Methodological Competence

Both the economy, and the public sector in particular, are facing fundamental changes, especially in times of digitalisation: In the future, disruptive technologies will have a significant impact on the public sector. Citizens expect digital services and increasingly see themselves as customers. In addition, the digital authority also requires a restructuring of organisations and processes.

To enable you to adapt to the upcoming changes in the best possible way, adesso has built up a broad service portfolio in change management. We identify and smooth out change barriers, and managers and employees are made to be more aware of change. In addition, interviews are conducted to provide precise information on various change management criteria. Change communication is a means for managers to acquire knowledge on how to disseminate the most important findings to all employees. In this case, conflict guidance followed by mediation makes sense. A change evaluation is carried out in order to assess the changes made in the best possible way. If required, adesso offers its employees tailor-made training for the software roll-out in order to ensure efficient operation even after the implementation.

Effective change management accompanies the digital transformation of the public sector and implements New Work approaches. Established methods help strengthen acceptance and trust in the changes. Overall, this creates a risk-minimised organisation with the option of becoming a pioneer in different and/or important competence areas. In addition, IT training increases the competence and motivation of the employees, the advantages of the software solution are fully utilised and productivity is increased.

In a digitalised world where change is constantly occurring, design thinking is a practical framework for innovation. This approach lets you generate user-centric solutions to individual problems and create promising new products, services and processes.

As part of the design thinking process, interdisciplinary teams pass through six steps during a design sprint:

• 1. Understand: Develop a shared understanding of the problem.
• 2. Observe: Quality-based observation of the problem from the perspective of different users.
• 3. Synthesise: Evaluate the findings and define a standard description of the problem.
• 4. Ideate: Brainstorm to find practical solutions to the problem.
• 5. Prototype: Focus on developing a small number of prototypes based on the ideas collected.
• 6. Test: Test the prototype with a focus on the target groups.

Using various methods such as personas, customer journeys, storytelling or by changing the perspective, the team is supported in overcoming mental barriers and breaking out of typical patterns of thinking. This is absolutely necessary in order to generate ideas with real potential.

Learn more about Design thinking

The progresses being made in the digitalisation process pose great challenges and lead to changes not only in the economy, but also in public authorities. An overview and understanding of various internal and external influencing factors is essential in order to overcome these challenges and to be able to initiate necessary change measures. Managers often lack the time in their workday to deal with future innovations and topics and to analyse their possible influence on the authority where they work.

The health check features 18 indicators from which focal points can be selected and used for the analysis of the current state. These include the use of new technologies, the consolidation of software and hardware, the ability to innovate, knowledge management and sustainability and the environment, among others. Requirements and challenges are then identified and prioritised in the Interaction Room. Afterward, targeted innovation methods are used to develop and deploy prototypes in cooperation with the help of the design thinking approach and then the customer’s requirements can be implemented.

On the one hand, the benefit lies in the evidence-based analysis of the current situation. Based on these, an overall picture of the organisation emerges, in which precise opportunities for improvement in various areas are identified. In the next step, concrete implementation options are identified and then implemented by our experts. In this way, the challenges are successfully mastered through the proactiveness of the organisation. Furthermore, a dialogue is initiated at decision-making level regarding the current state of innovation.

Along with broad theoretical knowledge, we also have extensive practical experience gained by taking part in numerous design thinking workshops and training seminars. We provide you not only with a professional coach to teach you design thinking methods. We also supply a domain coach who is able to give suggestions on how to implement ideas generated during the brainstorming session and support you until the innovative solution has been implemented. The benefits are plain to see:

• 1. adesso has successfully deployed design thinking as a proven method for customers in multiple projects.
• 2. Added value is generated through collaboration between a design thinking moderator and a technical expert.
• 3. Our expertise extends beyond producing a prototype. We also provide support during the development process as required in the relevant situation.

Knowledge management is an important element in meeting the challenges of agile working in the public sector and is made up of the following building blocks:

• 1. Identifying knowledge carriers
• 2. Identifying sources of knowledge
• 3. Optimising knowledge transfers
• 4. Bundling and combining knowledge
• 5. Offering sensitised personnel management

The most important methods for structuring and successfully implementing knowledge management are:

• 1. Preparation of an analysis of the existing knowledge management.
• 2. Preparation of an intellectual capital report by location or organisational unit.
• 3. Creation of knowledge databases and relationship management to create new knowledge structures.
• 4. Use of knowledge transfer as a gauge to monitor and evaluate the flow of ideas and information within an organisation.

The advantages of knowledge management are optimised knowledge distribution in the organisation, a structured and more transparent knowledge management process and the avoidance of silo thinking through the generation of synergies. In this way, organisations can ensure that knowledge is retained, organised and clearly shared among employees. This prevents the loss of important information and makes work more efficient for future projects.

The size and complexity of many modern IT projects for public authorities is far beyond the scope of traditional IT projects. The S-O-S Method defines projects with a total effort of 50–500 person-years as being ‘large projects’ and it calls projects exceeding this level ‘mega-projects’ or ‘programmes’.

Topics that affect numerous nations, federal states or departments are very significant sources of complexity for these projects. Such topics considerably increase the demands placed on communications management.

adesso’s own process model, PITPM (Pragmatic IT Project Management), provides you with the ideal foundation for building your company’s own project methodology. PITPM takes the client’s specific requirements and processes into consideration and focuses on the issues that are crucial to the project’s success. It does so without asking too much of your employees. Pragmatic processes, the subdivision into phases and disciplines, and the availability of well-integrated templates serve to increase productivity and improve the outcomes. The standardisation of the methodology and the resulting increase in transparency makes it quicker for your employees to get started on the project and take on the relevant roles within it.

With the complexity of large IT projects, the diversity of their framework conditions also increases. In public administration, it is necessary to overcome further hurdles for a successful project - before the eyes of politics, law and the public.

These hurdles range from the formally necessary invitation to tender to a multitude of predefined standards and bottlenecks in the availability of skilled workers.

Requirements management is also affected. However, targeted requirements engineering can provide a remedy. Pragmatically tailored to the needs of the public sector, it contributes to the success of your project. The high system quality and user acceptance are in the foreground. The systematic approach also reduces the risks of changes and errors, which can lead to high costs.

With aREp adesso has created a format that is tailored to the needs of public administration within the scope of requirements engineering in software development projects. Our Requirements Engineers pragmatically include your IT and business side and take care of their relief.

They keep track of your requirements for your project - from the demand to the tender or from the software development to the productive operation.

Without continuous testing, high-quality software products can no longer be achieved as part of the software development process. Today's testing procedures are characterised by agile approaches, the sensible use of tool chains and the automation of test sequences. However, each project has its own challenges, which requires a project-specific derivation of best-practice approaches.

Within the company, we make sure that the experiences from the projects are made available to a broad circle of employees. Continuous learning is a basic building block of our way of working. That is why we have set up the advisory focus Testing in Public Projects (TiPP) in the public sector. Our staff meet regularly to exchange ideas on specific project situations and to provide support in finding solutions. Another focus is the training and further education of junior consultants by senior consultants, whether through peer-to-peer cooperation or by passing on best practices.

The success of this approach is evident. adesso Public has a stable base of employees who have testing experience at different levels of maturity and in different test areas. The close exchange with testers from other adesso units contributes significantly to preparing for the changing test requirements in customer projects and to developing appropriate solutions.