People Power: Using Agile to Manage the Human Element

Jesse Fewell is an author, coach, and trainer in the world of modern management. He founded the original PMI Agile Community of Practice, co-created the PMI-ACP® agile certification and co-authored the Software Extension to the PMBOK Guide®.

  Agile   Talent Management   PM Network  

Agile can not only help you deliver projects—it can help you make the most of the talented people behind those projects, too. In past columns, I’ve written about the core tenets of Agile methodology. Now, let’s look at how they address the people side of projects:

“Deliver early and often” is about giving people what they paid for. Too many project managers deliver to the letter of a contract yet completely miss the objective of customer satisfaction. And then customers complain that project managers deliver “what I asked for, but not what I want.” Usually, this is because the customer honestly didn’t know any better. Delivering a website exactly to a poorly written specification does no one any good: Even if you get paid, you’ve built product to be ashamed of, and your customer will never cite you as a reference.

We must recognize that our stakeholders aren’t buying a scope statement; they’re funding a project to meet business objectives. Coach your customers to understand the difference between implementing all the scope versus achieving business goals. Yes, our sponsors have a responsibility to understand their own scope, but as project professionals who see these problems every day, we’re the ones who should know better.

“Empower your teams” is about treating people with …

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