Project Management

Is Agile Your Solution or Your Problem?

PMI Durham Highlands Chapter

Kevin Aguanno is the agile practice lead for Procept Associates Ltd., one of PMI’s first Registered Education Providers, specializing in training and project and programme strategy consulting. Author of over 30 books, audiobooks and DVDs on project management topics, he teaches agile methods at several universities and at conferences around the world. He spends most of his time helping large, complex organizations integrate agile project management methods into their governance frameworks.

Someone asked me the other week if I have noticed any situations where agile practices themselves have become so rigid that they become stifling rather than liberating. Actually, I had addressed the same issue a few days earlier with a client who was finding that strict adherence to an agile framework was causing problems for their project teams. Let me explain…

Tell Tale Signs of Rigidity
This insurance company had attempted to adopt a Scrum-based agile process framework three years ago without proper training or coaching. As you could expect, the pilot project team was running into significant difficulties not understanding when to apply agile practices, how they should be used and for what benefits. After rotating through a few agile coaches, they found themselves more confused than ever. Some agile practices were being tried, abandoned and re-tried again. Others were being employed in a manner that runs contradictory to the spirit in which they were first conceived. Most concerning of all, the project manager did not understand that everything on an agile project should be flexible enough to respond to the changing project--even the agile methodology itself.

This team had a number of agile practices they were following too dogmatically, without considering whether these practices should be adapted to the evolving project scenario. I’ve seen the …


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