Requisite Agility applied in Project Management

Waterfall Project Management

Requisite Agility in Project Management

Control and Obedience

Command-and-control cultures rely on top-down approvals of bottom-up status reports. The individual is the unit of production. In a Project Charter has the name of the person “accountable” which means who will be recognized, rewarded or punished. Regardless of systemic, structural and cultural impediments. The role of the supervisor is to plan, organize, lead, inspire, control and educate. (POLICE). Project Management enforces this culture.

Collaborative Intelligence
Sensors (human and technical) are in distributed networks (like our brain). The more nimble and more adaptive the connections between the parts the greater the intelligence, productivity and resilience in people, teams and organizations. Managers at all levels apply Gemba on a daily basis.

Teams are the unit of production. Individuals are accountable to the team they serve on. The team is invested in the success of every individual on the team. Project Management facilitates the nurturing and development of collaborative intelligence.

Functional Fragmentation

The organization is designed around horizontal control relationships of supply (organisational capabilities) and demand (customer needs).

Each downstream team or function is the internal customer of groups upstream, demanding their needs to be met. Customers make demands to fulfil capacities they lack. Project Managers are passive sensors and enforcers of budget, quality and time constraints that are out of their control.

Synchronous
RA transcends industrial concepts of supply and demand. The doctor is as dependent on the patient’s capability as much as the patient is on the doctors. In a healthy relationship both work together. Both are dependent on the synchronicity of the system as a whole. Project Managers are active systemic sensors engaged in continuous feedback, learning and adaptation. In a world Beyond Budgeting they are no longer helpless observers of a system designed out of their control.

Compliance-Driven Values

Values are written on the wall. Policies on ethics, fraud, fairness, equity and diversity are published.  People are expected to comply.  Project Managers police the compliance of abstract values. The unintended consequence of these sincere, good intentions is to create a low-trust, fear-based culture. But the only true source of integrity comes from within.

Seva
Seva is the Sanskrit word for being in union with and in service of humanity. Agile Coaches or Scrum Masters are servant-leaders. They are not in a parent-child relationship, they engage in mature adult-adult relationships based on mutual service and success. Project Managers are attuned to the presence or absence of Seva in themselves and the people they work with.

Unidisciplinary
There have always been ‘trades’ so it was natural for the industrial age to force people into even deeper specialization. Disciplines define us. Power is centralized. Cross-functional teamwork, alignment and dependencies hold a fractured foundation together. But resources, rewards, metrics, and performance systems revert to the individual as the unit of production.  We work with each other in an inter-disciplinary manner but ultimately we are expected to “stick to our lane” and are measured by the success of our functional silo.

Transdisciplinary

In the digital age technical specialization has become even more critical. We recognise that organizations are living systems, where the health is in the quality of relationships between the parts. Power is decentralized in networks of relationships.  The boundaries of industry sectors are blurring. Value streams are being aligned across eco-systems. Value is created in the white space, beyond the boundaries of the disciplines that define us. Being transdisciplinary reduces risk, increases innovation and makes us more resilient because it draws more value out of specialization.

Change Management

Change Management models based on the formula of “unfreeze, change, refreeze” are too flat footed in the era of digital transformation. Project Management adheres to Chronos (clock) Time: Deadlines and on-time-delivery are necessary but not sufficient. What is the value in meticulously tracking change requests in a proactive, team-based learning organization that is continuously and purposefully changing and improving?

Shaping Transitions
Project Managers (PM’s) adjust their approach across different levels of complexity. PM’s are trusted advisors in the business, not outsiders used as enforcers to ensure compliance. PM’s attune to how customers experience value. PM’s attune to the coherence and cadence of community or customer needs, desires and potential. They apply this awareness to engage in continuous, real time learning and development of people, teams and the organization as a whole.