Coordinating Knowledge Work in Multi-Team Programs: Findings from a Large-Scale Agile Development Program

Software development projects have undergone remarkable changes with the arrival of agile development methods. While intended for small, self-managing teams, these methods are increasingly used also for large development programs. A major challenge in programs is to coordinate the work of many teams, due to high uncertainty in tasks, a high degree of interdependence between tasks and because of the large number of people involved. This revelatory case study focuses on how knowledge work is coordinated in large-scale agile development programs by providing a rich description of the coordination practices used and how these practices change over time in a four year development program with 12 development teams. The main findings highlight the role of coordination modes based on feedback, the use of a number of mechanisms far beyond what is described in practitioner advice, and finally how coordination practices change over time. The findings are important to improve the outcome of large knowledge-based development programs by tailoring coordination practices to needs and ensuring adjustment over time.Comment: To appear in Project Management Journa

The Impact of Equity Engagement Evaluating the Impact of Shareholder Engagement in Public Equity Investing

Over the last decade, growing numbers of investors have become increasingly concerned with the environmental and social impact of their investments across asset classes. This trend has recently been driven by new waves of "impact investors" proactively seeking measurable social and environmental impact in addition to financial returns, and by "responsible investors" making commitments to engage on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues through initiatives such as the United Nations-backed Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI). At the same time, engaged shareholders have had long-standing experience using "the power of the proxy" and their voices as investors to hold companies accountable for the impacts they have on employees, stakeholders, communities, and ecosystems.While investor interest in shareholder engagement has grown, our understanding of the impacts associated with engagement activities remains largely anecdotal.In 2012, an important study on Total Portfolio Activation provided a new conceptual and analytical framework for investors to pursue environmental and social impact across all asset classes commonly found in a diversified investment portfolio. Building upon the insights of Total Portfolio Activation, the Impact of Equity Engagement (IE2) initiative seeks to deepen our understanding of the nature of impact in one specific asset class—public equities— where investors' engagement activities have generated meaningful social and environmental impacts.Given the large social and environmental footprints of publicly traded corporations and the persistently high allocation to public equities in most investor portfolios, public equity investing presents a major opportunity for impact investing. Yet impact investing, as currently practiced, has concentrated primarily on smallscale direct investments in private equity and debt, where many investors perceive that social and environmental impact can be more readily observed than in publicly traded companies where ownership is intermediated, diluted, and diffused through secondary capital markets.Indeed, the nature of impact within public equity investing remains poorly understood and insufficiently documented. Because of this, many investors may be overlooking readily available opportunities for generating impact within their existing investment portfolios.To address these misperceptions and missed opportunities, the IE2 initiative is developing a more rigorous framework for documenting the impact of engagement within the public equity asset class.

Designing Sustainable Organizations: Possible Clues from our Oldest Organizations

This paper develops some observations for designing sustainable organizations developed from lessons learned from some of our oldest organizations. This has implications for both the form and content of organizational design. Organizations need to remain oriented, flexible and innovative. The use of story is a valuable tool in organizational design, as the challenge of turbulence and change confront the organizational agent. Organizational fit includes not only ecological fit with the environment but our effect on that environment. To accomplish this over the years, we need to remain properly oriented. Consciousness becomes important, knowing who we are and how we contribute to the environment. The patience of the long-term perspective is important. There is much we can learn from ancient ways, however our power and knowledge have created entirely new challenges of how to manage our environment

Large emergency-response exercises: qualitative characteristics - a survey

Exercises, drills, or simulations are widely used, by governments, agencies and commercial organizations, to simulate serious incidents and train staff how to respond to them. International cooperation has led to increasingly large-scale exercises, often involving hundreds or even thousands of participants in many locations. The difference between ‘large’ and ‘small’ exercises is more than one of size: (a) Large exercises are more ‘experiential’ and more likely to undermine any model of reality that single organizations may create; (b) they create a ‘play space’ in which organizations and individuals act out their own needs and identifications, and a ritual with strong social implications; (c) group-analytic psychotherapy suggests that the emotions aroused in a large group may be stronger and more difficult to control. Feelings are an unacknowledged major factor in the success or failure of exercises; (d) successful large exercises help improve the nature of trust between individuals and the organizations they represent, changing it from a situational trust to a personal trust; (e) it is more difficult to learn from large exercises or to apply the lessons identified; (f) however, large exercises can help develop organizations and individuals. Exercises (and simulation in general) need to be approached from a broader multidisciplinary direction if their full potential is to be realized

