This morning at the National Press Building, the Washington DC chapter of PMI hosted a talk entitled “Agile or PMBOK? You can have both”. The presenter was David Sides from ESI, who has been using Agile at his client engagements for a while, and shared his observations light-hearted fashion (more on that in moment).
The event was sold out, with more than 100 DC-area professionals coming to check out the talk. When David asked how many were using Agile, only 2 raised their hands (including me). When he asked how many were looking into / thinking about using it, a full 40% raised their hands. Clearly, this was a topic that had significant draw.
So with that backdrop, Dave went about debunking some Agile myths, and making some interesting points. Here are the highlights:
- “There’s no such thing as pure methodology” – His point here is that all Agile projects have a dose of reality tempering the ideal process. Indeed, even waterfall projects use iterative/incremental process to knock out bugs during a test cycle.
- “Will Agile get you working software faster? Yes. Will Agile get your product to market faster? Maybe.” Getting to market depends on more than just working software. Packaging, marketing, sales prep, training, need to be considered.
- J.E.D. = Just Enough Documentation
- >”Too often we don’t have enough SMEs. Instead we get SMRs (subject matter rookies)”
- “How many of us have been on ’stereo concalls’…where half the participants are in the cubes next to us?”
- “Some cultures never change.” Even those that do need a “constant iterative change process to get where we can use Agile”.
- Move away from “Earned Value” to “Achieved Value”
He also had fun doing his Letterman routine: 10 stupid Agile tricks (e.g. “We in IT know what is best”). David did a good job, and he’ll be reprising the talk as a webinar tomorrow: http://request.esi-intl.com/forms/EV09JUN11FM-PM-AgileWebinar
At the end of the talk, he took questions from the crowd:
- But what about regression testing?
- But what about fixed-price?
- But what about Agile teams that need a full iteration to finish testing?
- But what about matrixed teams? My organization would never give dedicated staff
What suprised me about this event, was not that Agile newcomers were asking the same questions. Instead, my eyes were opened to the uncharted ocean of opportunity that exists in the market. So many projects are struggling with the same issues. So many PMs are tasked with the impossible. Agile offers a management approach that can solve those problems, but people are not getting the message.
This is why I volunteer with PMI’s Agile Community of Practice. The market needs a place for dyed-in-the-wool PMs to go for their first exposure to Agile PM. A place where people can have these basic questions can be answered, and then get directed to a local user group and local training. This kind of resource could the beginning of a journey of growth and expertise that could transform our workplace from a dungeon to a dynamo.
