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Agile is NOT a Project Management Methodology
April 5, 2009 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Agile Project Management, Project Management Musings
Agile is NOT a Project Management Methodology
By Lynda Bourne
A range of IT professionals are confusing a product development methodology with project management. Agile is not an IT project management methodology any more than choosing to use pre-cast concrete in preference to brickwork is a construction management methodology.
Agile is certainly a useful product development methodology for many IT applications and would probably be extremely useful in other situations such as developing training materials and many business change projects where most of the deliverables are relatively intangible. However this cannot turn it into a project management methodology.
Project management is the process of defining scope, deciding on methodologies, creating teams, and all of the other project management processes defined in the PMBOK® Guide. If agile is chosen as the product development methodology for an IT project it will certainly influence the way the project is planned, resourced and controlled but Agile itself is not ‘project management’. This is no different to the need to plan and execute a building project differently if all of the walls are delivered to site as precast panels compared to having workers build the walls in situ using bricks or blocks. If a project exists, project management is the overall controlling process not the selected work delivery process.
What is lacking in most commentary I’ve seen on Agile is any sensible discussion on using Agile within a project environment. The critical changes to scope management, change management, cost management and time management needed to effectively deal with the fluidity of Agile, within the constraints of a project, need discussion. Project Management is still about delivering optimum value based on a predefined framework of time, cost and output and managing changes within this structure.
It would seem many of the advocates of Agile are actually suggesting abandoning project management in situations where the client cannot really define its requirements and adopting a different form of management where conversations control the process development in a collaborative environment and the overall team’s focus is on achieving a ‘happy outcome’ for everyone. The primary constraint in this space is the resources capacity to deliver ’sprints’ and the organisation’s budgeting process is focused on paying for a more or less stable team of people working consistently on improving the business’ IT infrastructure to service its operational areas.
This would suggest there are limitations to the traditional ‘project management’ paradigm (and I have always felt PM was a focused form of management) and the emergence of a different paradigm. If this observation is correct the real focus of discussion should be where PM works best and where the new collaborative ‘agile paradigm’ works best.
Dr. Lynda Bourne DPM, PMP.
Lynda is the Managing Director of Stakeholder Management Pty Ltd. This business is focused on improving the capability of organisations to effectively manage their stakeholder relationships to the benefit of both the stakeholders and the organisation’s projects. She is also the Director of Training with Mosaic Project Services Pty Ltd, where she is responsible for the development and delivery of OPM3, PMP, CAPM, Stakeholder Management and other project management training.
Lynda is a recognised international author, seminar leader and speaker. She is a SeminarsWorld® presenter and an accredited OPM3 ProductSuite Assessor and Consultant who has led a number of commercial OPM3 ProductSuite assessments.
She graduated from RMIT University Melbourne as the first professional Doctor of Project Management in 2005. Her research on defining and managing stakeholder relationships has lead to the development of the Stakeholder Circle® tool set and the SRMM® maturity model. Lynda blogs regularly on the Mosaic Projects blog.
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Lynda,
I agree, Agile is not a PM methodology. But who says it is?
The definition I go by is that Agile is a set of software engineering practices. Then there is Scrum. Scrum is not a methodology either - even though some people call it that. It is a process framework for product management.
Definitions aside, you bring up a great question of how PMBOK and Agile/Scrum work together. As a consultant in a large corporation (that live by processes), I have some experience in using Agile as you talked about, IE, inside the parameters of a parent/existing processes - such as initiation, change-control etc. I have experience in implementing Scrum (ScrumButt) and defining these boundaries in a medium sized organization. I got away without making the PMO too mad at me! It is a a struggle but we can make it work.
As Agile/Scrum becoming main stream, I am seeing efforts that started documenting this aspect. One book I know of is by Michele Sliger titled “Software Project Manager’s bridge to Agility”. I have heard good things about this book, yet to pick one up.
Enjoyed your blog!
Manoj PMP, CSM, CSP