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Traditional Project Management vs. Agile Development with SaaS Projects
March 5, 2010 | Author: PM Hut | Filed under: Agile Project Management
Traditional Project Management vs. Agile Development with SaaS Projects
By Dan Orlando
Introduction
The purpose of this article is not to define Agile development methods (there’s more than enough of that out there already), but rather to identify the characteristics of a company that is properly implementing and seeing positive results from Agile Project Management.
When an SaaS (Software as a Service) project is initiated, those who are responsible for building the invention are among the most important people to the business during that time. They must be treated with the kind of dignity and respect that demonstrate the impact they have on the success of an SaaS initiative.
Traditional Project Management
Analyzing the problem-solving characteristics of a company’s Executive Officers will tell you a lot. More specifically, what you are looking for is the level by which they do or do not value and honor traditional means of solving problems.
The second major characteristic to look for is the existence of a process or strategy that is religiously used as an approach for resolving every problem that comes up. Chances are, with this kind of leadership at the very top, you will usually find what – at first glance – appears to be an orderly, hierarchical structure to the way that tasks are delegated. You will usually also notice a disconnect between the lower-level management such as having a clear understanding for design requirements, for example. In other words, a developer might get a different answer depending on which manager they pose the question to.
It is also common to find a lot of finger-pointing and missed deadlines in this type of environment. This is an example of the type of atmosphere that does not work for successful SaaS. In fact, this kind of atmosphere can be such a detriment to productivity that these projects are usually shelved before they ever even make it to the “75% complete” mark. Then new management is brought in, yet the core problem still exists – the Executive Leadership is accidentally injecting a structured and “top-down” type of software development methodology that was used mostly in the 80’s and early 90’s, known as “Waterfall”.
Outside consultants usually look far too low in the organizational chart – at the Project Managers and Lead Architects – when they are brought in by the Executives or Board of Directors to solve HR problems. Most consultants never even think to start by questioning the very people that hired them to fix the problem.
Agile Management
In contrast, Executive Leaders who handle every problem with a different approach inherit the side-effect of facilitating an environment that is conducive to change. When presented with what may seem to be a severely threatening problem, these leaders will often facilitate a creative “brainstorming” session between their best problem solvers (who are usually specially selected advisers, not always a Board of Directors), and the atmosphere consistently holds a positive aura no matter how serious or stressing the problem may be.
The result is an environment where Project Managers and Lead Architects are not afraid to make important decisions about changing things that are not working. Additionally, these “managers” are often leaders in the sense that they do not require a title. In fact, they usually prefer to have the same title as everyone else. Yet, the team always knows who to go to for support. This breaks down the “Waterfall” methodology that has consistently failed. Instead, a naturally “Agile” type of methodology is inherited, which has proven to be far more effective for successful SaaS.
Dan Orlando currently works with Universal Mind as an Adobe Flash Platform consultant for enterprise clients, where application performance, clean code, and a solid architecture are most critical. Dan is also an active member of the Adobe Community Professionals program as a writer and speaker. Dan has played a role in the development of several important innovations for the Adobe Flash Platform, including the AWS S3 integration library, an AMF server that runs on C++, and an open source REST library for Flex. Dan’s professional blog can be found at danorlando.com, he can be followed on twitter via @danorlando1.
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2 people have left comments
This post has a lot of factual errors and, IMHO, is just written to promote agile as a better framework. The post fails to mention the real strengths of traditional project managment and the weaknesses of agile.
Hi T.,
I don’t think the article is there to promote Agile, it is only pointing out that Agile was a better way to manage an SaaS project than waterfall as experienced by the author.
I was told by Dan Orlando (the author) that he’s going to expand tremendously on the all the points mentioned in the article and I believe he’ll be discussing your points as well (strengths of traditional PM and weaknesses of Agile in SaaS implementations).
Waterfall vs. Agile is always a hot topic…