pminyc - the project management profession is on …...1 the project management profession is on the...
TRANSCRIPT
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The project management profession is on the verge of a major transformation as a result of
the convergence of Agile and traditional plan-driven project management that will cause us
to rethink many things that we have taken for granted about what “project management”
is for a long time.
In this presentation, I want to give you a brief overview of how I see that transformation
evolving and talk about what it means to you.
The key driver behind this transformation is the rapid acceleration of the adoption of Agile
methodologies. Let’s look at how this trend is evolving. There’s no question that Agile has become
the latest management trend of today and it is much more than just a fad – it is really here to stay
and the rate of adoption of Agile methodologies has increased significantly since 2009.
• A Forrester study from 2009 observed that 35% of organizations used Agile
• By 2013, a study by Actuation Consulting showed that the adoption rate of Agile had grown to
over 70% which was more than double what was observed in the 2009 survey
It is clear that this trend is continuing to accelerate.
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There are two really significant factors that are behind this rapid adoption of Agile
• One is higher levels of uncertainty in the world today – technology is rapidly changing
and solutions tend to be more complex. That requires a more adaptive approach in
many cases. Attempting to force-fit a project with high levels of uncertainty to a
traditional plan-driven approach to project management is not likely to be an optimal
solution
• The other is the competitive environment we live in today demands higher levels of
innovation for companies to keep pace with their competitors. A traditional plan-driven
approach to project management that is focused on control and conformance to a plan
does not put sufficient emphasis on innovation
Think of many of the most recent and most innovative technological advances that
we’ve had today such as smartphones and tablets. I doubt that any of those advances
would have resulted from a purely plan-driven approach to project management
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This presents a significant challenge for the project management profession…
At one time, if you had a PMP, you were recognized as a very well-qualified project
manager. Over the past few years; however, PMI has recognized the need for project
managers to at least have some awareness of Agile and Lean and created the Agile
Certified Practitioner (ACP) certification. That’s definitely a step in the right direction, but it
doesn’t go far enough, in my opinion.
The real challenge is learning how to blend Agile and traditional project management
principles and practices in the right proportions to fit a given situation and we’re only
beginning to scratch the surface of that challenge.
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Agile and traditional plan-driven project management are still treated as separate and
independent domains of knowledge with little or no integration between the two and it’s
pretty much left up to the imagination of each individual project manager to figure out how
to fit these two seeming disparate approaches together in the right proportions to fit a
given situation.
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Another major problem is that there is a lot of polarization that has existed for a number of
years between the Agile community and the project management community.
However, a lot of that polarization is based heavily on a lot of myths, misconceptions, and
stereotypes that exist on both sides of this fence.
As an example, about 6-7 years ago I attended a presentation by a very well-known Agile
author.
• She positioned herself as a “reformed project manager”;
• She made some very disparaging remarks about project management; and
• Said she pretty much had to forget everything she knew about project management to
adopt an Agile approach.
• She also made a very concise statement that I have remembered ever since that “Agile
Project Management is an oxymoron”.
I came close to walking out of that presentation because it was so biased but it really was a
catalyst to me. From that point on, I became passionate about helping to correct some of
the polarization that exists in this area that is based heavily on stereotypes, myths, and
misconceptions on both sides of this fence.
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Here’s another quote from a recent online discussion I participated in. In response to a
person’s question about how he should learn Agile and traditional project management, a
person posted this response:
“Project Management and Scrum have nothing to do with each other. In fact, they
mutually exclude each other.”
That’s an indication of the kind of polarization that still exists today.
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Since that time, I’ve channeled that passion into publishing three books on Agile Project
Management in addition to two earlier books I published on Business Excellence and over
the past 2 years I’ve developed an online training curriculum on Agile Project Management
that has grown to over 25,000 students.
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The key question is “What is the project management? And is our current project
management approach mutually-exclusive with Agile?
The impact of Agile is clearly a trend that we cannot ignore in the project management
profession that will cause us to rethink what project management is but I don’t think that
there is a clear vision of exactly what that impact is.
