Kieran Conboy teaches companies new ways to stay ahead

The Enterprise Agility research cluster at the University’s Whitaker Institute was established by Dr Kieran Conboy, the newly appointed Dean of the College of Business, Public Policy and Law.

Kieran continues to lead that cluster, one that he is very passionate about because of its timeliness in the current climate.

“Now is the perfect time for this research as people are trying to cut costs and they need to deliver value for money to customers with fewer resources.

“We have a €4 million funded project by the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) to which companies sign up to. We develop, implement and tailor management practices in those companies.”

The national and international projects funded by the SFI, Enterprise Ireland and the Irish Research Council involve companies like Dell, Atlassian (Australian based world leaders in software),Information Mosaic and HP, as well as a number of SME (Small to Medium Enterprises) and some public sector including universities in Ireland and Australia.

The students involved in this research clusters are academics, post doctorates, industry based PhDs and part-time PhDs.

“At least every person on our team works with one company, but overall it’s a network of excellence. Typically there would be three or four people working with a particular company.

“We run workshops every two months to share best practice, where companies come together and share these practices with each other – and yes, some are more open than others but we are always sensitive to the companies and their needs,” he explains.

There are four key elements involved in the type of ‘agile and lean’ software system the teams operate. Because they operate in turbulent economic times, they help to drive change within companies, though not change for change’s sake, to pre-empt changes and to be ready for them and lastly how to react to change.

It is as much a learning curve for the companies they work with as it is for the students, he explains. In fact, even if a bad job is done, the team (and that includes personnel from each company) learns from it.

“What we typically see is that companies are not good reacting to change. We try and work with companies in two -week cycles. Usually, that is difficult at the start but very quickly they build up to getting used to these two-week cycles.”

Kieran is very aware that the work involved is not hypothetical research but has an impact on real people, real companies dealing in hundreds of products and possibly with thousands of people.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.