January 2012 PM Network – Agile special report

The January 2012 issue of PM Network contains a special report on Agile.  I read it to get a different take (hopefully) to an approach I see as a fad.  I’m not saying it doesn’t work; I’m saying prove it works.  Prove it with hard numbers, the scientific way.  If you don’t, you may be seen as a snake oil salesman…  If the benefits of Agile are tangible then they are measurable.  If they are measurable, spill the beans and show your numbers.

The first article on Agile (“The Evolution of Agile”) talks about creating hybrid approaches between hardcore Agile (my expression) and hardcore waterfall (again my expression).  Pepper this with a little bit of Kanban, etc. and voilà!  Maybe this is new, but I’ve heard this before (see my Traditional Agile post).  It also states that a hybrid approach would free you from excessive paperwork and documentation.  Sorry but hybrid approaches did not cause this change, cost pressures did that.  I work in a very regulated industry and cost pressures forced some sense into documentation as well as testing.  Everything is now risk based as a way of mitigating cost.

The second article “Agile to the Rescue” makes Agile a major contributor to the relief effort in Chile in 2010.  I’ll agree that having a platform to recruit people rapidly or to find missing people rapidly sure does help.  We are extremely dependant on our existing infrastructure and when it falls, we need a replacement quickly.  Of course if you throw a website together enough some infrastructure must remain to make it accessible; Katrina proved that I believe.  However a statement like “People were coming and going, and at any given time 100 volunteers working together in an office that typically is occupied by 20” as nothing to do specifically with Agile.  NGOs and armies sent to do relief work are in those types of situations every day and they are not following the Agile manifesto.  They’ve been like this for years.

I’m old enough and I’ve been around the block often enough to think that we are being served the same old, same old renamed and warmed over.

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.

 

Comments

[Shim Marom]

Love your commentry, and fully agree with your approach as outlined in your first paragraph. Claims need to be backed up by evidence otherwise they are just...claims.

[Patrick Richard]

Shim,

Thanks for the comments. It should be easy to come up with the numbers as project management type (hopefully Agile ones too) love numbers.

Otherwise I'm going to start thinking that its only you listening to me yelling in the void.