The Myths and Dangers of Agile...

Keith RichardsDirector

KRC

...and what to do to avoid them!

Presentation Structure

• What is agile exactly?

• The problems with agile

• Solving the problems of agile

• The myths and dangers of agile

• The way forward with agile

• Further information

• Close and questions.

Introductions

• KRC is a pioneering training and consultancy company

• Specialising in Agile approaches to how organisations work

• Focusing on improving Agile capability at scale

• 15 years experience in PRINCE2 and DSDM Atern

• DSDM Membership Director (formerly Technical Director)

• IAF Accredited Facilitator

• Author of ‘Agile Project Management’ (TSO).

‘Agile is now mainstream…

…everyone should have a position on agile’.

…but what is agile?

What is perceived as agile?

• Index cards and user stories

• Daily stand-ups

• Whiteboards, Burndown charts

• DSDM, SCRUM, Lean, KANBAN, XP

• Pair programming

• Catchphrases – YAGNI, IKIWISI

• Aspirations – ‘adaptable’, ‘proactive’

• Agile testing

• Agile organisation.

What is agile?

• Defined by the Agile Manifesto in 2002?

• Scope tolerant

• Collaborative

• Iterative

• Inspect and adapt

• Responsive to change

• Incremental build

• Business focused

• Communication focused

• Quality focused.

Do we have a problem?

We are getting successes but are they agile successes?

…or are they ‘no brainers’

• small teams

• organising a to-do list

…what about scaling?

…what about at the corporate level?

We do have a problem!

• Agile outside ‘solution delivery’ rarely exists

• Agile outside ‘business as usual’ rarely exists

• SCRUM, Lean, KANBAN, XP are not ‘Project Management’

• ‘Agile Project Management’ is perhaps an oxymoron

• Agile 2.0 is inevitable

• There is more to agile than being a broad church

• Project management basics are often ignored

• Up-front work?

• Standard PM Structures?

How do you solve the problems?• Understand the type of work – project or BAU?

• Understand the different layers of a project:

• Governance/Direction

• Project Management

• Solution Delivery

• Understand agile at these levels

….and the limitations

• Think about the culture of your

organisation

• Think about the implementation of agile change.

The 9 biggest agile myths

• SCRUM is an agile project management approach

• Agile is a method

• Agile is binary

• There is a family of agile methods

• Heavyweight approaches cannot be agile

• You start with a ‘backlog’

• Agile is quicker/faster

• Be emergent

• Agile scales naturally.

The 9 dangers with agile

• It arrives bottom up

• It looks simple

• Mixing oil with water

• Start with timeboxing or SCRUM

• Self-organising teams

• The Product Owner

• Allowing it to spread virally

• People upstairs just don’t get it

• Letting tools drive the transition to agile.

The way forward

• Analyse the gap

• Shop wisely at the ‘church of agile’

• Manage the change – facilitate it – at all levels

• Focus on the cultural fit – think about WIIFM

• It’s a long journey – one year, two year?

• Get common sense to be common practice.

A final thought!

Stable Agile

Which was has more governance?

Further Information / Next Steps

• KRC help organisations with their transition to Agile

• KRC offers a variety of Agile training (AgilePM/DSDM specialists)

• Maturity assessment (‘project health check’)

• Downloads at www.agilekrc.com

• Facilitation and mentoring

• DSDM Consortium – www.dsdm.org

• The DSDM Group (LinkedIn)

• Twitter @agilekrc

• Agile Project Management: running PRINCE2 projects with DSDM Atern

(available from the DSDM web shop or TSO).

The Myths and Dangers of Agile!

Any questions?

k.richards@agilekrc.com

www.agilekrc.com