Agile Art

Mike Griffiths is an experienced project manager, author and consultant who works for PMI as a subject matter expert. Before joining PMI, Mike consulted and managed innovation and technology projects throughout Europe, North and South America for 30+ years. He was co-lead for the PMBOK Guide—Seventh Edition, lead for the Agile Practice Guide, and contributor to the PMI-ACP and PMP exam content outlines. Outside of PMI, Mike maintains the websites www.LeadingAnswers.com about leading teams and www.PMillustrated.com, which teaches project management for visual learners.

  Agile  

I was putting the finishing touches to a long and difficult program for an energy company and wanted to celebrate the achievement with a memento for the sponsors. The program had begun more than eight years ago as a rewrite of a suite of core business systems. There had been a couple of false starts and then an attempt to outsource it that had ended badly.

I was brought in three years ago to recover the work and given the freedom to switch to an agile approach. Project by project, we got the legacy systems rewritten. We also took on the inevitable new business changes that had arisen in the interim and managed to finish within the original program budget, due as much to the unwavering support of our business champion as our agile approach. Our business champion went to bat for us on many occasions, fending off budget cuts and requests to divert team members. She was a big part of our success and had championed the cause for a very long time.

So I thought a framed print depicting the program struggles would be a nice reminder of the obstacles we overcame. Years ago I had worked with someone who happened to be a great cartoonist. He would draw fantastic political satire-style cartoons about project risks and issues (such as the PMO erecting barriers in front of the project “train” trying to reach its destination). Something like that would be perfect--a …

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