Agility and Project Leadership

Saw this post on Wall Street Journal about GE going more Agile.  It states that GE: 

Started down this path several years ago and IT organizations within various divisions are making the transition to this approach at different rates...  this methodology let the IT department complete a project around business analytics for the finance department, from start to finish, in a year, far less than the 18-24 month time frame its consultants and vendors would have taken using a more conventional approach.

The goal of the project was to make it easier to slice and dice financial information so that executives would have better information with which to make decisions. The project involved taking information from different systems and making sure the data could be read by the new software. The team also worked with partners in finance to determine their needs, and included review and testing phases to make sure the software was giving accurate results.

It goes on to elaborate how GE held internal conferences with big name Agile industry gurus as well as hiring Rally software to consult for them on the Agile transition.  Interestingly and telling, was a comment left on the article by a reader who states that GE Healthcare is hardly Agile as it proclaims:

For those who attended my presentation on “Managing Agility: Embracing the Benefits of Agile Leadership” at the PMXPO 2012, I want to thank you again for attending and Gantthead for the opportunity.  Unfortunately there was not enough time to answer all the questions that came in and there were quite a bit of them: 37 to be exact (question directly asking me about Agile specifics), which is quite a bit considering the majority of them came in after the presentation during the last 20 minutes!

Fortunately though, Erin DeCaprio the fabulous Gantthead MC, provided me the questions and contacts and I will answer all of them directly.  What I’d like to do here is to summarize, categorize and evaluate the questions, as I feel it really reveals the concerns of real world PMs working out there in the trenches like myself and how we go about integrating and leading Agile project initiatives.

Here’s the breakdown from the highest to the lowest:

Though this is a small sample and was not based on a formal survey and anecdotal, as a fellow PM working in a traditional PM environment I can assert that these are my very own concerns and the same concerns of other PMs I work with and know!

I work in the medical device industry that has heavy regulatory and compliance checkpoints that overshadow all the projects I’m involved with that is not always conducive or easy to just “throw” Agile at something to make it turn around faster.

But like every other industry out there these days, there still a need to turn products and services around faster and keep up with the pace of technological innovations, hence an imperative to be more Agile.

In any event, I will answer questions directly to the respondents and as a regular writer on this excellent site, I have lots of topics to focus on since I have a much better idea of what concerns the Gantthead user base.

Just saw the results of this survey poll on LinkedIn that I participated in:

Not surprised that PMI leads the way, but was a bit surprised by how much.  I really liked the age and demographic breakdown.

Was surpised how low the ScrumMaster certification ranked in this survey, but I think that has to do with the fact that the barrier to entry is so low (you only need to attend a 2 day seminar and once completed you are a certified ScrumMaster).

As I mentioned in another blog, I think we'll see the PMI adoption go higher with the recent explosive growth of the PMI-ACP certification within PMI.  I recently found this graphic showing the growth of the PMP:

Love them or hate them, no doubt when it comes to project management certifications, PMI is dominating the standards and leading the industry to a near monopoly especially in the US with growth in the rest of the world following.

As a commenter posted, "in terms of popularity, PMP would take the lead.....however, if a Project Manager does not how to implement the PMP processes in your working project environment, just 'knowing' the terminology either from PMP or PRINCE2 will not matter...."

I wholeheartedly agree, but if your going to get certified, the best direction seems to be the PMI-way.

As I’ve been studying for the PMI-ACP, I’ve been reviewing the idea of the “Agile Triangle” which is an extension of the traditional “Iron Triangle” of traditional project management.  This is an idea that was originally conceived by Agile luminary, Jim Highsmith, where he states that “many agile teams are now caught in a dilemma. On one hand they are told to be agile, flexible, and adaptable, but on the other they are told to conform to pre-planned traditional Iron Triangle framework of scope, schedule, and cost. In essence they are being told ‘be flexible in a very small box.’ Agile teams are striving to meet one set of goals and managers and executives are measuring against another set”.
 

1. Value – for the customer in terms of a released product or deliverable.
2. Quality – continuous delivery of high quality and adaptive products.
3. Constraints - the traditional scope, schedule, and cost.

From this perspective, Agile teams should focus on releasing the project rather than getting constrained by the iron triangle.  The three end points of the iron triangle would collapse into one end point of the Agile triangle called constraints.  The other end points define the project’s goal of obtaining the value and quality of the deliverables that are of utmost importance to the stakeholders and that would require more attention.

Thus, according to Jim Highsmith, Agile teams should focus on the releasable product rather than getting constrained by the iron triangle. The three end points of the iron triangle collapse into one vertex of the Agile triangle called constraints. The other end points such as value and quality define the ultimate goals, since they are of utmost importance to the stakeholders and need more attention.

I do agree though with a blog by Rajeev Singh of “Agile Montage” that the end point of “value” could use more clarification, since as he states, “It is talking just about product/service value. It is restrictive to only customers and shareholders. How about Employee/Team Value? Or, even intermediary value focused on enhancing the core environment and sharpening the saws. For better software, we ought to think of empowerment, leadership and mentorship”.
 

He expands on the Agile triangle image by adding an intermediary and internal value to the “Value” end point:

As he states, “We just can't think at the project level anymore. We ought to start focusing on the whole organization. It is untenable to continue delivering external value without investing in internal value. The risk of not doing so is to put continuous improvement on the back burner.”

Just when I thought I had a complete grasp of the infamous “Iron Triangle” of project constraints, I run into the notion of the Agile triangle in my studies and learn something new yet again!

• Methods:
  • Scrum (obviously)
  • eXtreme Programming
  • Lean (as applied to software development mostly)
  • Kanban
  • Crystal
  • FDD
  • DSDM
  • RUP
• Practices:
  • Osmotic Communication (by Alistair Cockburn in his book “Agile Software Development – The Cooperative Game”)
  • Servant Leadership
  • Agile Risk Management (Risk burndown chart, audit backlog, and risk analysis)
  • Agile Planning and Estimation (user stories, planning poker, etc.)
  • Communications (standup meetings, customer interactions, etc.)
  • Agile Quality (definition of “done” and how you qualify this)
• Upcoming Practices:
  • Innovation Games
  • Control Limits
  • Agile EVM