The Agile Enterprise

I stumbled over the question When did scrum stop being a methodology? while working on the webinar about the role of the PMO in the Agile Enterprise. Very interesting topic because the role of the PMO is to define the project delivery processes for the organisation. My experience with Agile frameworks and PMO is that Agile was usually tolerated by the PMO, rarely understood or supported. And even when Agile become a recognised approach in the organisation the PMO will still act like it will never last.

To be honest with PMO managers, in recent times they were reduced to resource managers, hiring and firing PMs, or a reporting team that consolidates the useless weekly RAG reports in something more appealing to the executives. I had the unrealistic expectation to get support from PMO on solving the Risks and issues escalated. After all the PMO Manager had access to the layers above the project sponsor, the duty and the tools to hep with the escalation. The most support I had was a personal agreement from the PMO manager that I am right but I won't get any help.

I never considered Agile a methodology, but a collection of good practices and in relation to the concept of methodology an attribute rather than a methodology in itself.

It was reassuring to find out that even one of the co creators of Scrum never considered Scrum a methodology. 

"When Ken worked on the original paper on Scrum he was CEO of a Project Management Software company selling methodologies and that crept into the paper.

As we rolled Scrum out across the world it became clear that Scrum was a framework for inspecting and adapting to improve productivity, quality, and the work life of team members. It did not have the detailed practices in “methodologies” and was a framework for adopting additional practices that worked in various enviroments.

The Scrum Guide today calls it a framework. It is the minimal set of features that allow transparency and adaptability to drive performance that exceeds that of competitors" Jeff Sutherland

For most people this looks like a very easy question: in 2001, when the Agile Manifesto was published. The first comment to this is that the "Agile Manifesto" is in fact the manifesto for Agile software development and while it is very important in the Agile history it is not the beginning.

Like many other discoveries "Agile" was originally a byproduct of military advantage. The first mention of an Agile approach is a study from the United States Department of Defense in late 50s aiming at finding ways to adapt military supplies to the specifics of war zones. It was the start of the Agile Manufacturing, and in my opinion manufacturing is still ahead in terms of agility. 

In the big scheme of things, like history, software development is a new topic. People "uncovered better ways" of doing it for millenia. Since we were hunters there were people that thought "out of the box" even when there was no such thing as a box :). The difference was the rate of change, thousands or even hundreds of years ago the society was pretty conservative and "new ways" were considered dangerous and sometimes crazy.There was no need for change as it is today.

For many newcomers Agile, the new kid on the block, started in 2001 when the manifesto for agile software development was published. While it is true that the manifesto had a significant contribution, there is a history of 'out f the box' thinking that's is good to be know, to learn from the past mistakes and achieve the ultimate goal of the Agile Enterprise: responding fast to market changes in an efficient and effective manner. I believe that it is time that Lean and Six Sigma, merged in a a single discipline at the same time as the publication of the manifesto, joins Agile becoming the foundation of modern products and services delivery frameworks.

I believe that a combined history of Agile, Lean and Six Sigma is more than a lessons learned exercise, it is a recognition of the contribution of  previous generations  Instead of demonising everything that was done before 2001 we should retain the knowledge and learn from their mistakes but also from their achievements.

"We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours."