Agile Contracts

Last week (I am not fast; am I…) there was a PMI Agile CoP webinar on Agile Contracts.  It was pretty good in the sense that it was not so over the top in trying to convince us that Agile is the best thing since sliced bread.

That being said some of the old sayings about Agile were repeated.  Agile does not make things better; people do.  Likewise Agile has less impact than companies’ culture and people’s professionalism in the will to do good work.  Delivering all at the end is a bad practice in all methodologies and not a virtue of Agile.

Anyway, a few negative points:

• PMI does not recognize two (2) types of contracts.  Last time I checked the PMBOK 4^th Edition recognized at least three (3) types and their sub-types: fixed price (firm fixed price, fixed price incentive fee, fixed price with economic price adjustment), cost reimbursable (cost plus fixed fee, cost plus incentive fee, cost plus award fee), and time and materials.  I would add the time and material not to exceed to the list of fixed price contract.
• My clients do no write blank check; if your do tell me who they are and I’ll go work for them.  I have never seen a client that puts a number of piles of money on the table and we decide on scope later.  Nor do you get committed to a project by getting the first quarter of it out there.
• You can flip diagrams (iron triangle) top to bottom; it just does not change their meaning…

For some reason all this does not sound new but rather the (not broken) same old, same old but renamed and using different words.

What do you think?  As always questions and comments are welcome.

Connect with me on LinkedIn.  I am a LinkedIn Open Networker (LION); you can use “Friend” to add me to your network, please mention the blog in your request.

Comments

[Shim Marom]

Well articulated mate. The notion by some in the Agile community that businesses are ready to commit their hard earned money on unspecified deliverables still amazes me.

[Patrick Richard]

Hey Shim, thanks for the comment!

I'm thinking that there might be something in Agile if just that it gets some people to join in the effort.

That being said, the proponents of Agile have to come up with more than anecdotal evidence and what they profess has to be believable. The presentation came short on this obviously.