PPP Management

If you see the supplier as the enemy - then agile is not for you, stop reading now. If you see the contract as a tool with which to beat the supplier - then agile is not for you, stop reading now. If you are focussed on savings and achieving the lowest possible price - then agile is not for you, stop reading now. However, if you see the buyer/supplier relationship as a collaboration (within bounds) – then agile could work for you. If the contract is a means to measure business benefit then agile could well work for you; and, if delivering true value to the business is a key agenda then maybe the rest of this article could work for you. From a Procurement perspective there are three factors that must be addressed before progressing with an agile agenda: Stakeholders, Capability and Suppliers. All three of these factors are integral to moving to an agile methodology; exclusion of any of these will make the move to agile very difficult, if not impossible. Stake...

Agile Procurement means many different things to many people and following the old adage “You can please some of the people some of the time….” Almost certainly means that there will be difference of opinions. Perhaps some definitions of agile /Agile would be a good place to start; oh dear, there’s already disagreement over the capitalisation of the first letter. The Oxford Dictionaries   defines agile as “ Able to move quickly and easily ” and “ Relating to or denoting a method of project management, used especially for software development, that is characterized by the division of tasks into short phases of work and frequent reassessment and adaptation of plans .” Agile as a business term follows on from the concept of lean engineering and can trace a lineage back to lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System in the late 1940s. Based on a system underpinned by process, tools and training it allows organisations to respond quickly to customer nee...