The Agile Framework

Jim Highsmith is co-author of the Agile Manifesto with 60 years of experience as an IT manager, product manager, project manager, consultant, software developer, and agile pioneer.

  ProjectsAtWork  

Most project management practices are focused on compliance activities, not delivering value. The five phases of agile project management balance stability and flexibility, allowing project leaders to both create and respond to change in order to maximize value.

This is the third article in Projects@Work's ongoing series on agile project management, adapted from the new book Agile Project Management (Addison-Wesley, 2004) by Jim Highsmith, cofounder of the Agile Allianceand director of the agile project management practice at Cutter Consortium.

The central question for project managers, project team members and executives is, “How does project management add value to a project?” Unfortunately, many development engineers consider project management to be a roadblock — a hindrance, not help. Project managers are viewed as administrators who put together detailed task schedules, create colorful resource profiles, "bug" team members about micro-task completions, and write reams of status reports for upper management, not as direct contributors to delivering value to customers. Teams often view project management as overhead.

"Buy pizza and stay out of the way" expresses too many product engineering teams’ view of "good" project management. Rather than overhead, project management should be seen …

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