As a project manager, a member of the PMI, and an Agile Project Management practitioner, I get yelled at a lot. PMP-certified project managers call me irresponsible for advocating the Agile approach to projects, and Agile practitioners call me a turncoat for collaborating with members of the PMI. It’s understandable that people who are used to one way of doing work are skeptical of another way of doing work. I get it. But does get tiresome. Last year, a fellow Scrum trainer called me a placator, akin to Neville Chamberlain, and it was not meant in a lighthearted manner. However, I am not the only recipient of that kind of vitriol. The Agile PM community is riddled with factions and in-fighting. In the pursuit of truth, many of our so-called thought leaders have taken rather inflexible positions of “No matter what you say, I’m right and you’re wrong.”
Well, today I’m in a collaboration session today with technology management thought leader Alistair Cockburn. In our chat today, he introduced me to his latest initiative, The Oath of Non-Allegiance. It is a web page that challenges Agile practitioners to formally sign and ratify the following:
I promise not to exclude from consideration any idea based on its source, but to consider ideas across schools and heritages in order to find the ones that best suit the current situation.
Finally! Someone has taken a stand to hold these Agile thought leaders accountable to the core value of “Collaboration” they all advocate. As a co-founder of the Agile Project Management movement, Alistair has been dragged into many of these philosophical feuds. I’ve always appreciated him for advocating the Scrum alongside his own Crystal methods. It’s a strong statement to say your thing is good, and this other thing is also as good, and you’re willing to teach them both.
QUESTION: What do you think of these Agile factions? Do you think this Oath will help the issue?
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