Gartner coined the term Bimodal in 2015 as a proposed model for enabling differentiation of delivery models for exploratory undertakings from initiatives for which the outcome is more predictable. <a href="https://www.gartner.com/smarterwithgartner/how-to-innovate-with-bimodal-it/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">&lt;Gartner Paper Link Here&gt;</a> They suggested &#8220;marrying a more predictable evolution of products and technologies (Mode 1) with the new and innovative (Mode 2) is the essence of an enterprise bimodal capability.&#8221; 
At the time there was a significant backlash to this proposal. Many saw it as a suggestion to divide an organisation and challenged the intent behind it. Since that time, many organisations have evolved the definition and now refer to Bimodal in the context of a business environment with more than one delivery model. 
The transition towards large scale Agile delivery and the intent to move towards Lean Portfolio Management has led to a bunch of organisations becoming “half pregnant”. They need to continue to operate traditional delivery models for some parts of their organisation, while other parts are operating agile delivery models. For some of these organisations, it is not yet clear how long they will be in this bimodal delivery state. 
These organisations will have to find ways to continue to be effective despite the challenges a Bimodal environment presents. Our experience shows us that by focussing on the following five keys, organisations can reduce their impediments and maintain delivery velocity:
<ul>
<li>Culture: Establish respect for the alternate delivery model. Remove the debate of which model is better. Focus on what works in a practical sense and engage for an outcome.</li>
<li>Funding: Clarify the acceptable funding models for the organisation. Project Funding and Capacity Funding are different models and require different decisions.  Clarify funding agreements for work being shared across models.</li>
<li>Work / Delivery: Teams may need to engage across delivery methods in order to achieve their intended outcome efficiently. Clear articulation of how teams engage others will save time. Lots of time!</li>
<li>Dependency Management: Where teams are dependent on others for an outcome, but the source of the item has the right to prioritise their own work, a clear approach to dependency management will be required.</li>
<li>Decision Making: Agility necessitates localised decision making and challenges conventional command and controlled based centralised governance. To speed up decision making, clarify the acceptable model and focus on achieving good, fast decisions that clear impediments and create a clear runway.</li>
</ul>
These are not the only considerations in being effective in a Bimodal environment. The organisation will need to address all kinds of challenges, but these should give any organisation a good start in the right direction. 
For further information see our service page <a href="https://coreconsulting.com.au/bimodal-agile-traditional-delivery-challenge/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Bimodal Delivery Adopting Agile</a> or give us a call.

Effectiveness in a Bimodal Environment

As of June 2019, there is a new method of connecting the Jira Power BI Content Pack. Prior to that, you could connect to Jira using the Power BI Service content pack in Power BI Service or download the .pbix version to use in Power BI Desktop. Both are great, and only required you to enter your username and password. However, as Atlassian announced <a href="https://confluence.atlassian.com/cloud/deprecation-of-basic-authentication-with-passwords-for-jira-and-confluence-apis-972355348.html">here</a>, you can&#8217;t use the password approach anymore. So, what is the new method of connecting the Jira Power BI Content Pack? There are some articles and Power BI forum posts that explain how to do it, but we thought we would explain the steps in a way a non-technical person would be able to understand.
<h3 class="heading6">Step 1: Generate an API Token</h3>
You need an API token for the account you will be using to connect the Jira Power BI Content Pack. You can manage all your API tokens here: https://id.atlassian.com/manage/api-tokens. 
Click on &#8220;Create API Token&#8221;, then give your API a meaningful name (you might have multiple tokens in the future). 
<img loading="lazy" class="size-half_column wp-image-1533 aligncenter" src="https://coreconsulting.com.au/app/uploads/2019/07/Jira-Content-Pack-Create-API-Token-545x272.png" alt="Jira Content Pack - Create API Token" width="545" height="272" /> 
IMPORTANT: After clicking &#8220;Create&#8221;, it will give you one chance to save your API token. Save it in a secure spot! If you lose your API Token then you will have to create a new one. 
<img loading="lazy" class="aligncenter wp-image-1534" src="https://coreconsulting.com.au/app/uploads/2019/07/Jira-Content-Pack-Copy-API-Token.png" alt="Jira Content Pack - Copy API Token" width="369" height="230" /> 
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<h3 class="heading6">Step 2: Add the API Token to the Jira Power BI Content Pack</h3>
The next step is exactly the same as connecting to the Jira Power BI Content Pack normally. This time, in the Data Source credentials, you use your email address as your username, and the new API Token as your password (instead of using your password as you normally would). 
<img loading="lazy" class="size-half_column wp-image-1535 aligncenter" src="https://coreconsulting.com.au/app/uploads/2019/07/Jira-Content-Pack-Credentials-545x233.png" alt="Jira Content Pack - Credentials" width="545" height="233" />
<h3 class="heading6">Summary</h3>
This new method has been around and discussed for a couple of months already. We were initially quite shocked to find that the great Power BI reports and dashboards we built for Jira stopped refreshing data one day, but quickly solved it. We were surprised at how hard it was to find a step-by-step guide on it for the non-technical / citizen Power BI developers, so we hope this post helps. Check out our <a href="https://coreconsulting.com.au/tools/jira/">Jira services</a> page if you want to know how else we could assist you. 
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Effectiveness in a Bimodal Environment

New Method of connecting the Jira Power BI Content Pack