Agile Kool-Aid

At lunch time I listened to the PMI Agile CoP “Confessions and Coaching for Leading Agile Projects” webinar.  Once again I fail to see the difference between a project manager, a scrum master, and in this case an Agile coach.  Someone is drinking his own Kool-Aid.  I won't be claiming the PDU; this lasted about 30 minutes...

I had a colleague who is not a PM listen in with me for a while.  I kept my mouth shut and his comment was “What’s the difference between that and what we already do?”  I guess that says it all.

 

Although I am interested in Agile because I love project management, it sounds like another fad or even a sect.  The more I listen to these webinars the more I think that I will not shell my hard earned money for a scrum master course; I feel that most are just a money grab.

 

What do you think?  As always comments are welcome.

 

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Comments

[Glen B. Alleman]

There is a unique set of activities in the agile paradigm - for software development - that are different from the "traditional" approach.
But this unique difference is rapidly going away. The core concept is rapid response from the "customer" about the the applicability of the product.

This answers the core question of all project management processes - "how long are you willing to wait before you find out you're late?"

In agile that time is from 2 to 4 weeks.

But here's the rub, that answer is the same 2 to 4 weeks for NASA's Orion manned space flight system.

We're (our firm and some collaborators) are submitting a paper to NDIA about integrating agile with EVM. When we document the processes of the software programs we work, we see very similar activities to our DCMA validated processes.

The notion that agile (Scrum) is a replacement for project management is of course nonsense, since Scrum is a software development method. Those who make this claim are confused between development and the management of development.

The "killer" problem with agile though is how to maintain the integrity of the list of needed features in the context of system architecture, business and project governance, and other enterprise activities for enterprise projects.