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Practice Management

What is it?

Practice Management are capabilities that focus on People and Promotion of Delivery Practices for an organization typically owned by a Practice Leadership team. Practice Management works best in conjunction with Portfolio Management where Portfolio Management capabilities focus on Products, Pipeline, and Path to Production. Phrased differently, Practice Management focuses on the craft, or, the “how” and “why” to the approach of building software. Portfolio Management focuses on the “what” and “why” of the software that is built.

Practice Management focuses on servicing the needs of practitioners in an organization. Practice Leads develop practitioners to have the skill sets needed to deliver outcomes quickly and efficiently. Practice Leads are zealots and promote the delivery practices to candidates for future hiring, partners, stakeholders, and potential customers.

Practice Management (and Portfolio Management) should be thought of as groupings of capabilities which must be custom-tailored to the exact needs of an organization so that the when creating roles to focus on capabilities, it is shaped in a way that integrates into existing leadership functions and addresses the biggest organizational bottlenecks.

Typically the Practice Leadership function is a small balanced team within a much larger organization, so they focus on putting structures in place where they can have a valuable impact on a one-to-many scale. The Practice Leadership team should have a balanced mixture of disciplines represented that mirror the teams in the delivery organization such as Design, Product Management and Engineering. Practice Leads align together on strategies and initiatives but then may break off to work with their own craft when it comes to discipline-specific activities.

People Focused Capabilities

People-focused capabilities are related to development of talent around delivery practices, helping the organization’s practitioners grow in their craft. Practice Leads put structures in place to motivate, challenge and provide growth opportunities aligned with organizational needs.

  • Recruit the right talent into the practice through a modern hiring process
    • Define the hiring process
    • Maintain a candidate pipeline
    • Write job descriptions
    • Interview and train interviewers
  • Retain high-quality talent by providing fulfilling work opportunities
    • Consult on practitioner allocations
    • Define growth paths for advancement
  • Grow practitioner talent by cultivating a learning environment dedicated to improving in the craft
    • Run a Community of Practice (facilitate practice discussions, book clubs, lunch & learns, etc.)
    • Directly coach and mentor practitioners
    • Give practice talks
    • Facilitate professional development activities
    • Assemble training materials
    • Define onboarding processes
    • Connect mentors to mentees
  • Accelerate practice scale and reach by fostering and promoting a culture of continuous learning and feedback so that people can enable others
    • Facilitate practitioner feedback processes such as reviews and assessments
    • Run practice-wide retrospectives
    • Implement Practice Health Checks

Practice Promotion Focused Capabilities

Promotion-focused capabilities are related to being a strong advocate for the practice and to create practice awareness internally and externally.

  • Craft and communicate a compelling vision to align practitioners with organizational goals
    • Set and communicate practice-wide vision and strategies
    • Gain practitioner support to drive practice initiatives
  • Effectively engage executive stakeholders to drive the practice strategy
    • Engage with customer stakeholders
    • Run internal roadshows
    • Create educational material for executives
  • Share compelling stories that highlight the existence and value of the practice brings
    • Organize practice open-days or shadowing opportunities
    • Create case studies
    • Share experience reports (presentations, blogging, posting to social media)
    • Conference guest speaking
  • Build beneficial partnerships with external organizations to enhance access to quality resources
    • Sponsor check-ins
    • Build an “alumni” network
    • Attend conferences and networking events
    • Cross-organization community participation

Why do it?

In order to build a successful “innovation lab”, you need a culture where practitioners are constantly thinking about how to grow and evolve their craft to stay on the cutting edge. This ensures people-focused continuous improvement practices are in place within the organization so that our skills and competencies are always growing and evolving alongside our industry. In the same way we establish continuous improvement feedback cycles for products, this people-focused approach ensures talent is always growing and skillsets don’t become obsolete. The promotion side of Practice Management sets the practice up for better fit hiring candidates and better fit customers leading to greater chances for successfully delivering outcomes.

Practice Management Key Results

Speed

  • Improved frequency of customer feedback
  • Improved ability to respond to feedback
  • Reduced time to deliver features
  • Reduced time to deliver outcomes
  • Increased frequency of product deployments
  • Accelerated practitioner learning

Stability

  • Decreased team volatility
  • Decrease in product defects and failures
  • Lower talent attrition

Security

  • Improved psychological safety

Scalability

  • Expansion of practitioner capabilities
  • Improved coaching capabilities
  • Improved speed to onboard
  • Greater sales reach
  • Greater talent attraction
  • Better customer fit
  • Better talent fit

Savings

  • Greater automation
  • Leaner development teams
  • Less product waste

Practice & Portfolio Management in Tandem

Practice & Portfolio Leadership teams work closely together to deliver outcomes.

Practice Leads focus on servicing the needs of all practitioners and cultivating healthy communities of practice. They develop practitioners to have the skill sets needed to be successful on projects.

Portfolio Leads focus on servicing the needs of the customer through delivery of outcomes. They ensure teams are moving in the right direction together.

Practice & Portfolio roles create a clear division of capabilities when both exist in an organization. If one role exists without the other, the capabilities become more homogeneous across Practice & Portfolio. Responsibilities and focus should reflect the current needs of the organization.

Internal Practice Management & Customer-Facing Practice Management as a Service

Rise8 both has internal-focused Practice Leads focused on these capabilities for growing Rise8 practitioners as well as a Practice Leadership service offering where we collaborate with customers to bring these capabilities to their organizations.