traditional vs lean portfolio management, agile pmo & organisations

ThoughtWorks Local Office Day

Traditional vs Agile/Lean PMO

Dean Leffingwell Many “impediments” rise to a ceiling that is beyond the control of the teams. Sometimes the ceiling is represented by the PMO, a place many agilists perceive to be “the mother ship of impediments.”

Indeed, if you mention the words project office or PMO among a group of agilists in the trenches, reactions will vary, but probably only from negative . . . to very negative.

It should come as no surprise that our agile teams, and programs, are being held accountable to legacy waterfall practices for governance, and traditional methods of project management.

They are based around legacy mindsets, but that was all there was.

Legacy MindsetsWidget engineering“Draw it up, and build it like you drew it”

Order-taker mentality“You build, what we tell you to build”

Maximize utilisation“The more we start, the more we finish”

Control through milestones“If we still can’t tell where we are we’ll just ask for more detailed data”

We can plan a full year of projects“If we only planned in more detail, we could really get it right this year.”

Just get it done“This is the plan ‘we’ agreed to; now execute it”

Project PlaningOrganising for Work, Henry L. Gantt, Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1919

People UtilisationOrganising for Work, Henry L. Gantt, Harcourt, Brace and Howe, 1919

Peter Drucker

“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.”

Focus on execution through agileShould it be done? NOT Can it be done?

www.bbrt.org › Beyond-budgeting

Dave Snowdon – Cynefin Model

Programmes are complex adaptive systems,

hence experimentation is required to understand

Programme and projects

How do be a Programme manager – and why they are awesome….Little about delivering value

From Projects to Continuous Delivery of Value

“Traditionally, based on a construction-like metaphor, a “project” gathered some resources together, a set of requirements, a mission, start and end dates, and a project manager.

The project then binds these things to together in a package that tends to become fixed and immutable.

Once started, every project develops its own antibodies to change.No one wants to be part of a canceled project; jobs may be on the line, even if the result was a “successful early failure” of a new product or technology.

How does one innovate in that environment?”

Dean Leffingwell

From Continuous Delivery to Continuous Validated Learning

Lean Startup – Eric Ries Plan, Do, Check, Act - Deming

How does experimentation apply to everything we do

How Programme Wall Could be