Doing More with Less by leveraging Agile & PMI
The current economy and budget cuts/freezes have sparked great interest in doing more with less… …Less people – Less money — Less time. As a result of this trend, the interest in Agile methodologies is grabbing the attention of many PMO organizations and CEOs, including the IT space, product development and other projects in general.
“Can Agile and Waterfall methods coexist?”
Absolutely they can…they already are. This transition from Waterfall to Agile won’t happen overnight, but the boulder has started rolling down the hill and is picking up momentum. The need is there !
Many project managers and PMO organizations are looking for help in introducing agile techniques into largely traditional organizations to help better manage today’s projects. Likewise, agile teams are looking for help in gaining acceptance of their approaches working well for them into larger communities.
THE SOLUTION: Two major forces are collaborating to work together….changing the world…
Yes, it’s here…..the NEW “PMI Agile Community” was officially launched at the August 2009 Agile Conference. This group is a grass-roots initiative between a group of Agilists and the PMI to create a new Agile Community of Practice (CoP) within the PMI, with the stated purpose “to equip PMI members with Agile knowledge and skills.” The PMI is saying things like:
“The Agile community has some good ideas to pass down to conventional project managers”
These good ideas include:
- Customer Engagement – If the customer doesn’t like something, the sooner you know, the better. One of the key elements of Agile is to engage effectively with your customer and end-users, understand their needs and problems, and then deliver an effective solution. This requires regular and effective communication, openness and accountability, and a good measure of trust to support robust relationships between the project team and their key stakeholders. PM’s need to focus their energies into collaborating rather than fighting the client.
- Going Lean and Light - Lean thinking was coined by James Womack and Daniel Jones at Toyota over a decade ago bringing value to the forefront of projects saying, “Lean thinking changes the focus of management from optimizing separate technologies and assets to optimizing the flow of product through the entire value stream”.
- Focus on Results with Value – Being focused on results with value rather than just following the process is the key: minimizing unnecessary movement, simplifying process and continuous improvement (“Kai-sen”). The process should assist the team because it helps them get their job done. It is very hard to impose a process on a team.
- PM’s are Leaders, not just an Admin – The PM is not just an admin or paper pusher as some might say. Rather, they provide leadership to the team, improving the process which the team works while staying focused on enabling the team to provide business value. Leadership, communication and coaching skills are essential for the effective PM (…another great topic to tackle another time !).
You an see how these ideas build on one another and allow organizations to DO MORE WITH LESS !
AGILE CERTIFICATION for PM’s
The most popular Agile method used today is “SCRUM”, where certification has been in place for almost 10 years so companies can find PM’s that have the practical knowledge and experience in using Agile methods. You’ll find that most of these PM’s are also well versed in Waterfall methods and have been introducing Agile into the traditional project world already.
TRAINING
Great news if you don’t know Agile well. There is great training out there to learn more about Agile and Scrum. Even FREE webinars to get an great idea if you want more in-depth certified training. Either way you can use what you learn to find an Agile Mentor and start trying to apply some Agile skills to your projects today. See my references outlined below.
To get the latest on “PMI Agile Community of Practice”, join the group for FREE at http://ow.ly/nX9g You’ll find Business Plans, agile project management practices & tools, sharing of ideas and much more.
- PMI Agile WIKI: http://agile-pm.pbworks.com
- PMI Agile Community of Practice: http://agile.community.pmi.org
- PMI Agile Yahoo Group: http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/pmiagile
- Agile Alliance: http://www.agilealliance.com
- Scrum Alliance: http://www.scrumalliance.com
- FREE WEBINARS: http://danube.com/webinars
I’d love your feedback on my article. Please take a minute to share your thoughts below — all input is welcome
Hello.
I like your site and wanted to know if you would be interested in exchanging blogroll links.
Thanks in advance
@Sue Massey
Hi Sue – I’m happy to exchange blogroll links. If I can help – great !
Hi Donna,
I am a fan already of the Agile CoP.. thank you for the post!
Even some of my invlovement on the KnowledgeBase sub team using a backlog and running a few iterations was a great learning experience. Now I can see one of my favorite teams at work is adopting some of these “agile” concepts like getting to done at the end on an interation.
Margaret
Hello Donna,
I must admit, I was a bit surprised to see how you’ve addressed servant leadership in your post. Forgive me if I was left with the wrong impression, but you seem to suggest that a servant leader does not provide true leadership? I would argue that a great deal of the most effective leaders, across industries and throughout history, have demonstrated many of the characteristics that are often associated with servant leadership.