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First, there’s a narrow view of what “project management” is that has been heavily
engrained into people’s thinking. This view has become so strong and predominant that it
has come to define what project management is for many people and will be difficult to
change. This slide shows how many people think about what project management is:
• “Project management” is something that is only done by a single person called a
“Project Manager”
• There is only one way to do “project management” and that is using a traditional plan-
driven methodology (what many people loosely call “Waterfall”)
• “Project management” is completely incompatible with an Agile approach because an
Agile approach must be dynamic and adaptive and project management emphasizes
control and is inflexible
Some of these statements are obviously stereotypes but there is some element of truth
behind them because many people including project managers have come to accept this as
a way of thinking.
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The project management community has not done enough to change this perception of
what “project management” is.
In the past, a project manager has typically been thought of as someone who plans and
manages a project to deliver fairly well-defined requirements within a budgeted cost and
schedule. PMBOK defines “project management as:
“The application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to the project activities
to meet project requirements”
That is exactly what a traditional plan-driven approach to project management emphasizes.
The emphasis in this environment has been on predictability, planning, and control and a
project has been generally deemed successful if it delivered the defined requirements
within the budgeted cost and schedule. That can lead to a somewhat inflexible approach
with an emphasis on control.
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A major problem with the traditional plan-driven approach to project management is that
it assumes that detailed requirements can be defined and stabilized upfront prior to the
start of the project. That approach might work well in the construction industry and other
areas that may have relatively low levels of uncertainty but it just doesn’t work well in
environments that have a high level of uncertainty.
If you try to force-fit a project with high levels of uncertainty to a traditional, plan-driven
project management approach, it just doesn’t work well and can be very problematic.
• It forces you to make a lot of assumptions to resolve the uncertainty in the project in
order to adopt a traditional plan-driven project management approach and many times
those assumptions are wrong
• With a traditional plan-driven approach, there is typically an emphasis on predictability
and control. That can create an environment that is not very adaptable to change and
frequently the customer of the project may not even see the solution until the very end
of the project and by that time it is either too late or too expensive to make significant
changes
The result is that there have been many projects that have successfully met their cost and
schedule goals but failed to deliver an acceptable level of business value
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In today’s world, there is typically a much higher level of uncertainty in many areas that
calls for a broader and more adaptive approach to project management. In an uncertain
environment, a project manager needs to be given a general objective without necessarily
having well-defined requirements and he/she needs successfully define, plan, and manage
an initiative to meet that objective.
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Let’s consider how “project management” is implemented in an Agile/Scrum project.
• In an Agile/Scrum project you may not find anyone at the team level with the title of
“Project Manager”
• The project management functions that would normally be done by a single person
called a “Project Manager” are distributed among all the members of the Agile team
• The project management approach is much more adaptive rather than plan-driven
Many people would not recognize it as ‘project management” at all because it doesn’t fit
with the traditional narrow stereotype of what project management is that is so well-
engrained into people’s thinking. I think it definitely is “project management” but it’s a
different style of project management that doesn’t fit the usual stereotype of what project
management is.
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I think Agile will force us to adopt a broader view of what “project management” is.
• It’s integrated because project management is fully integrated into the way the team
works rather than being done by a single person called a “Project Manager”
• It’s dynamic because the nature of the project management approach isn’t limited to a
traditional plan-driven approach to project management. It is expected that the project
management approach will be adapted to fit the nature of the situation
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In this new environment, the emphasis is on maximizing the business value that a project
produces for a given level of investment
Rather than simply delivering well-defined requirements within a planned schedule and
budgeted cost
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This is definitely not a trivial problem to redefine the way we do project management in
much broader terms and there are a number of significant challenges to overcome.
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The first challenge is that choosing the right approach to fit a given project and business
environment can be a big challenge. Many businesses have an existing management
system and project management approach that is based on a traditional, plan-driven
approach to project management and there may be good reasons to not completely
abandon that approach and replace it with Agile.
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A fundamental problem is that many people see this as a binary and mutually-exclusive
choice, they make the mistake of attempting to force-fit their projects and business
environment to one of these extremes and that can cause a lot of confusion and
consternation because it often doesn’t result in a good fit.
