Agile PMs Get it Right the Last Time

Posted by Deborah Hartmann Preuss on Oct 20, 2006

Sections

Process & Practices

Topics

Planning ,

Agile Techniques ,

Leadership ,

Project Management ,

Agile ,

Budgets

Doug DeCarlo challenges project managers to ditch the counter-productive "get-it-right-the-first-time" philosophy practiced for so long by so many, in his Gantthead article, "Get It Right the Last Time: Developing an Agile Attitude," (free Gannthead registration is required to view this article).

Instead, he proposes some Agile attitudes to help managers work differently.  His ideas fly in the face of what many traditional practitioners hold dear:

...spending six months or more doing exhaustive requirements analysis not only wastes time, the resultant output will be obsolete by the time you are finished, and that’s not even counting the further obsolesce that sets in during the time it takes to execute the already-obsolete requirements. This results in an oxymoronic deliverable: a new legacy system, one that’s outmoded as soon as it goes into production.

He says that the most difficult part of agile project management is not in applying a new set of tools, but in changing one’s mindset or attitude about what it takes to succeed.

Applying a new set of tools while using a traditional project management mindset gets you nowhere slowly.

Read the article to see how DeCarlo's 5 proposed Agile Attitudes will help managers deliver in an Agile enviromnent:

1. Change is the norm, not the exception
2. Reality rules, not the project plan
3. The future drives the baseline, not the past
4. The process serves the people -- it does not handcuff them
5.  Leading takes precedence over managing

Decarlo is Principal of The Doug DeCarlo Group, co-founder of the Agile Project Leadership Network (APLN), and author of eXtreme Project Management - Using Leadership, Principles and Tools to Deliver Value in the Face of Volatility.