Guessing is not a strategy: How to build decision velocity with AI and real-time data
June 10, 2026 | Live Webinar
Organizational Views of Agile Maturity
Categories:
Agile
Categories: Agile
| The desire for organizational agility is on the rise, according to PMI's 2012 Pulse of the Profession. The survey found that more than 25 percent of respondents now use agile project techniques frequently, and that number is likely to keep moving up. The survey also found that in successful organizations, 68 percent of projects meeting original goals and business intent often used agile project management. But how does agile apply not just to teams but to organizations as a whole? When an agile adoption is new, the focus is on training. When teams have been trained, shift your emphasis to fostering a community of agile practice in your organization. As agile matures, the metrics will expand beyond how many people use agile. The metrics will start to verify that agile benefits are beginning to be realized. These tips can help an organization assess the strengths and deficiencies of its agile teams: 1. Instead of asking about one team's remaining work at the end of an iteration, look at the amount for unfinished work for all teams in your organization. This can tell you who needs more coaching. Graph the remaining work for each team every two weeks, for example. Can you see which teams need more help? Can you find the average slope for both successful and unsuccessful iterations? Ideally, we start at 100 percent work planned on day one, reach 50 percent in the middle and have 0 percent left at the end of the iteration. 2. Determine if all of your project teams are adding requirements. This can tell you if you are implementing the letter of agile, but not the intent. Strong agile teams will capture some competitive advantage of timely requirements, but will control scope change to not lose focus. 3. Get a pulse on impediments and retrospective actions for all teams.This can tell you if teams are implementing continuous improvement and facing risks head on. Asking these questions at an organizational level may not be natural at first. But when encouraged, it can reveal a new perspective on which teams are actually leveraging agile as they mature on their path to adoption. What are your thoughts on organizational agility? To discuss Pulse of the Profession on Twitter, please use #pmipulse. See more on the Pulse of the Profession. |
Plan for Special Events on Your Project Calendar
| The months of July and August have a few events that can put kinks in your project plans in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. During the summer, for example, temperatures can reach as high as 122 degrees Fahrenheit (50 degrees Celsius). Project managers working with or in the Muslim world also need to plan for Ramadan, when the majority of the population fasts between sunrise and sunset. Then there's Eid al-Fitr, a national holiday that marks the end of Ramadan. Its importance is similar in scale to Christmas or Yom Kippur. These combined events mean project managers must plan meticulously to ensure minimum disruption to their project schedules. During this one month, the expected impact on the construction sector alone is a reduction of productivity by 40 to 60 percent. The main causes are heat and a fasting workforce that is unable to work at full capacity. Additionally, project managers in construction face government constraints, which forbid laborers to work more than six-hour shifts in the day. They must stop working at noon and wait until it gets cooler to start again. To keep project schedules moving during the very hot weather and major holiday, the key is to plan, plan -- and plan some more. These planning best practices can help:
|
The 'Appropriate' Project Approach
|
I recently attended a two-day workshop to help me get certified as a Scrum master. What made this class interesting is that I am a "traditionalist" -- a project manager who leads and manages projects using the waterfall approach. This was going to be a whole new ballgame for me. While I am not particularly new to the concepts of agile, I was looking forward to learning the extended basic agile concepts, frameworks and skill sets, and learning to apply those skills. Surprisingly, I understood more of Scrum than I thought I would and realized I was already implementing some agile principles into my waterfall projects. Most importantly, I realized that the debates surrounding waterfall versus Scrum may just be full of hot air. The focus of those arguments is that one approach is categorically better than the other in all circumstances. That couldn't be farther from the truth. Traditional and agile frameworks are neither better nor worse than the other. But, either could be completely disastrous for a project if applied broadly. One of the most important ideas I took away was the idea of 'appropriateness.' Scrum is about finding the right level of planning, documentation, velocity of task output, cost and schedule -- and not just per project, but per team. It's not about what is 'best,' but what is appropriate and suitably fits the set of circumstances at hand. I began to think that if all project managers embraced this idea of using an appropriate approach instead of the perceived 'best' approach, projects could potentially get along much better than they currently are. I think that what is appropriate for a project could be waterfall, it could be agile or it could be a hybrid. And that would mean project managers would have to be well versed in all kinds of approaches and understand several project management languages. At the end of the two days, and after an online assessment, I became certified as a Scrum master, but I think I became more than that. I got better at being able to identify what a project needs and what a team needs. Now, I have a few choices as to which approach is appropriate to meet those needs and ensure success. Do you think there can be a hybrid? |