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A better solution is to go in the other direction and fit the approach (or combination of
approaches) to the project and to the business environment. That may require more skill
but it definitely can be done!
That’s exactly what a well-integrated Agile Project Management approach is. It’s not just
throwing out a traditional plan-driven approach and converting to Agile, it is integrating the
two approaches in the right proportions to fit the business and project environment.
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There are several things that are critical to implement this new vision:
1. We need to think of “project management” in broader terms rather than thinking that traditional plan-driven
project management is the only way to do project management and we need to see Agile and Waterfall in a fresh
new perspective as complementary rather than competitive
2. Project managers need to be trained in how to blend Agile and traditional plan-driven project management
principles and practices in the right proportions to fit any given situation
3. We need to recognize that “project management” is a function, not a title, and the function of “project
management” is not always exclusively performed by someone called a “Project Manager”
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There are many potential benefits of developing an Agile Project Management approach but the exact benefits might
be somewhat different among different companies. I’ve summarized here what I think are some of the most
important general benefits of developing a more Agile approach:
1. First is adaptability – Many people make the mistake of using a “one size fits all” approach for all projects and
that just doesn’t work well in all situations. You need to be able to fit the methodology to the project and Agile
offers an alternative approach that is particularly well-suited for projects that have high levels of uncertainty.
2. The next one is time-to-market. An Agile approach can improve time-to-market by accelerating the startup
phase of the project by deferring some of the upfront planning that might be done with a traditional project
management approach. And, using an iterative approach to deliver at least a portion of the solution as quickly as
possible can also have a significant impact accelerating time to market.
3. Third, In many situations, Agile and Lean thinking in general offer the potential to reduce the costs and overhead
associated with a project. By putting the emphasis on producing value as opposed to maximizing control, there is
a lot of opportunity to reduce the costs of documentation and other overhead in a project. That’s not to say that
documentation and other forms of project control and administration are all bad things to do, but it is definitely
good to take a hard look at those items and see if they really produce value and who they produce value for.
4. The biggest advantage in many situations, as I’ve mentioned is higher customer satisfaction that results from
producing solutions that are more well-aligned with customer needs by engaging customers more directly in the
project to provide feedback and inputs as the project progresses rather than relying heavily on documenting
requirements upfront prior to the start of the project.
5. Finally, a major indirect result of an Agile approach is that it offers the opportunity to have a significant positive
impact on the culture of the whole organization by building a spirit of collaboration, trust, and shared
responsibility within the organization. That can be a difficult thing to achieve but the benefits are well worth it in
terms of organizational synergy and productivity.
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Each of these approaches has advantages and disadvantages depending on the situation
and we should think of them as complementary rather than competitive.
It’s important to be able to objectively understand the advantages and disadvantages of
each of these approaches in order to choose the right approach to fit a given situation.
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Here’s an example of how the comparison of Agile to Waterfall is misused. This statement
says that:
“According to the 2012 CHAOS report, Agile succeeds three times more often than
Waterfall.”
I totally agree that Agile has huge benefits but comparing Agile to Waterfall like this is really
misleading. It creates the impression that Agile totally replaces Waterfall and Agile is good
and Waterfall is bad and that is not the case.
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Saying “Agile is Better than Waterfall” is like saying “A Car is Better than a Boat”. Each has
advantages and disadvantages depending on the situation and the environment you’re in.
It also raises questions of “how did you measure success to compare the two approaches?”
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The Waterfall process and a number of other plan-driven processes use well-defined
processes.
• The process doesn’t change significantly from one project to the next
• It’s similar to a manufacturing process where you’re producing the same product over-
and-over again – you want to control variation in the process to produce the same
product every time
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That kind of process has the advantage of being predictable and providing control over
changes in scope, schedule and costs
But its weakness is that it is can be inflexible and not work well in environments where the
requirements are uncertain and likely to change. The emphasis on control can also create
some unnecessary overhead
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The level of uncertainty in a project is a major factor in choosing the right approach. If the level of
uncertainty is relatively low, a traditional plan-driven approach based on a predictive control model
may be very appropriate.
