How to Create and Capitalize on Agility Regardless of Your Approach (Part 2)

Johanna Rothman, known as the "Pragmatic Manager," offers frank advice for your challenging problems. She consults with leaders and teams to help them learn about practical and possible options. They can then decide how to adapt their product development. Her most recent book is "Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility." See www.jrothman.com for all her books.

  Agile  

In the first part of my two-part series (Why Agility Matters Much More Than Any Agile Method or Framework), I described two project managers, Fred and Jenny. While their companies called their projects “hybrid-agile,” Fred’s project used a waterfall with sprints. Jenny’s project used a staged-delivery lifecycle, also with sprints. Neither project had a single cross-functional team. Instead, the projects had component teams.

Component teams create delays because the people don’t collaborate on a limited number of features. In addition, it’s difficult to see which work is flowing and which work is stuck—and where.

As a result, both projects suffered from late and unplanned feedback loops. Yet, everyone thought they were using some form of agility to manage the project and product risks.

Fred and Jenny had several options to incorporate more agility into their projects:

1. Ask the component teams to collaborate as if they were one cross-functional team
2. Use flow metrics to see the reality of product development and planning
3. Timebox all phased work
4. Create a more frequent release cadence for demos and learning

Each of them started with the various team members so they could create a single cross-functional team.

Ask the People to Work as One Team on Smaller Chunks of Value
Fred asked the people on his project two …

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