A Different Mindset: From Project To Program Manager
| As a project manager, leading a project to success provides a feeling of accomplishment. Having been successful at several projects, project managers could see becoming a program manager a likely career move. But when PMO managers were asked about the most critical factors for success, developing the skill sets of project and program managers were an area of concern, according to PMI's 2012 Pulse of the Profession. As a result, many organizations will renew their focus on talent development, formalizing processes to develop competency. In my opinion, developing a program management mindset is a key first step to successfully transitioning to a program management role. For example, moving from the linear world of a single project to the molecular world of programs can be daunting. Plus, you'll face the new experience of leading other project managers. Here are some practices I have found valuable to adopting a program management mindset: 1. Think big picture A common misperception about programs is when they are viewed as one big project. Keep in mind that a program is an interconnected set of projects that also has links to business stakeholders and other projects. Adopt a 'big picture' attitude to the overall program and avoid fixating on a single project's details. 2. Create a project manager trust model As a project manager, you develop trust with individual contributors performing delivery activities. As a program manager, you have to develop trust with project managers. Create a common interaction framework with every project manager for progress reporting, resource management, etc. 3. Encourage project managers to say "so what?" As a program manager, you will deal with additional reports, metrics and other information that you didn't experience as a project manager. Encourage your project managers to start dialogs with "so what" outcomes. This will get right to the direct impact on the program. Have them support these outcomes with relevant information from their reports, dashboards and metrics. 4. Establish credibility with business leaders With programs, customers are typically in business functions. Immerse yourself and your project managers in their business. Training, site visits and status meetings held at business locations are good ways to immerse your team in the customer's business. 5. Develop long-distance forecasting skills Forecasting several weeks in the future is satisfactory with a project. However, a program with projects moving at different speeds and directions requires a longer forecast horizon. Set your forecast precision in terms of months, not weeks. In addition, look for multi-project forecasting considerations such as holiday blackout periods and external project dependencies. What have you found effective to make the mental leap from project manager to program manager? To discuss Pulse of the Profession on Twitter, please use #pmipulse. See more on the Pulse of the Profession. |
Stick to Project Management Basics
| The importance of fundamentals in project management is obvious, but easy to lose sight of. As professionals who constantly strive to improve, we study, read, take courses, attend seminars, listen to podcasts and more -- all to become better project managers. Ironically, sometimes this desire to learn causes us to lose focus on the fundamentals. Instead, we look to novelty, the latest trends and perhaps even the latest fads in the interest of improving. Likewise, we might embrace sophisticated techniques without ensuring that we've properly implemented the basic things on which the sophisticated techniques depend. I've often heard great sports figures and musicians emphasize the importance of fundamentals in their success. Project managers would do well to place similar emphasis on the basics of our profession. I'd go even further to suggest that before we embrace any new or sophisticated technique, we should first look at how well we are implementing the fundamentals. For example, what good does it do us to implement the latest agile techniques on a project where we haven't adequately implemented rudimentary change management disciplines? Similarly, what good would it do to implement Monte Carlo simulations in a context where we haven't adequately identified basic risks? In my estimation, our success depends almost entirely on how well we have implemented fundamental risk and change management processes. Things go wrong and plans change -- yet we often charge ahead without adequately planning and preparing for those realities. Certainly, our intuition tells us this is true, and our experience validates our intuition. Yet it still often happens that we lose sight of the obvious fact that the basics matter and matter most. If you should ever waiver in your conviction, look no further than PMI's 2012 Pulse of the Profession. The report notes that change management and project management basics are among the most critical project success factors. New and sophisticated techniques have their place, but the best thing to do in any profession is to go back to basics. Don't let the allure of the sophisticated or the novel, distract us from the value of fundamentals. To discuss Pulse of the Profession on Twitter, please use #pmipulse. See more on the Pulse of the Profession. |