Project Management

Adopting Agile Governance Requires Discipline

From the Disciplined Agile Blog
by , , , , , ,
This blog contains details about various aspects of PMI's Disciplined Agile (DA) tool kit, including new and upcoming topics.

About this Blog

RSS

View Posts By:

Tatsiana Balshakova
Mark Lines
Mike Griffiths
Scott Ambler
Bjorn Gustafsson
Curtis Hibbs
James Trott

Past Contributors:

Joshua Barnes
Michael Richardson
Daniel Gagnon
Valentin Tudor Mocanu
Kashmir Birk
Glen Little
Klaus Boedker

Recent Posts

DA 5.6 is released

Disciplined Agile 5.5 Released

Choose Your WoW! Second Edition Is Now Available

Requisite Agility applied in Project Management

Disciplined Agile and PMBoK Guide 7th Edition

Categories

#ChoiceIsGood, #ChooseYourWoW, #ConsumableSolution, #ContinuousImprovement, #CoreAgilePractices, #experiment, #Experimentation, #GuidedContinuousImprovement, #Kaizen, #LifeCycles, #ProcessImprovement, #TealOrganizations, Adoption, agile, agile adoption, Agile Alliance, Agile Business Analyst, Agile certification, agile data, agile governance, agile lifecycle, agile metrics, agile principles, agile transformation, Agile2018, Agile2019, Agile20Reflect, AgileData, Analogy, announcement, Architecture, architecture, architecture owner, Articles and publications, Asset Management, Atari, Backlog, Barclays, being agile, benefits, bi, blades, book, Branching strategies, Browser, Business Agility, business intelligence, business operations, capex, Case Study, Certification, certification, charity, Choose your WoW, CMMI, cmmi, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Compliance, Compliancy, Conference, Construction, Construction phase, Context, Continuous Improvement, coordination, COVID-19, Culture, culture, Cutter, DA, DAD, DAD Book, DAD discussions, DAD press, DAD roles, DAD supporters, DAD webcast, DADay2019, Data Management, database, dependencies, Deployment, Development Strategies, DevOps, disaster, Discipline, discipline, Disciplined Agile, disciplined agile delivery, disciplined agile delivery blog, Disciplined Agile Enterprise, disciplined devops, Documentation, Domain complexity, dw, DW/BI, Energy Healing, Enterprise Agile, Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Awareness, enterprise awareness, Essence, estimation, Evolving DA, Executive, Experiment, facilitation, FailureBow, feedback-cycle, finance, Financial, FLEX, Flow, foundation layer, Funding, GCI, GDD, Geographic Distribution, gladwell, global development, Goal-Driven, goal-driven, goals, Governance, GQM, Guideline, Hybrid, Improvement, inception, Inception phase, India, information technology, infosec, Introduction, iterations, Kanban, large teams, layer, lean, Lean Startup, learning, Legal Project Management, LeSS, Lifecycle, lifecycle, Manifesto, mark lines, marketing, MBI, Metaphor, Metrics, metrics, mindset, Miscellaneous, MVP, News, News and events, Non-Functional Requirements, non-functional requirements, Non-solo development, offshoring, Operations, opex, Organization, Outsourcing, outsourcing, paired programming, pairing, paper, People, People Management, phases, Philosophies, Planning, PMBoK, PMI, PMI and DA, PMI Chapter, Portfolio Management, post-format-quote, Practices, practices, Principle, Process, process improvement, process tailoring, Product Management, product owner, Product Owners, productivity, Program Management, Project Management, project-initiation, Promise, Quality, quality, rational unified process, Refactoring, Reiki, Release Management, release management, Remote Training, Remote Work, repeatability, requirements, Requirements Management, research&development, responsibilities, retrospectives, Reuse, Reuse Engineering, ride for heart, rights, Risk, Risk Management, Risk management, Roles, RUP, SAFe, sales, Scaling, scaling, scaling agile, Scheduled Workshops, SCM, scorecard, Scrum, ScrumMaster, SDLC, Security, security, self-organization, SEMAT, serial, skill, solutions software consumable shippable, Stakeholder, strategy, Support, Surveys, Teal organizations, team development, Team Lead, team lead, Teams, Technical Debt, Teleconferencing, Terminology, terraforming, test strategy, testing, time tracking, Tool kit, Toolkit, tools, traditional, Transformation, Transition iteration, transition phase, Uncategorized, Upmentors, Using PMI Standards, value stream, velocity, vendor management, Virtual Training, Workflow, workflow, workspaces

Date



Governance establishes chains of responsibil­ity, authority and communication in support of the overall enterprise’s goals and strategy. It also establishes measurements, policies, standards and control mechanisms to enable people to carry out their roles and responsibilities effectively. You do this by balancing risk versus return on investment (ROI), setting in place effective processes and practices, defining the direction and goals for the department, and defining the roles that people play with and within the department.

