The new operating model for project teams: Balancing flexibility and standardization
June 25, 2025 | Live Webinar
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Topics: Agile, Knowledge Management, Lessons Learned, Scrum, ProjectsAtWork
When you’re operating in an Agile environment — or any other software development scenario, for that matter — three factors almost always make the difference between success and failure: domain knowledge, dialogue and deadline pressure. Here, Cutter Consortium consultant and researcher Michael Mah presents his anatomy of a failed project.
In a recent presentation, I shared my observations about five companies implementing Agile methods. There is a slide in the deck that shows an image of the human brain with the words "Domain Knowledge" next to another image of cartoon talking heads, with the word "Dialogue." The slide summarizes a distinct difference among the five companies I examined — their degree of success or failure could be traced to how well or poorly they handled two critical attributes: domain knowledge and dialogue.
Among these five agile case studies, two of the companies could be considered “poster children” for productivity and quality; others had mixed success. But it may be most helpful to consider a project that failed.
In this example, the company brought in a new team in an attempt to bring a new medical IT application to market. These new developers were learning about this product and its features for the very first time. Moreover, key players who were once with the company — …
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