This interview is part of our Expert Interview Series
We have conducted a series of interviews to gather learnings and points of view from top management’s perspective on the state of innovation in banking. Those findings, among other analysis, predictions and upcoming business opportunities, are part of our “Financial Services 2021 Innovation Report” which will be released this summer.
Subscribe to get notified once it’s out.
This interview is part of our Expert Interview Series
What does agility mean to you?
What is the latest agile project in which you had been involved?
One of the latest agile projects I have been involved is the support of the US Engineering department with which we held a series of workshops. The goal of this agile room was to support the team to manage the growing demands and workload to meet the company’s expectations of increasing the volume of MWs in the country. In addition, we’ve been requested to help the team to develop and execute our projects with efficient time to market, de-risking them and shortening time from awarding to contract execution.
On the other hand, I would like to mention also one of the most important agile projects that I have been involved until now and that is, ERMIS project. The aim of the project was to further improve the safety level on GPG and contractors’ activities, involving all technologies (wind/solar/hydro) in Greece, and was launched with the purpose of finding solutions that can solve the complexity of performing electrical operations to a great number of plants and diverse electrical systems involved. The practices that the team has been identified and already put in execution are being communicated as a benchmark inside the company worldwide.
Why should energy companies become more agile?
Nowadays, decarbonization, sustainability and innovation have spurred a revolution in the energy market. Accessing a diverse portfolio of generation, storage, and flexible demand will continue to be crucial in the future. Risk management and controlling ‘Big Data’ will provide leverage for gaining a competitive edge. Customer proposals will be enhanced, and demand response will be unlocked by user-friendly applications and automation technologies. It will be critical to stay close to clients and maintain their confidence as their requirements evolve, to be a leader in the green energy sector. Therefore, agile is a way for supporting, analyzing, managing, and improving existing business practices and creating new opportunities. Most importantly, it is the way of finding innovative ways to manage the unknown and meet customer’s expectations. Agile also allows for more time to be spent reviewing the work that has been done, identifying the impediments, bottlenecks, and challenges that are putting a hold on company’s growth.
What are the biggest benefits that energy companies can get out of agility?
Agile is a learning-based approach that incorporates continuous improvement into our everyday workflow, creating the right conditions and time to respond and adjust to change. It integrates time for reflection, thought, and experimentation into the process, and works as a mechanism for making incremental improvements on a regular basis, whether it is caused by internal or external factors. By applying the agile principles, energy companies can get de-risked projects and better predictability of the future opportunities, be more flexible and adjust to market needs and changes which creates a competitive advantage, while having motivated teams that work for what matters most by creating exceptional products that meet customer needs and expectations.
What are your best practices for implementing agile in the energy sector?
We always start by building the future state that we want to have and breaking it down to a concrete backlog, which includes a set of activities with the information we have at this moment. This is being done by, as we call it, inception workshops in which all the involved parties are participating. We first set the right conditions, for the team to be open and think out of the box and by guiding them to speak their mind.
This leads to create a group of motivated and committed individuals to work together, in the most complex environment even before the COVID-19 era cooperating with people working at the power plants, at the headquarters and around the world, on delivering the proposed activities and solutions always focusing and collaborating with the customers and stakeholders. This is being done by deciding all together the team’s working agreements and cooperating in an iterative and incremental way by doing periodical review and planning sessions, using a digital tool to track the current progress and plan the future steps.
Always fostering team’s self-organization and supporting the teams to remove their impediments by doing retrospective sessions.
What are the biggest challenges of implementing agile in the energy sector?
Daily operational workload proves to be the biggest challenge of implementing agile in the energy sector. Team members usually work in parallel in an agile project and in the meantime, they also have to deliver their day-to-day tasks.
Another important challenge is the inter-departmental communication in combination with the organizational chart. Therefore, we always try to promote informal ways of communication between them and tear down the silos.
Which agile tools, rituals or methodologies do you find best suited for energy companies?
JIRA and Microsoft Teams are the best agile tools for energy companies.
Agile teams should always have a unique channel of communication to track their activities. JIRA is used mostly for more complex and digital agile rooms and Microsoft Teams is perfect for business teams as it seems to be more user friendly.
Regarding the best rituals, they are the Sprint Review / Planning sessions and Retrospectives.
In the sprint review and planning sessions the team members always are aligned and discuss about the progress they made on their activities. It is one of the most important rituals as it provides the opportunity to identify bottlenecks and external factors that block the team.
The best methodologies are SCRUM and SCRUMBAN. Mainly because they create a high level of transparency and alignment to work on what is most important for the teams.
Which energy company do you consider a benchmark for green-tech and agility and why?
Enel is a benchmark. Our corporate mission is to help the globe overcome some of its greatest challenges, such as climate change. This can be only accomplished through focusing on sustainability and innovation. That is why we are continuously searching for fresh, innovative and inspirational ideas by involving all employees in the decision-making process and implementing an agile transformation strategy. We believe that, “Only by rethinking the way we innovate we truly disrupt the industry and develop technologies and solutions that have the power to shake up old markets and create new ones”.
What's your favourite book, article, podcast or video on agility?
“Start with Why” from Simon Sinek.
WHY is the foundation for inspiring others and accomplishing extraordinary achievements. Any organization can describe what it does, and some can describe how it’s being done, but only a few can explain why they do it. Those who begin with WHY always motivate and empower.
Special thanks to Ilias Meligkovas for his insights on this Interview
This interview is part of our Expert Interview Series
We have conducted a series of interviews to gather learnings and points of view from top management’s perspective on the state of innovation in banking. Those findings, among other analysis, predictions and upcoming business opportunities, are part of our “Financial Services 2021 Innovation Report” which will be released this summer.
Subscribe to get notified once it’s out.