Here’s an extreme example. If I were building a bridge across a river, it would be ridiculous to say
“We’ll build the first span, see how that comes out, and then we’ll decide how to build the remaining
spans”. That just doesn’t make sense.
Building a bridge is a relatively predictable kind of project and calls for a more plan-driven kind of
approach.
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An empirical process like Scrum is based on continuous improvement and uses what is
called an empirical process control model. The word “empirical” means based on
observation; and, in this context, it means that both the process and the result are adjusted
as needed based on observation throughout the process rather than remaining fixed
Scrum provides a general process framework but it is a very general process framework
that can be easily adapted to different kinds of projects and within a given project it is
adaptive to projects with highly uncertain requirements.
In a Scrum project, changes to requirements are encouraged as the project progresses to
maximize the business value of what is produced
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The advantage of an empirical process like Scrum is that it is very adaptive to uncertain and
changing requirements and it may also have less overhead and faster time-to-market
The disadvantage is that because changes are encouraged rather than limited, there is less
predictability over the costs and schedule of the project
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On the other hand, if the level of uncertainty is high; a traditional plan-driven approach doesn’t work
well and a more Agile or adaptive approach is probably needed. For example, what if I set out to find a
cure for cancer? Would it make sense to try to develop a detailed plan for the effort? That would be
equally ridiculous –
There are just too many unknowns and uncertainties. You might develop a high-level plan based on
what you do know and possibly some assumptions to test and validate, but most of the effort would
be based on a trial-and-error approach and the plan would evolve as you went along based on the
results of those trials.
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I want to reemphasize that this is not a binary and mutually-exclusive choice between
“Agile” and “Waterfall” and it is very possible to blend those two approaches together in
the right proportions to fit a given situation.
Let’s talk about how that would work…
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Scrum is probably the most widely-used Agile methodology in the world and it does
provide an excellent framework for defining an Agile project but it really only defines a
process for a team-level and sprint-level process. It doesn’t explicitly specify any additional
layers of management that might be needed on top of that for larger and more complex
enterprise-level projects.
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The important point to recognize is that very few Agile projects start out by just writing
code with no planning at all as some people might think.
Some level of planning is always appropriate in an Agile project; however Scrum does not
explicitly specify higher levels of planning.
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In many cases for larger and more complex projects, it is essential to add additional layers
of planning to the project
Most Scrum projects will have at least project-level planning where at least the high-level
goals and objectives of the project are defined; however, project-level planning can be as
“thick” or “thin” as necessary depending on the nature of the project.
The project-level planning forms an “envelope” around the team and sprint-level planning
process defined by Scrum; however, the project-level planning would typically be at least
somewhat dynamic. Rather than defining a rigid upfront plan that might not change for the
entire duration of the project, it would be expected that lessons learned from the team and
sprint-level planning process would be fed back into the project-level planning process to
make adjustments to the project-level plan as necessary.
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And, of course, release-level planning may also be necessary depending on the scope and
complexity of the project
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This is what a spectrum of approaches would look like:
• At one extreme, a highly adaptive approach might be limited to team-level planning only
with little or no release-level planning or project-level planning
• At the other extreme, a more plan-driven approach would put a much higher level of
emphasis on project-level planning and release level planning
By adjusting the level of emphasis on planning at each of those levels, it is very possible to
create a broad range of hybrid Agile approaches with different levels of agility and
adaptivity.
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In my books and online training, I have included some case studies of companies that have
successfully developed an Agile Project Management approach. I just want to briefly
mention a couple of them before we close.
