Dark Side of Agile Project Management [#AgileProjectManagement #AgileProjects #AgileProject]
True Agile development practice delivers 3 compelling business benefits:
1. Provide early and continuous delivery of value
2. Reduce risk and impact of errors
3. Improve alignment with customer needs
Tips to improve Agile project management:
1. Acknowledge that Agile is not a new version of a waterfall SDLC, where you do legacy development in sprints
2. Engage all groups across the organization with a stake in the outcome
3. Recognize that the Agile Manifesto does not include the term “Agile project management”
Tips to improve Agile project management:
1. Acknowledge that Agile is not a new version of a waterfall SDLC, where you do legacy development in sprints
Agile projects assume that you are dealing with business challenges for which solutions are not readily predetermined, so you do not know what the solution needs to look like before you begin designing and building it. Here, each sprint is like a science experiment where you test a hypothesis.
As in a science experiment, the result does not always prove your hypothesis is true. A successful experiment or sprint gives you a better understanding of what is true and what is not true so that your next hypothesis and experiment / next sprint will deliver a better result and get you closer to your truth.
2. Engage all groups across the organization with a stake in the outcome
Keeping a cross-functional product team fully engaged throughout each sprint reduces the pressure to get it right the first time because this cross-functional team is engaged in the learning experiments.
This should include external customers wherever possible, to avoid the “build it and they will come” syndrome.
3. Recognize that the Agile Manifesto does not include the term “Agile project management”
Agile is a big problem for most business leaders, who are accustomed to approving IT development projects based upon a specific set of requirements delivered in a specific timeframe and at a predetermined cost.
Until and unless they accept the idea that they are no longer managing projects with fixed functions, fixed timeframes, and fixed costs, as they did with waterfall, they will struggle to use Agile as it was designed to be used. And they will fail to realize the promised benefits of better software developed more quickly with lower risk.
Agile is a new model that does not fit within a legacy project management framework.
Beware the dark side of agile project management:
Many teams don’t do true agile project management; they simply break legacy development process into two-week sprints. Here’s how to improve – and reap the benefits
The Enterprisers Project
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