Agile State of Mind

Are you wondering how to choose which project management method to deliver a successful project? Organizations today have to be more competitive in the marketplace so choosing the best practices and methods for your organization and projects is important. Agile is a set of values and principles, not a pre-defined process with obvious areas of limitation. Waterfall is a model based on development method that is linear and sequential.

Here are four criteria to choose the best fit of methodologies at the right time for the right customer.

1. Time to market projects – Agile adoption has replaced waterfall in organizations in the delivery of small, yet frequent pieces of functionality where requirements are expected to evolve, change is embraced, competition in the marketplace is a key concern, and critical to delivery of the latest technology. I.e.: medical device manufacturing, military/aerospace.

2. Status quo – Waterfall is a better choice for organizations that are not flexible, have clearly defined requirements, frequent interactions with end users and other stakeholders is a constraint or when there is risk of key developers quitting the project midway.

3. Success criteria – The success of a project that is defined by delivering business value will benefit from agile methodology. The success of a project defined by measured by KPI of the IT organization would be better suited with a Waterfall methodology.

4. Organizational Project Portfolio – Organizations that have a diverse portfolio must be both risk adverse, innovative and take some risks to be competitive.  Choosing a hybrid approach to use a blend of both methodologies would be beneficial. Planning, requirements and team communication are areas in which organization are designing custom best practices/ methodologies that fit their culture.



Action Items to Help You Get Started:

> Choose your methodology wisely; make sure your project team can adapt to the change and lead using the right best practice methodology or a hybrid approach.

> Focus on team member selection – Resources on an agile team can thrive by co-locating in common areas or resources can struggle due to intense and constant interactions which may create stressful team dynamics.

> Leadership Support – all projects need great sponsors, buy in from the business for implementing IT standards and methods and support for product service delivery using a big bang approach to smaller iterative delivery cycles.

Ultimately, a hybrid approach of traditional waterfall and agile elements make be your key to success. A hybrid approach can help an organization leverage talent and deliver business value early and often for software development projects.

ProjectWorld & World Congress for Business Analysts 2014, is taking place in Seattle, Washington September 22-24th at the W Hotel. The 2014 program is designed with courses for all training levels, a robust agenda, and most importantly tangible lessons which you can begin implementing the day you return to your office, making you even more valuable to your organization. PW&WCBA offers attendees 36 PDU/CDUs - that's more than half of the required credits necessary to maintain your certification in just one place.

To learn more or register for the event, click here: http://bit.ly/1jtZtxB
- See more at: http://www.iirusa.com/projectworld/speakers.xml

Insights from PW&WCBA: Solving The Puzzle With Scrum

As we move forward from the 2012 PW&WCBA event, we'll be looking back at some key lessons learned and trends that popped up during our sessions and sharing some of the takeaways presented in our exclusive Executive Summary. If you attended the event, you may download the executive summary document on Crowdvine.

Via Flickr user Jhritz

One of our most popular sessions at PW&WCBA 2012 was "Agile Essentials: People Planning, and Product Practices" with Ellen Gottesdiener, Founder, Principal Consultant, EBG Consulting, Inc.

At one point during this session Gottesdiener briefed our audience on some of the essential components of Scrum Methodology such as:

1. Product Backlog – The backlog consists of pieces of the overall product. The product backlog is always changing according to customer requirements. The product champion prioritizes the backlog for the team.

2. Sprint Backlog - The spring backlog is the objectives of the current sprint. This backlog is created by the team as a whole and is fixed once the sprint begins.

3. Sprint – The sprint is a short time period in which the team focuses on the sprint backlog which contains small pieces of the overall product backlog. The sprint produces a working iteration of the final product. Any items not finished during the sprint go back into the product backlog to be finished at another time.

But if you (or the stakeholders that you need to convince) are new to Scrum Methodology you may find yourself struggling with the terminology and jargon. In our 2012 executive summary, author Victor A. Lopez wrote the following, and I think it's an important, simple selling point for Scrum:

"The Scrum methodology allows teams to break down the product into small, manageable pieces instead of being intimidated by the larger puzzle."

Looking at the jigsaw photo above, you couldn't say what the end result will look like, and you might find it quite challenging to try and assemble the puzzle. Many would give up without giving it a shot, and others would get frustrated without guidance after the first attempt.

Using a methodology such as scrum helps all the moving pieces of your project puzzle fall into place. In Scrum, the product champion can see the big picture and prioritize tasks for the team, just as you may choose to, say, assemble the edges of the puzzle first.

We'll be publishing insights from attendees of this year's PW&WCBA event over the next several weeks. Would you like to share your thoughts or this session or any others? Email them to Michelle LeBlanc at mleblanc@iirusa.com.