Supply Chain Digital Transformation For IT PMO
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Production Schedule to
Meet your Lead Time
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ITAR Registered
AS9100
IATF 16949
ISO 9001
MIL-STD-810-F/G
Blockchain Technology Can Improve Project Management
Build a resilient supply chain
Increased supply chain transparency
Streamlined supplier onboarding
Storing digital records
Exchanging digital assets
Ensuring acceptable behavior
Building reputation systems
Executing smart contracts
Resilient, transparent, and trusted supply chains
In times of disruption, this matters more than ever. Businesses and consumers want brands to guarantee product authenticity, while supply chain participants demand responsible sourcing and better visibility to minimize disputes.
Blockchain for supply chain solutions help supply chain leaders use data to handle the disruptions of today and build resiliency for the future.
Supplier Management: Digital Identity Verification For Procurement
Container Logistics: Building Trust Between Partners
Supply Chain Transparency: Greater Efficiency Based On Mutual Trust
Using Blockchain As A Project Management Device
A major piece to each potential disruption story is how blockchain technology could alter existing workflows and processes, such as project management.
Yes, it’s still theoretical, but crypto-entrepreneurs are already working on ways to position the immutable ledger a key component of future project management workflows. In this post, we discuss how blockchain will transform the project management space.
Blockchain Will Protect Your Project Data
In a distributed ledger, each node or computer will independently host project data. Each node will also update that data. In other words, no single party in this system can alter or change this data and, in turn, the entire project team will reference a single source of truth. This will be helpful when investigating discrepancies and disputes, especially with an external project stakeholder, such as a client or subcontractor. For example, if you had scheduled your construction contractor to send people on a certain date and they send their people too late or too early, everyone on the ledger can verify if the subcontractor made a mistake or not.
Internally, you can also trust the data on the ledger when analyzing business operations to see how much time is spent on tasks, identify opportunities for efficiencies, and other benefits. Yes, you can do the same today with a centralized cloud-based project management suite. But there is a chance of losing some of that data due to downtime from the cloud host or tampering.
With DLT, you can trust that the data set from your team is complete and untampered. In this respect, you also get data redundancy thanks to the availability of multiple nodes — in case your node is temporarily down as a result of transitioning your software and data.
Smart Contracts Could Optimize Workflows
For example, in the construction industry the use of building, information, and modeling (BIM) is growing. The basic idea of BIM is to facilitate collaboration between the different stakeholders in the construction project, such as the architectural firm, civil engineers, suppliers, and others. Let’s imagine a building construction project involving the concrete supplier, construction crew, and the building project owner. The project owner could set smart contracts that will only notify the construction crew to come on the scheduled date after the concrete is delivered to the site.
If the concrete is not delivered, then the crew subcontractor would not need to commit to that scheduled date. This could prevent the risk of idle labor and, in turn, help control the budget of the project. Likewise, the crew subcontractor could freely send its people to another project in lieu of the original project without having to notify the project owner — they can just refer to the information shown in the BIM software. Similarly, you could have smart contracts to only release specific orders to suppliers — for example the amount and grade of steel you need — only when the civil engineer greenlights the design. If the engineer detects a clash, the suppliers will not be notified until the designers resolve the clash.
But when that is done, the suppliers will only get orders based on the updated design, thereby saving the project owner of cost overruns resulting from incompatible materials. You can apply this to aviation, auto-manufacturing, electronics manufacturing, and other project types too. A blockchain-based BIM suite would also provide each stakeholder with an immutable source for the project’s metadata. They can use that metadata as proof for arbitration, disputes, and regulatory reasons as well as for accreditation purposes, such as LEED and WELL building standards.
Idea In Brief
- Blockchain technology holds promise for improving many functions of the PMO. Blockchain’s core characteristics, including transparency and auditability, create an environment of trust for project teams, senior management, and stakeholders, where people and institutions can act with speed and confidence.
