Last week, the Washington DC chapter of PMI hosted a roundtable discussion on Agile Project/Program Management, which featured a packed crowd, smart speakers, and some healthy debate. Indeed, the event was broadcast on the official PMI Agile twitter feed. The event was an outgrowth of the strategic partnership between the DC chapters of PMI and APLN. The panelists were:
- Rodney Bodamer of CC Pace, who leads the APLN Washington DC chapter, and serves on the Steering Committee for the PMI Agile Community of Practice
- Richard Cheng, who leads Excella Consulting’s Agile practice
- Linda Cook of Project Cooks, who leads the APLN Maryland chapter
- Dave Nicollete, independent Agile coach and popular Agile blogger
General Inisghts
The discussion was moderated by Bearing Point’s Matt, who was reprising his role from the very popular APLN-DC event disussing Agile Government. Nicolette and Bodamer were brilliant for sure, but Cheng was itching for a fight and Cook was on fire with her quotable talking points. Among the panel’s key comments were:
- “Top barriers to agile are 1. crashing against organzational culture and 2. anxieties about job security”
- “Don’t just say let’s go agile”; target a specific problem.”
- “ask how much am I willing to invest in this project, not how much will it cost”
- “an agile PM facilitates process, relies on team to deliver results”
- If you’re a theory Y manager already, then agile will be easier for you to do
- “manage things, but lead people”
PMBOK != Agile
The event also yielded two interesting differences of opinion. When asked whether the PMBOK could be used in conjunction with Agile, most PMI Agilists will say yes. Cheng got a laugh when he read page 1 of the PMBOK, which calls for iterative processes that fit the project at hand. But we went on to critique that “agile does not talk well to adoption in organizations with multiyear budgeting cycles”, such as the U.S. government. He also made the point that a “traditional WBS is not an agile feature breakdown stucture”, a concept popularized by PM authors Wysocki and Sliger/Broderick.
Oddly enough noone on the panel disagreed with Cheng’s points, but they instead highlighted the common point that Agile practices are considered to be a subset of the best practices described in the PMBOK. Hmm….
A juicy debate, by PMI standards
The most interested disagreement came over how to get started using Agile. Nicolette assumed everyone in the audience was ambitious, suggesting you choose a high-value high-risk project, and then use Agile to turn it around. Cheng disagreed, suggesting that a high-risk project is inherently high-risk. Going Agile may not mitigate all the risks associated that project. Instead, choose a high-value low-risk project to show that you can deliver business value more effectively with an Agile approach. Then, with that track record, you can gradually take on riskier endeavors to spread the value.
After the talk there was a photo op (see top of the post) and some good networking.
