Agile Project Management and the ‘Human Condition’

A recent article in Racontour.net (http://raconteur.net/business/becoming-agile-in-face-of-disruption) extolled the virtues of Agile project management as being imperative to companies saving time and money on their projects. The article went on to describe an intervention that led to a successful outcome turning around a failing project by focusing on actions that were aligned to the original objective. The implication was that taking an Agile approach was a key success factor. Whilst this is no doubt true, I contend that there is more to it than that.

Focusing on the ‘essentials’ is what any good turnaround or change manager would do when a project is in trouble. This has been the case long before the term ‘Agile Project Management’ was coined and the methodology and supporting tools were created. Agile project management is the application of a set of tools and methods (some of which are now certified as ‘best practice’) in order to achieve the focus referred to above and deliver manageable outcomes quickly. This is what we used to call ‘quick wins’ and their prime objective was to re-establish the lost credibility of the project and the teams involved in its execution.

There is nothing new in this and it is not a ‘silver bullet’. Back in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s it emerged under the banner of ‘Rapid Application Development’ (RAD) and ‘Dynamic Systems Development’ (DSD), utilising the same basic principles of focus and prioritisation.

Smart turnaround managers always picked the most achievable outcomes for the ‘quick wins’ in order to establish credibility. This allowed them to embed an engagement process to bring business, IT and supplier groups together, in order to agree what the products of a delivery were, the order in which they needed to be done, and an achievable timeframe to do them. The critical success factors are focus, agreed prioritisation, effective communication and alignment of all the people engaged in the definition of the products, their production and the receipt of the subsequent business benefits.

The trick is to apply the available tools and techniques appropriately within the prevailing organisational culture and that, more than anything else, is the ‘secret sauce’ for success. The tools and techniques themselves will not achieve success. It is the insight, experience and nous to apply them in a way that works within the organisation, taking into account the prevailing culture.

I have seen this work in practice, as I applied it to a business struggling to complete a major system transformation programme. The most satisfying aspect of the whole engagement was when business owners set up their own ‘scrum’ teams and followed the key principles we defined when embarking on change projects.