How can we support municipal administration employees using an agile management approach?

Client: City Municipality of Celje (MOC)

Project Duration: 6 months

The project was carried out to support the employees of the MOC municipal administration by introducing agile methods and processes aimed at measurably improving operations in the long term. The administration’s leadership wanted to test these new approaches through a pilot project, for which we selected one of the municipal departments.

Resrach wall, categorized by field (visualized in Miro).

The project was executed in four phases: introductory activities, research, synthesis, and the preparation of improvement proposals.

First we aligned the process and activities with the heads of the selected department, taking into account staff availability and the nature of their work. Although the project was initially designed to involve direct collaboration and testing of various agile approaches with employees, this phase revealed that a suitable environment must first be established before agile methods can be introduced. Consequently, we shifted the project’s focus to researching, mapping workflows, and identifying challenges within investment projects. These specific projects were identified as the primary bottleneck for the entire department.

In the research phase we conducted 11 in-depth interviews with employees from the selected department, performed 2 observations of staff meetings, and reviewed 8 documents related to investment project management.

In the synthesis phase we prepared summaries of the research activities, presented the findings to the department heads and municipal leadership, and created a visualization of the entire investment project process.

At the end of the project, we compiled a report including proposals for improved departmental operations. Due to staff burnout and time constraints, the implementation of these changes has not yet begun. This included a catalog of input information from the research, categorized by specific fields.

Despite the shift in project goals, our research identified numerous opportunities for improvement beyond just investment projects. We presented these in a separate chapter of the report, organized into 4 categories with 37 specific proposals for improving departmental operations.

We successfully:

• Visualized the departmental workflow and documented key process challenges.

• Formulated improvement guidelines based on these challenges.

• Developed a template for the standardization of internal processes.