2#6 - Trond Sogn-Lunden - Ways of Working - Insight Factory (Nor)

«If you think about how we can work effectively together, you need to look at how you can effectuate your delivery teams. »

I had the pleasure of chatting with Trond Sogn-Lunden from Veidekke, one of the biggest construction contractors in the Nordics. The construction industry is characterized by Merger and Acquisition. This is an interesting setting and reflects the importance to understand the organizations culture when looking at ways of working. The other important element for Veidekkes culture and organization is project-orientation. Some projects can last for years and are located away from the corporate office.

Here are my key takeaways:

The Project setting

• "A project is the smallest unit for profit and loss. If the project is a success, the business succeeds. »
• Even if some projects are more digital than others, even frontrunners need to use the same base systems and be consistent in how problems are tackled.
• There is a balance to strike between project autonomy and application landscape consolidation.
• In the same way there is an important distinction between what is best for each project vs. what is best for the company as a whole. For the insight factory, this is a constant push and pull.

The Insight Factory

• The Insight factory brings a factory mindset to data and ensures that data products are delivered.
• Capacity to deliver is more important than the technology stack.
• Developers (solution responsibles) translate business requirement to solutions, close to the business.
• A developer needs to be a combination of «superman and Jesus».
• A coordinating role, ala business analyst, can help to ensure a unified application portfolio.
• This role can help to access relevant raw data for the insight factory to be used for analysis.
• The Insight factory is providing data sets to the business and help to enable the business to do their data visualization on top of it.
• This helps to build data competency in the business, secures ownership, and added capacity.

Product Management

• Product Management is an important concept on how deliveries are organized.
• Product focus and pipeline structure enables Veidekke to have different change rates for different products and manage them as units and can deliver on demand.
• Every product can be connected to a domain, which is what insight is organized around.
• You need allies in the business to get the reach you need as a central insight factory.
• Business users should be part of your data product groups.
• You can set up inspirational events, to get traction and understanding for your insight & analytics work.