Text by Heikki Paananen
Photos Olli-Pekka Latvala
Heikki Paananen was awarded the Meritoriously Certified Award at Project Days 2024. The PRY annually rewards particularly meritorious certification achievements.
I’m Heikki Paananen, I’m the Agile Development Lead in Sitowise Oy’s Digi product unit, where we develop digital product solutions. My work focuses on developing the capabilities of our teams to deliver more value to our customers through agile methods. Over the course of my career, I have worked in a number of different project and development roles, using Scrum, Kanban, SaFe models, among others, but it was only with Sitowise that I was able to develop true organisational agility at the heart of product management.
The most fascinating thing about product development is working with the new and unknown, where different perspectives and experiences can lead to surprising insights. Interdisciplinary teams, combining different skills and ways of thinking, can work together to create innovative solutions. In addition, close collaboration between stakeholders and a rapid feedback loop help maintain motivation and focus on common goals, which is crucial for long-term success.
With the Certified Agile Associate IPMA Level D certification, I learned about the different aspects of agile management that I needed to create a structured model. These perspectives allowed me to evaluate the current operating models in our company and helped me to design agile operating models. My goal is to create a clearer understanding for everyone of a) why, b) what and c) how we do – this will help our teams move forward on our journey together. An agile management model can help an organisation grow towards continuous value creation and learning – the key lesson I see is finding the ‘red thread’ through the entire value chain, from the company’s vision to the final deliverables.
I recommend the IPMA Agile Management Certificate to anyone who wants to benchmark their organisation’s value creation processes and consider areas for improvement from an agile perspective.
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