I believe, strong operations management, whether for the development of specific projects, digital products, involves many aspects such as project management, CX, UX, technology, content, CRM, etc. However, all of these need to work together to achieve significant results. Each of these knowledge areas offers various opportunities for improvement, but individual enhancements are only useful when aligned with a solid corporate culture and contribute to business evolution.

When considering the evolution of the business itself, over the years, I have increasingly believed in a virtuous circle that depends on the well-orchestrated contribution of many departments. And it all starts with the Scope of Work, in our perception of the scope of work, and in our ability to collect data from its execution to identify evolutionary actions.

The Scope of Work (SOW) has deliverables, which are the consequence of sets of activities carried out by internal and external resources within a certain SLA (Service Level Agreement).

The combination of all SLAs generates the pricing of the activities, which in turn determines the pricing of the deliverables, leading to the pricing of the SOW.

The sold SOW generates questions for us on a daily basis.

1. We need to monitor, measure, analyze, and make swift decisions. The SOW requires monitoring.

2. The monitoring needs to oversee the SOW, its deliverables, activities, and SLAs.

3. Monitoring needs to generate data-based reports.

4. Quality data, when crossed, generates quality information, which enables good decision making

My focus is to achieve the following virtuous circle, where constant monitoring of all aspects of the operation allows us to gather insights to enhance both the operation itself and our understanding of it, consequently improving our own scope of action and pricing model.

This, I understand to be the only way to separate what we think we do and how we do it from what we actually do and how we do it, and from this true understanding, seek ways to optimize any operation in every sense.

The mapping of activity and process flows is crucial for a clear understanding of the steps involved in different sets of deliverables and the distribution of interdepartmental responsibilities.

By defining flows and responsibilities, it's possible to identify profiles and levels of seniority compatible with the demands, optimize team structures, SLAs, and hourly-rate-based pricing processes. It's also possible to identify common factors that provide opportunities for creating support documents, check-lists, and implementing tools to automate flows, track activities, and monitor them.

The mapping can be done to agnostically identify any type of workflow, whether it's ad hoc or recurring, of any nature. The intention is not to bureaucratize or limit processes; for example, even discovery or creative conception activities have (or can have) well-defined stages that can be optimized.

The intention of the mapping is to establish the company's or a specific operation's standards to help with quality control and reduce dependence on individuals, making the intelligence that provides the deliverable an asset that is not lost in case of turnover.

Mappings like the ones seen below are the starting point for inferring SLAs that will be confronted in the monitoring process. Once processes are monitored and optimized day after day, the workflows will evolve according to business needs and can be used as a basis, along with demand volume predictability, to identify if the volume of resources involved (employees, partners) is compatible with operational needs, serving to identify surpluses and shortages, which contributes to significant improvement for financial optimization.

I believe a lot in the model based on squads. Delimiting small agile units, with members grouped based on a defined scope of activities, whether based on activity similarity or a common goal, aids in the monitoring and optimization process.

When we think of squads, it's often not feasible to create such narrowly dedicated work groups because team members may be shared across other fronts to optimize costs. However, it's possible to create hubs that will be shared units, for example, among squads.

Squads are dedicated to the client/operation/product/project and its needs. They encompass all dedicated resources (if any). Same goals and KPIs.

Hubs, on the other hand, operate similarly. However, they are a grouping of professionals united by the similarity of their deliverables. Same goals and KPIs.

The Ceremonies

Well-defined meetings help reduce the number of meetings and enable more time for people to work. In my view, the three most important ceremonies are:

• Planning: to organize expectations;

• Daily: to keep things on track;

• Retrospective: to collect data, learn, improve and feed our virtuous circle, as we'll see in the next topic.

Qualitative

Data collected during the Retrospective ceremony may vary in nature, including operational, technical, stakeholder feedback, among others. It's also crucial that all members of the squad or hub answer three questions: What went well? What went wrong? What can we improve?

For these questions, I personally like to use the EasyRetro tool because it helps anonymize responses, encouraging people to be more honest. Its dynamic also ensures quality.

All information is stored to create a timeline of progress and to analyze opportunities for improvements to be implemented as quickly as possible.

Quantitative

Data collected from management tools includes the volume and type of tasks performed, SLAs practiced for activities, timesheets, overtime volume, among other indicators.

These data are then processed and compared to identify the planned versus actual performance and their levels of efficiency. Also, to rectify or confirm defined workflows, supporting documents, departmental responsibilities, the correct level of seniority for different employees in various activities, the quantity and quality of existing human resources compared to what should be, and any other indicators we wish to store.

As we have these normalized data provided by other squads and hubs, we can cross-reference this information to generate increasingly meaningful reports for the company leaders to increasingly accurate decisions.