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The first company I want to talk about is Valpak. Valpak is best known for the blue
envelopes containing discount coupons that many of you get in the mail. They have a
highly automated plant in Tampa, Florida where paper comes in one end and millions of
envelopes stuffed with coupons come out the other end virtually untouched by human
hands. Valpak is a great example of a company that has successfully implemented an Agile
transformation using the Scaled Agile Framework. Some of the key factors that made this
successful were:
• Strong senior management support coupled with a very aggressive and capable Agile
leader (Stephanie Stewart) to make the effort successful
• An independent coach was brought in to help define and implement the process and
train and mentor the teams
Aside from the many other benefits of the Agile transformation, Chris Cate, the CIO of
Valpak noted that once the Agile project methodology was running smoothly; the teams
became self-managing, the projects required a lot less management focus, and managers
were able to focus on a much more strategic level.
Valpak did a very complete, top-to-bottom implementation of Agile throughout the whole
company which had a huge impact on improving their business; however, it required a very
aggressive senior management commitment to a very significant business transformation
to make it successful.
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The next company I want to talk about is Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare.
• First, here is some background - Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (HPHC) is a full-service health
benefits company serving members throughout Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and
beyond. For over 40 years, Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare has built a reputation for exceptional
clinical quality, preventive care, disease management, and member satisfaction and has
consistently rated among the top plans in the country.
• This was a very important factor because it meant that the implementation of this project could
not be allowed to cause any problems that might impact Harvard Pilgrim’s excellent reputation
and standing.
• The project was very large and complex and required the replacement of almost all of Harvard
Pilgrim’s outdated IT infrastructure requiring approximately 100 Agile teams over a five year
period. It’s equivalent to changing the wheels on a high-speed train as it is moving down the
tracks at over 90 miles an hour.
• Because of the scope and complexity of this effort, the number of moving parts was huge and
required a lot of planning and coordination to minimize any operational business impact. As a
result, it was essential to blend a traditional plan-driven project management approach with an
Agile development process
The results of the effort were very significant – over the period of this project, Harvard Pilgrim:
• Developed flexible business architecture to support change
• Introduced Agile approach and philosophy without disrupting business operations
• Was ranked #1 for nine years in member satisfaction and quality of care despite massive
changes
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I want to quickly recap some of the topics we’ve talked about in this presentation.
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Here’s a quick summary of some of the key points:
• Don’t fall into the “Program Du Jour” trap by just jumping on the Agile bandwagon
without understanding what you expect to get out of it and what it takes to be
successful
• Take time to understand the benefits and limitations of Agile and what problems it will
solve for your business and craft and approach that is tailored to fit your business
• Learn to see past the stereotypes, myths, and misconceptions that exist about both
Agile and “Waterfall”
• Develop a fresh new perspective to see these two different approaches as
complementary rather than competitive and learn to blend them together as necessary
to fit a given situation
• Don’t force-fit your business or projects to some arbitrary approach
• Go in the other direction and fit the approach to your business and projects
This may seem difficult and it is…Agile requires a lot more skill and training to do it
successfully because it requires very knowledgable people making intelligent decisions to
fit a process to the situation rather than simply mechanically following a defined process,
but it definitely can be done and these are exactly the challenges that my training is
designed to address!
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This presents some significant challenges for project managers, I’ve often used the analogy
of a Project Manager as a cook versus a Project Manager as a chef…
• A “cook” knows how to prepare a limited number of simple recipes by the book.
• A “chef” knows how to prepare a much broader range of more exotic recipes, his/her
knowledge is not limited to pre-defined recipes, and he/she will often create new and
innovative recipes for a given situation.
I think that sums up the challenge for project managers very well.
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This has only been a very short presentation and this is a very complex topic but there are
lots of other resources available for more information:
My latest book, entitled “The Project Manager’s Guide to Mastering Agile” has a lot more
information in it plus many more detailed case studies of how to put these ideas into
practice
My blog site at managedagile.com is another valuable resource with over 100 free articles
on various topics related to Agile Project Management. That site is very popular and draws
a lot of traffic
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Another important resources is that I’ve developed a complete online training curriculum
that is designed to help project managers bridge this gap through the Agile Project
Management Academy. You will find t that school at
agileprojectmanagementacademy.com. Those courses are offered on three different
training platforms and, as of now, have more than 25,000 students with over 500 5-star
reviews!
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Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to speak to you today. I will now try to
answer any questions you might have
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