Public sector in the Nordics is showing us what's possible with agile@procurement
The agile procurement conference in Stockholm, organized by members of crisp.se, is a unique format with a unique audience. It proofs what would be possible in the public sector and purchasing using agile. This blog post is about my personal summary about the version 2017 from February the 22nd. I really can recommend it, meet you there next year!
The agile procurement conference brings together the agile community and it’s modern approaches with the governance authority, professional procurement managers, lawyers, customers and vendors from the public sector. Generally it was a very good mix of talks, networking and active learning. I was surprised how interested the audience followed all the talks, no matter if it was about a success story of a project (done different), frame conditions by the law (tipps and tricks to use those right) and agile practices (to improve classic behaviors).
Talks were held by (summary translated from http://agilakontrakt.se):
Lars Nilsson - how they procured and built Karlstad Hospital, an awarded project with a budget of about €1'000 million. --> Read the interview with Lars Nilsson
x-functional working groups split by customer need
- Results: Effective health care, centered on the patient, on time and with 300Mkr of the Värmland County Council.
- The most important lessons: The importance of the target work, prototyping and to remove short-term economic incentives so that all participants put 100% of their focus on building the right solutions. Those turned out more cost/time-effective in implementation and later on in usage and maintenance
Rikke Halland - On the digitized Danish Company Agency using 5 suppliers and agile contracts. A 600Mkr applications containing 29 sub-projects.
Customer & user benefits
- Results: 100 & projects delivered 100% of the budget, 80% of the time. Number of support calls / application has decreased by 40% and the average time an employee spends on each case has fallen by 69%.
- The most important lessons: The importance of shared vision, shared risk, and building a culture of learning that builds trust between the customer and the supplier was essential building blocks.
Bjorn Bergström lawyer at Ramberg, the possibilities of using Agile contracts under the LOU. Bjorn pointed to the most common pitfall for attorneys, focusing on legal definitions and details, and thus missed to create the conditions for the business objective.
Tomer Shalit client expert from Crisp how they Sussagruppen (several counties) found a moderate level when ordering healthcare solutions. The trick is to identify the needs (instead of the requirements) and create a visual overview of the content using the User Transaction Flow.
Mirko Kleiner creator of lean agile procurement from flowdays.net how a more lean and agile approach for procurement could disrupt and reduce classic procurement (Examples in Energy-/Insurance Sector) to days instead of months. The trick is to focus to customer needs (using the lean Procurement Canvas) and allow collaboration of all stakeholders at one time.
Common building blocks for these projects are:
- Clear outcome targets (and the importance of anchoring the target image of all participating parties)
- An active customer and partner
- Choosing partner of maturity and demonstrated ability (rather than promises and lowest price)
- To build the solution with partial deliveries and prototyping. (Lars showed eg. How prototypade develop new operating room before they were built)
- Visual planning and joint overview
- Collaboration and co-location
Special Thanks to Mia and her Team, it was a pleasure meeting you in person!
Find out more about the agile procurement conference visiting https://agila-upphandlingar-inom-lou.confetti.events and the organizers website http://agilakontrakt.se.