It's always about culture and the people
From the Agility and Project Leadership Blog
by Don Kim
And sure enough, this post by InfoWorld quotes a survey done by VersionOne on the leading cause of Agile failure:
In the survey's seventh year, "we dug a bit deeper into why agile initiatives fail and found that in two-thirds of the cases, it was either a failure to integrate the right people or to teach a team-based culture," the report states. Other reasons include communication problems between development teams and other areas of the business and problems with the Scrum master. (Scrum is a popular agile methodology, and agile itself emphasizes iterative software development, with processes evolving along the way rather than being predetermined.) External pressure to follow the traditional waterfall processes was cited as a failure factor as well.
As I've indicated in a post on Project Management Central, it's as much of a state of mind that's most important for the success of Agile and that having a self-organizing and effective team is a "state of mind" nurtured by the larger organization.
The failture to nurture this important aspect of Agile is a failure to create the culture for an organization's people to thrive. That's why I end this post with none other than a Dilbert expose on the pitfalls of Agile adoption by the pointy haired bosses:
Posted on: March 03, 2013 12:16 PM |
Permalink
Comments (3)
Please login or join to subscribe to this item
Kenneth Katz
Release Train Engineer/IT Project Manager| UnitedHealth Group
Enfield, Ct, United States
A phrase that I like to use at work is "There is no magic." Scrum can be useful, for the organizations, teams and individuals that are willing and able to do the things that make Scrum work. If they can't or won't, then it doesn't work so well.
Harlan Bridges
Consultant, Coach, Trainer, Speaker, Program Manager, Project Manager| Entrepreneur
Seguin, Tx, United States
It's interesting to note that such similar comments have been made about project management. Surveys have shown that the principles of project management are not the reason for failure as much as inappropriate or poor application of project management. Culture too, is cited as a frequent reason for failure.
Agile is experiencing many of the same issues, poor execution, inappropriate application and cultural resistance.
In my experience, the misconception that SCRUM is a form of project management or can replace project management also plays a part in the failure of Agile projects. SCRUM is about team organization and interactions. It has been around for decades, at least since the 1970's. Even with today's adaptations, it is not a management process and does alleviate the need for project management. Too many times, I have run into IT departments that believe because they are Agile, they don't need project management.
There is not an inherent conflict between Scrum (a team organization method) or Agile (a development process) and project management. They can and should work well together.
Please Login/Register to leave a comment.
|
If you look at it, manure isn't such a bad word. You got the "newer" and the "ma" in front of it. Manure.
- George Costanza
|
