Phippard L1,2, Ward N1,3
1Australian BioCommons, Melbourne , Australia, 2The University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia, 3The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia
Biography:
Lisa joined Australian BioCommons in November 2020, bringing with her over many years of experience working within projects and change, and has held positions such as project officer/manager, program lead and change delivery manager across several types of organisations, including law, finance and education.
Lisa is passionate about the people side of project and program management and thrives on seeing the amazing outcomes that a group of talented people can achieve when working together towards a shared vision.
Lisa relaxes from her people-centric role by surfing and takes every opportunity to get out and explore Australia with her family.
Abstract:
Managing research infrastructure (RI) is a little bit like herding very excitable cats. There are continuously emerging needs as research techniques and researcher capability evolve. The pace of change is fast and there are more opportunities for improving or implementing new RI than available resources can cope with. Balancing responses with the finite resources at hand is an art form. How do you know which opportunity to prioritise and how do you know which opportunity to delay or which to just let go?
Australian BioCommons is frequently faced with this conundrum of opportunity versus available resources. We decided to look to industry standards to help us to manage this challenge. Traditional project management wasn't going to cut it. Neither was ‘decision by committee’. We needed something more agile, something more empowered. Enter the Product Owner.
Product Owners are ‘accountable for maximizing the value of the product’, as defined in the Agile delivery process known as Scrum. Our Product Owners aren't just managers; they are the bridge between the technology and research ‘value’. They engage with domain experts and deep dive into researcher needs. They develop the product vision, continuously evolve product roadmaps, and keep the development team focused on the tasks that are important to delivering value.
In this presentation, we describe our adoption and empowerment of product owners, the challenges we had to overcome, the ‘this is actually working’ moments, and how product ownership has really helped us to focus on ‘what next’.
