I’ve have been getting asked more and more “What is a Mobile Center of Excellence? Do I need one?” and “What does COE stand for?“
So today is the crash course on everything COE aka mobile center of excellence or mobility center of excellence.
Who better to ask then Jeff Wolfers an IT Executive who deals with mobile center of excellences world wide and is based across the pond in the UK.
Thanks for taking some time out of your schedule Jeff, lets dive right in to learn about these mysterious internal mobile COEs.
1) What are the goals of a mobile center of excellence?
The goal is simple… to develop new and unique products and services
within our marketplace. Current focus is the mobile space, and cross
platform as well, but Android is the leading platform in our market.
We’ve developed an interdisciplinary team of designers, technologists,
marketing, operations and financial people. People come in and out
depending on the project, and we bring fresh people in once in a
while, but the methodology is unique so some experience with the group
helps. Lateral thinking is the most important skill!
feed everyone your group is too big, ha)
I think teams of 3-5 are best. I always say, “keep it as small as
possible for as long as possible.”
4) What advice would you give to an enterprise starting their first mobile center of excellence?
Start small. Achievability is key. No need to boil the ocean. Build in
stages, build on success, and learn from the failings. Kaisen is
critical as a process model. Keep track of lessons learned.
business units. (they must be like baby birds chirping for apps)
Ideas tend to sort themselves out. Some are ready to move, some need
more thought work, some evaporate when the tough questions start. We
rarely have huge issues re prioritization, although when we do the size
of the opportunity generally wins the day.
We have a core group that invented the process and methods, they are
more or less permanent. Then we bring in others depending on the idea
/ project as necessary.
Big thanks to Jeff, to learn about his latest projects follow him on Twitter | @JeffinLondon or on LinkedIn
By Daniel DiMassa [@TheDiMassa] [Google+] [Adoption Forumla]
