Project Constraints on a Journey Toward Being Agile

Pawan Rai is a project management practitioner with over a decade of experience in the software development industry. He started his career as a web developer, and soon transitioned into managing critical projects from initiation through closure. He is passionate about streamlining processes and continuous improvement, with an aim to increase organizational efficiency and effectiveness while accomplishing project objectives.

  Agile   Cost Management   Governance   Quality   Resource Management   Risk Management   Schedule Management   Scheduling   Scope Management   Knowledge Shelf  

Introduction
Every project manager is familiar with the project management triangle, comprising of scope, time, and cost. The triangle of constraints demonstrates how making changes to one side of the triangle often results in changes to the other two constraints. With time, more dimensions have been added, and quality, resources, and risk are now considered to be additional constraints that must be accounted for while ascertaining the success factors for any project.

This article will try to present all these constraints in light of how they are still relevant in the age of agile. I shall try to explore certain implicit key factors of project management that are rarely voiced in public forums or events by the agile community. The intent is to equip readers with the right mind-set when stumbling upon questions related to baselines and budgets, while trying to shift the focus toward value-driven mode.

There are numerous occasions, while interacting with the agile community or attending various workshops, that I encounter prominent speakers who avoid questions related to how traditional project management concepts are covered under agile. In most cases, they drop a hint that these are more complex concepts, but then continue on with their explanations of tools and techniques (e.g., scrum ceremonies, artifacts, roles, etc.).

Over this period, while having tried an agile …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.