A 'PASEO' Approach: Regionally contextualized and integrated engagement, dialoguing, knowledge sharing and communication

In research for development (R4D) and programmatic research work for development knowledge sharing and knowledge management, engagement and networking is essential for achieving behavioral change. R4D is about making sure research is contributing to positive development agendas and changes. We need to engage and communicate internally within our projects with the potential users of our results who can influence and implement change. It is important to clearly distinguish—from the beginning—the difference between this ‘internal communication’, what we will refer to as the ‘paseo approach’, and corporate communications. This document will elaborate the key characteristics/principles/good practices of what we aim for in internal project communications, the ‘paseo approach’, and what it requires in terms of processes, competencies and skills in the people who undertake it

A Formal and Functional Analysis of Gaze, Gestures, and Other Body Movements in a Contemporary Dance Improvisation Performance

UID/FIL/00183/2019 PTDC/FER‐FIL/28278/2017This study presents a microanalysis of what information performers “give” and “give off” to each other via their bodies during a contemporary dance improvisation. We compare what expert performers and non-performers (sufficiently trained to successfully perform) do with their bodies during a silent, multiparty improvisation exercise, in order to identify any differences and to provide insight into nonverbal communication in a less conventional setting. The coordinated collaboration of the participants (two groups of six) was examined in a frame-by-frame analysis focusing on all body movements, including gaze shifts as well as the formal and functional movement units produced in the head–face, upper-, and lower-body regions. The Methods section describes in detail the annotation process and inter-rater agreement. The results of this study indicate that expert performers during the improvisation are in “performance mode” and have embodied other social cognitive strategies and skills (e.g., endogenous orienting, gaze avoidance, greater motor control) that the non-performers do not have available. Expert performers avoid using intentional communication, relying on information to be inferentially communicated in order to coordinate collaboratively, with silence and stillness being construed as meaningful in that social practice and context. The information that expert performers produce is quantitatively less (i.e., producing fewer body movements) and qualitatively more inferential than intentional compared to a control group of non-performers, which affects the quality of the performance.publishersversionpublishe

Using an asset-based approach to identify drivers of sustainable rural growth and poverty reduction in Central America : a conceptual framework

The asset-based approach considers links between households'productive, social, and locational assets; the policy, institutional, and risk context; household behavior as expressed in livelihood strategies; and well-being outcomes. For sustainable poverty reducing growth, it is critical to examine household asset portfolios and understand how assets interact with the context to influence the selection of livelihood strategies, which in turn determine well-being. Policy reforms can change the context and income-generating potential of assets. Investments can add new assets or increase the efficiency of existing household assets, and also improve households'risk management capacity to protect assets. After all is said and done, a household's asset portfolio will determine whether growth and poverty reduction can be achieved and sustained over time. The asset-based framework is amendable to different analytical techniques. Siegel suggests combining quantitative and qualitative spatial and household level analyses (and linked spatial and household level analyses) to deepen understanding of the complex relationships between assets, context, livelihood strategies, and well-being outcomes.Municipal Financial Management,Economic Theory&Research,Public Health Promotion,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Environmental Economics&Policies,Economic Theory&Research,Poverty Assessment,Environmental Economics&Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Municipal Financial Management

How to Decolonize a Classroom

This study is gathered from personal reflections of my time and experience with the Vermont Workers’ Center organization in Brattleboro Vermont USA. As a Community Organizer I highlight my internal and external work on projects specific to racial justice, and its use in organizing and educating members in the Southern Vermont region. The challenges as an active and involved community member of color, living and working in the context of a predominantly white setting has inspired me to curate a model and theory to “decolonize” or unlearn the prevalence of white supremacist culture in our educational spaces