Farewell to Standard Approaches?

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   Organizational Project Management  

In recent months, I have seen an increase in the number of agile proponents urging likeminded thinkers to push back on the notion that “Agile and Scrum are dying” (their words). First off, I have seen way more people objecting to the idea of agile’s demise than I have suggesting it, so I’m not sure that it’s a real trend anywhere other than in the minds of agile purists. But one of the drivers that is being cited is the growth of hybrid, which some see as diluting agile and contaminating a well-proven approach.

It reminds me of the reaction to agile by waterfall proponents 20 years ago, yet plan-driven or predictive project delivery is still doing well today (per the recent PMI Pulse of the Profession® report on The Future of Project Work, it’s still the most widely used). The growth of one approach—hybrid right now—doesn’t require the decline of another, as seems to be the fear in some quarters. Rather, it provides another option—an alternative choice that expands the likelihood that organizations will have the right approach available for every unique initiative.

In fact, hybrid provides several alternatives, because unlike traditional or agile, it isn’t a defined approach or methodology. As the report points out, Disciplined Agile proposed three variants of hybrid, offering more or less agile-themed …

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