Humberto RamosPM Consultant| NSNMéxico D.F., Distrito Federal, Mexico
Both of them need to manage scope, time, cost, resources and so on.
Does agile really means less organization, less process and less waste? In what way?
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One way to look at is the processes et al., are new and different from Traditional Project Management. But in reality, agile proposes self-organisation i.e. it empowers or gives the responsibility to the individual than to the supervisor.
In fact there are many processes but they are simple and when practised easy to remember and follow. They can be easily be tailored to suit our requirements. Another advantage is such skills can be easily transferred to other agile methods.
In short, it doesn't advocate, less organisational or processes as such but it makes our job simple, easy, tailored (not rigid) and efficient as well as empowered. Saving Changes...
Bureaucracy in traditional waterfall method costs only the contractor a lot of money in the form of delayed decisions, delayed procurement, delayed approvals etc. Whereas, in agile model, bureaucracy directly affects both the customer's as well as contractor's interests and hence the project will move faster.
In agile model, since every iteration / release is limited to 2-4 weeks, any slight delay due to bureaucracy will affect the sprint and since both the customer's representative and contractor's representative are present for joint-development, agile will naturally be less bureaucratic as things are more transparent in agile than in waterfall model.
Since it is a win-win model,as compared to the traditional waterfall which is essentially a win-lose model, any bureaucracy leads to a lose-lose situation and so has to be less bureaucratic.
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Alistair DuguidTechnical Delivery Manager| Informatica CorporationShelton, Ct, United States
I agree with the other posters that agile will produce less process and less waste.
After all, what is "process" and bureaucracy? Isn't it procedures, documents, and rules that we put in place to compensate for the fact that we don't all magically know what everyone else is thinking, intends to do, plans to do, or has done? Isn't it a kind of compensation for the fact that we communicate imperfectly and that errors result from this poor communication?
If so, then all you need for agile to be less process-heavy, less wasteful, is for communication to be more efficient, and less prone to error. And if the customer is represented on the team and is more directly involved with the team, fleshing out user stories, specifying user acceptance tests, and helping to validate a user story is "done", then wouldn't agile be less prone to errors of communciation between the customer and the team?
And if the agile team is delivering shippable, deployable product at the end of every iteration, and the customer gets to try out this product, and give feedback that will help to correct past errors in communication and avoid future ones, won't that also reduce the amount of compensatory process that has to be put in place to keep things on track?
Doesn't it make sense that the better communication in an agile project will reduce the amount of process required to manage it, and the amount of rework or waste that results from miscommunication? Saving Changes...
Humberto RamosPM Consultant| NSNMéxico D.F., Distrito Federal, Mexico
Thanks for your insightful responses. I intend to learn from your participations. And to let other learn too by following this conversation.
However I have not seen a definitely argument that convince that, Agile method can be less bureaucratic than Waterfall.
Full team autonomy from a boss?, ok, but should everyone in the team be autonomous from the others?
Does a system developed with full autonomy between each system module, may reduce waste or generate more redundancies?
Users that are affected by the system may have different opinions, usually they have. Who rules what decision prevails?... full autonomy still requires coordination and team decisions
A problem of communication may be more a problem of coordination. Process are required and put into place to ensure that common weakness in a project are mitigated.
Better communication and coordination may reduce dead-end or delays. But better communication and coordination is not a property of agile method but of good project management.
What do you think? Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
Sorry but people that wrote about waterfall is bureaucratic are wrong. Bureaucracy do not nothing to be with the project life cycle you will use. And agile does not means less organization or less process. In fact, agile is not IT or software related only. So, when you say agile you have to take into account that. And agile is not a method or methodology, neither agile is not compatible with the PMIs standards. Unfortunatelly there is a missunderstanding in the community about that. More: it is not right to use the word system as a synonim of software. In fact, the only way to apply agile and gain in agility at organizational level is thinking from the point of view of system theory, where system is not a software system Saving Changes...
Daryl McCrackenDirector of E-commerce| Cornerstone Building BrandsHouston, Tx, United States
The waterfall model fits will with physical development such as road construction or house building. In that, knowing where the plumbing needs to be before the foundation is poured is critical because the cost of change later may prove impossible to pay.
In such a model, one needs a clearly specified plan of the house. An architect is required and perhaps an engineer. Soil tests are needed, surveys must be conducted, all before any physical work commences.
There are builders who strive to have little or no waste and those that are extremely wasteful.
I''ve also had the opportunity to see software developed in both a waterfall and an Agile methodology both as a customer and as a team member. What I have observed - and these are only my own personal experiences - are that the least successful projects are those that saw the concept of Agile as faster, more efficient (or dare I say easier) than waterfall or other methods. The end result was incompletely documented, poorly functioning and lacking all the needed requirements while items not critical were thrown in ''because we had time this month.''
In hindsight, I doubt these ''Agile'' development teams could have done any better with a traditional waterfall methodology. Good project management cannot ignore best practices just to ''go fast.'' Saving Changes...
