and makes you feel in control of your career. If you see chances for improvement, implement those in your workflows, sharing your successes and experience with the department and its leadership: Be the change you want to see!
Agile Principles for ACTIO
Continuous Improvement and delivery
Continuously working on and improving a product, sharing intermittent results often and receiving frequent and timely input from stakeholders and colleagues is the basis of the Agile process. Agile is a software development process many of us in the department are familiar with. We have amended the original Agile principles for ACTIO to applicable to all work products and process in our department.
- Satisfy stakeholders through early, continuous improvement and delivery. When stakeholders receive new updates regularly, they’re more likely to see the changes they want within the product. This leads to happier, more satisfied stakeholders. Be prepared to show improvement on your task in every meeting.
- Welcome changing requirements, even late in the project. The Agile framework is all about adaptability. In iterative approaches like Agile, being inflexible causes more harm than good.
- Deliver value frequently. Similar to principle #1, continuous delivery of value to your stakeholders frequently makes it less likely for them to churn.
- Build projects around motivated individuals. Agile management works best when teams are committed and actively working to achieve a goal.
- The most effective way to communicate is face-to-face. If you’re working on a distributed team, spend time communicating in ways that involve face-to-face communication like individual meetings, daily stand-up meetings, or Zoom/TEAMS calls.
- Providing a working solution to solve your task is the primary measure of progress. The ultimate goal of our projects is a “working product”.
- Maintain a sustainable working pace. Some aspects of Agile project management can be fast-paced, but it shouldn’t be so fast that team members burn out. The goal is to maintain sustainability throughout the development process.
- Continuous excellence enhances agility. If the team develops excellent solutions in one development phase, they can continue to build off of it the next. Continually creating great work allows teams to move faster in the future.
- Simplicity is essential. Sometimes the simplest solution is the best solution. Agile development aims to not overcomplicate things and find simple answers to complex problems.
Regularly reflect and adjust your way of work to improve effectiveness. Retrospective meetings are a common Agile practice. It’s a dedicated time for Agile teams to look back and reflect on their performance and adapt their behaviors for the future.
“(…) anything is better than indecision. We must decide. If I am wrong, we shall soon find out and can do the other thing. But not to decide wastes both time and money and may ruin everything.”
-Ulysses S. Grant
