Insights from Lara Ammar, Martin Mancero, and Andrea Merle López
A modern sports business represents a multitude of things; a forum for connecting people above all else. As a driver for direct-to-consumer (D2C) media consumption, and a conduit for brand sponsors to engage diverse audiences, it is important that sport remains adaptable to the latest digital trends while, at the same time, leaving room to innovate and adopt new solutions.
Nevertheless, the industry faces a challenge to adapt its own infrastructure to meet the changing demands of fans, athletes, competitions, and other stakeholders. In the coming decade, data ownership will help define the role of sports entities and the decisions that will shape how organizations interact with all the above, plus the technologies that executives choose to integrate into their businesses.
As rights holders seek to simplify their dataflow and centralize digital touchpoints, some of the principal challenges for executives is deciding which objectives to prioritize, the timeline for developing their digital and data frameworks, and the types of solutions they should be adopting in the first instance.
While traditionally project management offices (PMO) have consulted organizations on existing projects with clear timelines and deliverables, more sports businesses want a PMO that affords them the ability to scale their digital offering going forward; both as a bona fide D2C entertainment provider, and also as a digitally driven service provider to its partners, with the support of a robust customer database.
“These complex implementation projects require a more agile methodology,” explains Lara Ammar, N3XT Sports PMO Director. “Agile project management works to prioritize the lists of features an organization wants to adopt and to meet each of its objectives in time and to budget, without impeding the entity’s ability to scale its digital infrastructure or adapt to new digital solutions.
“We do this by breaking each project into what we call ‘sprints’, which are usually executed over a two-week period. This allows the PMO to demonstrate to the client how and when key objectives are met at the end of each sprint. Our project managers have the Professional Scrum Master and the Disciplined Agile Scrum Master (DASM) certifications. While many sports organizations do not have a PMO or project manager in place, it is our role at N3XT Sports to guide the delivery of these projects, while also working to educate the organization’s workforce on how to use the digital tools it adopts.”
Change management is therefore an important role within agile project management, so to develop a customer’s understanding of their own digital infrastructure and how to source and implement new technologies as part of the organization’s long-term digital strategy. For example, as part of United World Wrestling’s (UWW) digital transformation, N3XT Sports led 150+ workshops and interviews with several of UWW’s internal departments covering more than 90 attendees and 18 stakeholders during the first phase of UWW’s digital transformation project. In doing so, this allowed for a smoother implementation phase, whereby UWW and N3XT Sports achieved a successful project flow without impeding on the federation’s ongoing operations, while laying the foundations and understanding requirements for the next phase of UWW’s digitalization.
“When we’re building something new, we’re always helping the client and its workforce to better understand how the solutions they adopt fit to their operations,” Ammar continues. “This highlights areas where they can adapt their processes, not only in the immediate future, but further down the pipeline. By adopting an agile approach to its ongoing projects, an organization acquires the resources it needs to implement other features in the years to come.”
DEDICATED PROJECT MANAGER KEY TO NAVIGATING MULTI-PHASE PROJECTS
In order to align the client’s expectations for their digital transformation and the necessary tools and resources required to meet their business objectives, it’s important to understand the steps they will need to take. Where sport’s properties are faced with multi-phased projects over a number of years, by taking an agile approach to their management, this will make it easier for entities to adapt to changes to their business structure, industry trends, and stakeholder demands.
“Most sports organizations are not yet implementing this type of approach,” says Martin Mancero, Project Manager at N3XT Sports. “More vendors and service providers are using an agile approach. Therefore, educating the sports industry on how that works is hugely valuable. While this is still a learning curve for organizations, we put the structures in place that are not yet established across sports organizations and provide guidance to help them to translate their objectives into clear processes designed to meet their strategic goals.”
One step to manage change successfully is for the PMO to identify a project manager within the organization undergoing changes. In doing so, the project manager not only helps to navigate the organization’s ongoing digital transformation but acts as an advocate for change across the wider business. According to a survey carried out by the Project Management Institute (PMI), cited in its latest Pulse of the Profession report, 64 percent of organizations that encourage interpersonal skills such as collaborative leadership, show high project management maturity.
Furthermore, 51 percent of organizations that prioritize soft skills of this kind say they report higher levels of agility with their organization’s operations, while 72 percent of projects that adopt this approach successfully meet business goals and as few as 17 percent fail to do so within budget.
In turn, by implementing standardized processes and strengthening communications between stakeholders and the PMO, this lays the groundwork for the entity’s overall growth, while collecting data and learnings from ongoing projects will no doubt aid the organization’s governance and compliance and reduce unnecessary delays and costs associated with the implementation process.
“This is particularly true of the Olympic sector,” Mancero continues, “whereby International Federations (IF), national federations, and National Olympic Committees (NOC) are able to break down their multi-year roadmaps, for example, into digestible, actionable steps that can be tracked over time. It is best practice to have clear documentation and to ensure that the organization is keeping a record which provides data and insights into how to distribute workload and for identifying opportunities for improvement to the organization’s digital frameworks.”
WHAT’S N3XT?
Although a complex endeavor, digital adoption doesn’t have to be a complicated process. N3XT Sports’ project management team provides a mix of solutions tailored to the individual client’s needs. Whether they are taking on a multi-phased project at one time or have devised a project list that requires a hybrid approach, whereby the PMO is able to adopt an agile methodology (including sprints) for select workflows, there is no one project management solution, but an array that sports organizations can choose from, giving them greater flexibility.
For example, the N3XT Sports PMO works closely with the Spanish Field Hockey Federation (RFEH) to guide the national body on several concurrent projects, including the implementation of: (1) a modern information and competition management system; (2) a club management tool; (3) an updated website; and (4) the creation of a customer relationship management (CRM) tool that serves the federation’s multiple stakeholders. The RFEH cites digital transformation as one of four strategic pillars in its 2022-2030 strategic plan, for which it has adopted N3XT Sports’ agile methodology to deliver on some – but not all – of its project workstreams.
“Our main objective or goal, as the RFEH’s outsourced digital transformation manager, or technology expert, is to help the federation’s project management team meet its objectives,” explains Andrea Merle López, Project Manager for N3XT Sports. “The role is to inform and guide the client team to complete the multiple workstreams. No matter the approach, it’s important for one person to have a complete overview of the entire project, to ensure every milestone within each workstream is being met within time and to budget.”
Our project management team at N3XT Sports works tirelessly to develop and deliver digital transformation projects across a multitude of sports properties at federation level, competition level, and club level. To learn more about how our agile methodology can support your organization’s digital transformation and project management needs, fill out the form below and we’ll be in touch. Our goal is to drive the digitalization of the sports industry and our clients.