Beyond the Traditional Agile Leader

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

  Agile   Leadership   Talent Management   Teams  

Back in 2001, Agile was aimed at IT work, specifically software development. As it gained traction and demonstrated its ability to deliver better solutions, often in less time and for lower costs, organizations, departments, teams and individuals started to look beyond software development for opportunities to apply agile concepts to other types of work.

Today, agile is a mainstream delivery approach for many organizations, applied across departments and for many types of projects. It’s now accepted alongside plan-driven project management, allowing organizations to select the best way to deliver each discretionary initiative that they undertake.

However, while traditional or waterfall project management features project managers from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, most people undertaking agile roles still tend to be technology focused. The same goes for Scrum Masters and product owners, though the latter tend to have the most diverse backgrounds in terms of areas of the business that have experience.

I think it is time to deepen the pool of agile leaders. The future of project management is bright. The number of projects being undertaken by organizations is increasing, and demand for traditional and agile project leadership is high, outstripping supply. At the same time, organizations expect their project leaders to understand the business context for …

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