District Office Biberach: Transparent Organization of 100+ Projects

About the District Office Biberach

The large district and university town Biberach lies at the heart of Upper Swabia in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, and is the largest city of the district Biberach. The district Biberach comprises 45 municipalities and is consistently ranked among the most economically strong rural and urban districts in the Federal Republic of Germany in the regional rankings published by the German Economic Institute. Jakub Campa has been employed at the District Office Biberach for five years and is Head of the Digitalization Unit.

Excel, OneNote, and email: Decentralized project work

Before Stackfield was introduced at the Department for Organization and Digitalization at the District Office Biberach in 2022, task management was handled differently from project to project. Some project managers kept Excel lists, others used OneNote, and occasionally tasks and overviews were maintained via email, says Jakub Campa. Team members thus not only had to adapt from project to project, but the tools used did not provide the necessary means to make tasks transparent either. Project management had to go to great lengths to obtain feedback and, like those involved, had little insight into the current status and any bottlenecks. Thus, in order to establish a standard for collaboration within the office and provide project participants with the necessary transparency, the decision was made to look for a project management solution.

Data-secure all-in-one package: Stackfield combines data protection with versatility

Specifically for project work at the Department for Organization and Digitalization, a solution was required that combines necessary features in one central location and provides an appropriate framework for daily collaboration. In order to ensure that deadlines could be met, main requirements were the ability to clearly separate responsibilities and define schedules. As a public institution, the District Office Biberach also placed great emphasis on maintaining the highest standards of data protection. As a GDPR-compliant and multi-ISO-certified all-in-one tool, Stackfield emerged as the clear winner.

Learning materials and common scenarios: Stackfield is successfully rolled out across departments

Collaboration via Stackfield was initially tested on a limited basis for specific projects. Within this first year of testing, the Digitalization Unit at the Department for Organization and Digitalization received further requests from other units and departments. Today, Stackfield is being introduced to colleagues step by step and the solution is being rolled out further. Jakub Campa and his team highlight four different common scenarios and explain how Stackfield can be used to provide support in each case, including:

• The organization of projects in Stackfield's rooms,
• The organization of organizational units such as departments, units, and teams,
• Regular communication between supervisors and employees, as well as the planning and organization of regular meetings, and
• The improvement of one's own working methods in private areas/rooms.

If uncertainties arise nonetheless, Stackfield learning resources as well as materials defined by the team are available at any time. Jakub Campa explains: Getting started with Stackfield is very intuitive. Stackfield itself offers a blog and lots of learning content that you can use when needed. We have also created a series of short training courses for our users to ensure a standardized use of Stackfield.

Internal and cross-departmental project work in Stackfield for greater transparency

Today, project work in the field of digitalization is largely handled in Stackfield. Jakub Campa explains: There are currently about 35 projects underway in the Department of Digitization. In total, there are certainly more than 100 projects in the organization that we manage in Stackfield. When a new project is scheduled, it is immediately assigned its own room. Project management and the relevant team can be added to the room as members with different rights. The room settings can be used to activate or deactivate modules (e. g., tasks, pages, or files) as desired and to define task workflows and columns. How the room is set up is entirely up to the project management. Each manager can develop their own logic for subtasks, labels, columns, etc. This must be communicated to the team and be understandable as well. We have seen many different structures being used, reports Jakub Campa.

In addition, Stackfield is utilized in project work across departments. We have established an umbrella organization across the individual departments so that our colleagues can also work in Stackfield across departments. This has several advantages. Project-related communication takes place directly in rooms, and other colleagues become familiar with Stackfield and can use the tool in the same way, explains Jakub Campa.

Stackfield's project portfolio for cross-room project details

An overview of the various projects, which often run in parallel, is provided to Jakub Campa and his colleagues via the project portfolio in Stackfield. All projects approved for the relevant use are summarized here in tabular form. The columns provide project-specific information such as current status, start and end dates, progress, and more. Clicking on a project opens the project details for that project, including task-specific summaries, milestones, various diagrams, and more, for a more detailed overview. Jakub Campa praises: The project portfolio makes it very easy to identify capacity bottlenecks. If necessary, the view in the project portfolio can be further refined using filters, and project details can be added or removed via columns. The view can then be exported or printed, for example for reporting purposes.

Preparing for and following up on meetings: Processes become more efficient and transparent

In the Digitalization Unit, meetings are held on a daily basis. To prepare for and follow up on these so-called Dailys, a separate Daily Room has been set up. Team members can use this room to note topics that will serve as a basis for discussion in the corresponding Daily. To ensure that the topics discussed remain visible in the long term, they are commented and expanded during the meeting. This way, relevant topics discussed in the meeting stay visible to all participants in the room and can be reviewed later, making it easy to catch up.

Preparation and follow-up for Jour fixes (regular meetings) with supervisors take place in separate rooms as well. Jakub Campa praises: The big advantage of these rooms compared to Word or Excel spreadsheets is that you can place tasks and topics in the room at any time and they can also be seen by the other party. The other side can view the content and comment on it, edit it, or even complete it before the meeting. Compared to the conventional model, you no longer have to wait until the regular meeting. This saves a lot of time and allows you to concentrate on the essentials during the meeting.

Stackfield as the office-wide standard

Today, daily work at the District Office Biberach revolves around Stackfield, but there is still room for improvement. Jakub Campa explains: This year, we would like to make Stackfield available to all managers and to all colleagues at the district office who oversee projects.