Common budgeting challenges solved by Agile Budgeting and Lean Funding

 

In my earlier post I talked about the importance of decoupling budgeting and funding. Here are three common failures that occur when this doesn't happ:

1. Budgeted dollars are given to a group but not all people are allocated as needed
2. The development is funded but not the required release and support efforts
3. Something gets started but something its dependent upon is not funded

By funding MBIs, which specify the scope and people required, we get both the dollars and people we need - for the entire chunk of work being built.

Now consider these common budgeting challenges:

• Long time to get funded
• If I don’t use my funds (budget) I lose it
• If I don’t get started I might not ever get the funds
• Change of priorities – so if I jumped when I was at the top I’d have gotten my funds
• Not able to get started when I expected

Again, consider that we're not having budgets in the old sense but funding MBIs based on which ones are most important. This doesn't mean all of our problems are gone, however. We're still left withthat people are going to want to push their own areas.

I'll talk about this in my next post on the Disciplined Agile promises.