- Blockchain can help PMOs and their stakeholders by automating record-keeping, reconciliation, and basic coordination tasks, thereby freeing managers for more challenging and value-adding activities. Blockchain-enabled PMOs can take advantage of automation to hasten their transition from passive entities that manage scope, costs, and schedules to active, adaptive partners who lead and execute strategic initiatives.
- The circumstances where PMOs will most benefit from blockchain include those with complex and distributed activities, and those under regulatory compliance or quality certification requirements for rigorous verification and auditing.
Industries Served
Space
Aerospace & Defense
Automotive
Oil & Gas
Maritime
Medical
Disrupting Project Management: Pmos In Transition
In organizations with high-performing PMOs, the PMO often plays a vital role in bridging the gap between strategy design, project execution, and value delivery. As the Project Management Institute (PMI) noted in its “2018 Pulse of the Profession” survey, “Some organizations want to be more efficient, while others are trying to increase margins or drive innovation. Regardless of the benefits they seek, organizations use projects to achieve their strategic objectives. Project managers in those organizations are turning ideas into reality.”
PMOs seeking to maintain their currency in their organizations know that it is no longer enough to master the fundamentals of project management. They need to aim higher. As Bill Mabry, director of the digital transformation PMO at Salesforce put it: “PMOs need to be seen as transformational and leading edge rather than a support system or an administrative body.” Mabry continued, “The smart ones are repurposing to align to customer experiences and ensuring that the vision, the means of achieving it, and all of its success metrics align with and support the broader business strategy.”13 In other words, leading PMOs understand that in today’s disruptive landscape an organization’s success depends on both an effective and dynamic strategy, as well as a creative and resilient execution of that strategy by an empowered PMO.
This gravitation toward strategy execution is one of a handful of key forces converging to disrupt the traditional PMO model. The rise of disruptive technologies, the relentless focus on continuous innovation, and the shift to highly networked models of value creation and value delivery are forcing a fundamental shakeup of how companies compete, which in turn is spurring PMOs to recalibrate the value they provide to their organizations. Before examining how blockchain can help revolutionize project management, we look at how these trends are reshaping the PMO function.
Networked Corporations And Decentralized Organizations
The traditional vertically integrated corporation is a paradoxical beast. Capitalist titans such as Henry Ford champion the marketplace’s virtues, yet their corporations function like planned economies, often taking over public sector markets such as
healthcare and education.
For decades, these corporate fortresses triumphed over competitors, but no longer. The monolithic, vertically integrated companies have morphed into more agile competitors. In a recent Brightline Initiative survey of over 1,600 executives worldwide, the consensus view was that, to combat siloed ways of working, organizations need to set up processes and create incentives that encourage and reward collaboration across organizational boundaries. Executives generally agreed that decentralized decision-making generates timely and powerful market insights from managers on the front line who are
navigating changing market conditions.
Smart companies are breaking down silos between functions, business units, and offices in different countries, deploying resources
and capabilities globally, and harnessing the power of human capital across borders and organizational boundaries. For the managers in charge of coordinating these sprawling webs of value creation, the strategic role of project management is less about producing schedules, spreadsheets and status reports, and more about mobilizing and coordinating knowledge, people, resources, and capabilities within intricate business webs.
Start-ups and small companies are going global, too, and using technology to access international markets and international talent pools with a minimum of bureaucracy, financing, and overhead. Gone are the days when entrepreneurs had to build up their business infrastructure painstakingly from scratch. Aided by Internet-based business platforms, small to medium enterprises can now go global from day one, reaching overseas markets and talent pools with a few clicks. Modern collaboration technologies not only put a much larger and more diverse talent pool within reach of any entrepreneur starting or scaling a business; they allow talented individuals to work together in a seamless, global operation, despite being separated by time zones and geography. Perceptive business owners can even manufacture and distribute entirely new product lines without having to own a physical plant or manage inventory
Why SyncFab?
Contain costs, boost productivity and increase profitability with SyncFab game-changing business solutions. Blockchain’s technical features provides superior trust, automation, security and resilience over traditional databases.