Are you familiar with the works of Greenleaf and others who have done their best to describe this concept in detail? A brief interview for those not familiar with the concept: http://clientserviceinsights.blogspot.com/2008/04/servant-leadership-in-dr-keiths-own.html
Hi Margaret – I just shared this same thing with a gentleman on the LinkedIN Certified ScrumMasters group…since he felt, “agile or lean are not always helpfull to do more with less. This depends on how good or bad you did before changing anything. You could also do things better or maybe just do the right things with the same effort than before and therefore optimize the output instead to cut the efforts … ”
My reply was, “I see your point of view and believe that the changes you make to be able to do more tend to be more “agile”. Such as the more iterative approach that allows you to “continuously improve”. Toyota calls this Kai-sen, where I led projects for several years – and they did ITIL methods for IT projects and Agile methods sometimes over on software development side. I was able to integrate methods from both worlds to speed up projects….make decisions quicker….and keep a much better handle on Time & Budget. Scope is what killed us – as it changed all the time – and by being more agile/iterative in my approach – I was able to manage Scope changes while keeping Time/Budget on track.
What would you have said to this gentleman?
Donna
Hi Brad –
I actually agree with you – servant leadership skills are part of being a good team leader. I’m a huge fan of Covey, Greenleaf, Jennings and others. I actually have Hunter’s “The Servant – the true essence of Leadership” on my desk right now. They will all tell you that servant-leaders have the following qualities: Listening, commitment to growth, foresight, building community etc. All of which I agree only great leader possess.
I was referring to the worldly typical view of “servant” here. Where servants just do what they are told, don’t really have much to do with influence or decision making, and definitely no part as a strategic member. More of a “slave” rather than a strategic contributing member of the team.
ScrumMasters and Team Leads should play a much more strategic role…they must be the “servant-leader” Greenleaf and Hunter talk about. Not just a slave. Leader to Leader institute goes into this in more detail as well at http://ow.ly/o7NI.
I thank you for bringing this up so I could clarify things – we want “great” leaders as PM’s !
Donna
Hi Donna!
I agree “the changes you make to be able to do more tend to be more “agile”.”
That’s what happened to me over the past year, we were trying to improve and we naturally gravitated towards some ideas that, in retrospect, turned out to be heading towards agile. We have weekly “reviews” of one page project plans owned by the sub teams.. Teams commit at the beginning of the quarter what each can do, we allow change as long as the sponsor agrees with the change in planned quarter end results, etc. It’s a great team to be part of.
Margaret
Great post, Donna. Thanks for raising awareness and engaging in dialog.
This is great topic. Based on my (limited) experience, Agile/Scrum is great for development, but does not really compare to the PMBOK as a framework for Project Management. The PMBOK comprehensively covers the entire spectrum of project management activities and associated artifacts, while the majority of Scrum/Agile is focused on product development, and lacks specific processes for managing other important project considerations such as risk and cost.
On the other hand, over-emphasis on the PMBOK has it’s own challenges. I have seen many PMOs fail because they were focused on the process (e.g. PMBOK) instead of delivering value to the customer. A successful PMO will allow a project manager the flexibility to apply the appropriate knowledge areas and documentation for each project, while leveraging Agile methods to more effectively develop and deliver the products and services to satisfy the customer.
That said, a more progressive thinker might argue that Agile/Scrum methods could be used for non-development project activities (e.g. create Project Charter, Close Project or Phase), but that is a topic for another time.
@Margaret – Are you holding daily standup’s & managing a backlog of requirements? I’d love to know how and where you are using Agile.
I just returned from hosting a session at AGILE OPEN 2009, where we discussed how Agile techniques can be used in a more traditional waterfall or PMI type project. It was a great discussion that I’ll type up some notes & post in the next few days. Come back to see how others are using Agile in all types of projects to do thing quicker – more effectively – etc….
*** Note: if you have a change to go to an Agile Open – go – you will learn more from people on what’s working then you will ever seen in a book !!!
@Lindsay – Sounds like you are a progressive thinker….Instead of “comparing” Agile to PMBoK…..what if you leverage Agile in phases of the PMI process?
Coming from AGILE OPEN 2009, I found many people leveraging Agile to improve on the PMBoK and other waterfall-like frameworks that many companies use today. They are using it in all kinds of projects. Although Agile started with software development…it has morphed and is being used all over the place.
It comes down to PEOPLE….Not process (as you mentioned) — if you can make people more effective – then you have more effective projects. And Agile is much more adaptive and people enabling….something that seems to have been erased from many workplaces. So if you can interject Agile practices into the the PMI process flow – you “will” help the project out. I’ll post some great notes in the next few days on a session I ran on this exact topice – and what others are doing to “do more” with Agile + PMI.
Hi Donna, you might want to take a look at our web site. Eric