Governance and management are two different things. Governance looks at a team from the outside, treating it as a system that needs to have the appropriate structure and processes in place to provide a stream of value. Management, on the other hand, occurs inside the team and ensures that the structure and processes are implemented effectively.  The Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) process framework characterizes governance as an element of enterprise awareness from the team’s point of view because governance looks at the team from the outside.

It is easier to avoid your traditional governance and tell management that “agile is different” than it is to work with your governors to adapt your governance to properly guide the delivery of your agile teams.  As we described in the book every organization has a necessary degree of governance and there are ways to make it especially effective on agile initiatives.  It takes discipline to work with your governors to help them understand how disciplined agile teams operate and then discipline to accept and conform to the resulting governance process.

Our experience is that the most effective way to govern agile teams is to focus on collaborative strategies that strive to enable and motivate team members implicitly. For example, the traditional approach to motivating a team to provide good ROI would be to force them to develop and commit to an “accurate” project budget, and then periodically review their spending to ensure they’re on track. An agile approach would be to ask the team to provide a ranged estimate of what they believe the cost will be so as to set expectations about future funding requirements.  Then the team works in priority order as defined by their stakeholders, visibly providing real business value through the incremental delivery of a potentially consumable solution.  Costs are tracked via the team’s burn rate (the fully burdened cost of the people on the team plus any capital outlays for equipment or facilities) and value is tracked by the stakeholders’ continuing satisfaction (hopefully) with what the team is delivering for that cost.  In short, a traditional approach often measures financial progress against a budget whereas an agile approach seeks to maximize stakeholder value for their investment by always working on the most valuable functionality at the time.

The DA toolkit includes several important agile governance strategies:

  • Adopting a risk-value driven lifecycle
  • Explicit, light-weight milestone reviews
  • Agile enterprise teams that work closely with agile teams
  • Regular coordination meetings (daily standups in Scrum)
  • Iteration/sprint demos
  • All-hands demos
  • Follow enterprise guidelines (coding standards, UI standards, data conventions, …)
  • Retrospectives, and better yet measured improvement
  • Increased stakeholder visibility
  • Development intelligences (BI for IT)
  • Aligning agile team governance with other governance (operations, security, data, …) strategies
  • Agile measurement/metrics programs
  • Active risk mitigation
  • Named phases
  • Robust role definitions

Many of the strategies described above are “standard” agile governance strategies, and a few are unique to DAD.  It requires discipline to adopt and then execute on effective governance strategies, particularly in organizations where you already have a strong traditional governance program in place.

Posted by Scott Ambler on: November 30, 2012 07:50 AM | Permalink

Comments (6)

Please login or join to subscribe to this item
avatar
Fabiano Sanches Program Manager, Customer Success| InterSystems Corp. Boston, Ma, United States
Great insight to work with agile teams without losing the governance aspects of the project.

avatar
VIMAL RAJ NEDUNCHEZHIAN Program Manager| Mphasis Limited UK Nuneaton, Na, United Kingdom
Excellent quote .. Thanks , Much appreciated!

avatar
Amr Dessouky Service Delivery Manager| Link Development Riyadh, 1, Saudi Arabia
Thank you for this insightful information to help with governance of agile teams.

avatar
INDUMATHI KANNAYIRAM PROJECT MANAGER| DELTASTAR POWER PROJECTS SERVICES LLC Abudhabi, U.A.E, United Arab Emirates
Very informative and thorough !!

avatar
Carlos Perez IT Project Manager| Loloi Rugs Texas, Tx, United States
I invite you guys/gals to check and share the PMI Kickoff training with your team. It is really good to have an idea of Agile or Waterfall methodologies.

avatar
Abdiel Domínguez PMP® | Scrum Master | Consultor de Proyectos| Sector financiero Panamá, Panama
Valiosa información.

Please Login/Register to leave a comment.

ADVERTISEMENTS

"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame."

- Oscar Wilde

ADVERTISEMENT

Sponsors