Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Got the Courage to Be Agile?
Doug is the author of the landmark book, Extreme Project Management®: Using Leadership, Principles and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility. He works with clients who undertake projects in very demanding environments: those settings that feature high speed, high change, high unpredictability and high stress. Doug has lived in the trenches—from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania to Beijing, China—with over 275 project teams with budgets that ranged from $25,000 to over $25 million. He is one of the founders of the Agile Leadership Network, an organization dedicated to connecting, developing and supporting great project leaders. He is known for his hard-hitting and humorous keynote speeches that address vital issues facing today’s project-based organizations. You can visit Doug at www.dougdecarlo.com.
One thing that all agile project management practices have in common is that they are first and foremost built on a set of commonly held values for working with people and for creating products and services. Notice that I said commonly “held” as opposed to commonly practiced values.
For instance, the Agile Manifesto for software development is a set of meta values that have worked their way into various agile project management approaches. The Manifesto clearly and simply states what its founders hold near and dear:
“We have come to value:
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan”
In my extreme project management workshops, from time to time, I take an informal survey and ask participants to raise their hand if they agree with the Manifesto’s stated values. I go through them one by one. Nearly all say “yes” to each. Yet, when asked if they put the value into common practice, only around 50 percent say “yes.”
I’ve also taken the same survey using the six value statements that comprise the Declaration of Interdependence as espoused by the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN). The results are similar.
Why the gap between…
Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.
ADVERTISEMENTS
|
"The creator of the universe works in mysterious ways. But he uses a base ten counting system and likes round numbers." - Scott Adams |