Agility and Project Leadership

There has been a lot of hype recently about the effectiveness of crowdsourcing that runs parallel to the hype around social networking, which is no surprise since each feed each other.  A crowdsourcing project typically gets launch through some kind of social media platform like Facebook or Twitter, and if its popular enough it can go “viral” (to use another hyped term).  A great recent example of a crowdsourcing project was the infamous Doritos commercial that aired on the Super Bowl.

The PMBOK v5 Guide Exposure Draft was made available to the public on February 17, 2012 and is available for public review and comments/recommendations by PMI members.  What this means is that you have an opportunity to provide your feedback on the draft before it goes to final publication.

• They took out Chapter 3 (The Standard for Project Management) and placed it in the appendix since it is now an ANSI standard
• The communications content that used to be part of Chapter 11 is now a new Chapter 13 titled “Stakeholder Engagement” which adds a new, 10th knowledge area called “Project Stakeholder Management”
• The word “Plan” has been added to the knowledge areas in the Planning Process Group for items such as Scope, Schedule, Cost, and Stakeholder management much like it was in previous editions
• There are now 47 processes in the 5th edition PMBOK Guide exposure draft as well as 614 input, tools and techniques and outputs which is about 15-20% more than the previous edition

Here'a a video by author Eric Ries on being a lean-er startup:

This movement seems to be catching on quite well, and interestingly, much like the early days of project management that was done informally and with very little structure that now has many methods and best practices associated with it, Mr. Ries is arguing that launching and managing a startup can be put on a more systematic and scientific basis with methods and best practices from Lean and other business processes.

Of course as anyone who has been involved with managing projects or with startup business ventures would know, that it is much as art as it is science, but I do applaud his efforts to put setting up a startup which is typically associated with chaos on a more firmer foundation.

It is very similar to an idea I have about reconciling the best PM practices with startup business ventures.

You can buy the book on Amazon:

Wikipedia defines a cult as "a new religious movement or other group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre".  Images of Charles Manson or Jim Jones comes to mind with brainwashed individuals engaged in bizarre rituals and following their crazed leaders without question to murder or commit mass suicide.  So it may seem harsh for me to title this post as the "cult of Agile", but when I see blog post such as this one titled "Project Management: A Malady" or "Are Project Managers Living a Lie?" where in their over zealous efforts to promote Agile, they blast traditional project management, I can't help but to feel as though they are speaking as if from a cult.  As Tobian Mayer of Agile Anarchy posts:

This very interesting article from the NY Times talks about how and why the US lost out to China for the manufacturing of the iPhone.  Though most would think it is cost that drives companies like Apple to transfer their manufacturing overseas, the article points out that it was only one of several major factors:

It isn’t just that workers are cheaper abroad. Rather, Apple’s executives believe the vast scale of overseas factories as well as the flexibility, diligence and industrial skills of foreign workers have so outpaced their American counterparts that “Made in the U.S.A.” is no longer a viable option for most Apple products.

The article goes on to talk about the incredible Agility of Chinese companies like Foxconn in China, where "Apple’s executives had estimated that about 8,700 industrial engineers were needed to oversee and guide the 200,000 assembly-line workers eventually involved in manufacturing iPhones. The company’s analysts had forecast it would take as long as nine months to find that many qualified engineers in the United States... In China, it took 15 days".

Furthermore, companies in China have many skilled workers who have highly specialized technical skills that are above most manufacturing level labor, but not necessarily at the level of a formal engineering degree at the university that just cannot be matched in the US.  They are also able to mobilize them very quickly with no issue both for the employer and employee, for the most part, to work 12 hour shifts, 6 days a week.

We can dispute in this country whether that work level will be sustanable and if it's worth the loss of personal life with family and friends that will take its eventual toll, but in my opinion I have no doubt much of this comes down to people in countries like China who are just more hungrier for financial success than we are in the US and Europe.  Whether this is good or bad in itself is missing the point that China other countries are and will continue to outpace us in manufacturing which is a catalyst for creating middle class jobs.

What this entails for those of us in the project management field, is that as we all know, the world is getting flatter, faster and more projectized for as the article points out,

The pace of innovation, say executives from a variety of industries, has been quickened by businessmen like Mr. Jobs. G.M. went as long as half a decade between major automobile redesigns. Apple, by comparison, has released five iPhones in four years, doubling the devices’ speed and memory while dropping the price that some consumers pay.

Your now going to have to deal with whole industries in other countries that are more agile, flexible and speedier with respect to how they dispatch and deploy their workforce, engineer their business processes, and manage their portfolio of projects.

We are in for some interesting times indeed.