Musings on project management: Mixing Agile with traditional business

Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Mixing Agile with traditional business

There comes a point where more planning can not remove the remaining uncertainty, instead execution must be used to provide data and remove uncertainty.

This quote comes from a nicely argued case -- from the agile blog 'leading answers' -- for mixing agile methods in rather traditional businesses, like the oil and gas exploration/production business

If ever there was a business that benefits from Boehm's Spiral Model, OGM (oil, gas, minerals) is certainly one. (Disclosure: I hold some OGM leases in Texas, so I've a bit of personal experience with this)

So, what have we got here?

A lot of risk acknowledged up front (can't know everything -- thus the opening quote)
A need to run with pilot projects before committing to production
A need to tie into legacy systems (in the OGM case, distribution systems)
A lot of deliverables that can be done -- indeed, should be done -- incrementally, and then integrated
Small (it's all relative re small) teams, co-located, personally committed, with risk hanging on every move.
A degree of local autonomy required to meet the challenges of the moment

Sounds like an environment that needs agility, if not agile methods, on a lot of the stuff.

Of course, there's "one big thing" in many traditional businesses:

You can't go around self-organizing (agile speak) willy-nilly! Especially in OGM, there are regulatory constraints everywhere, and safety-first doctrine hanging on every move.

So, yes, there is a big bureaucracy that watches over... it's certainly more intrusive than a coach or a servant-leader (more agile speak) (I'm sure they never heard this stuff in an oil field or an offshore rig!). In fact, I'll bet the rig boss is a force to be reckoned with!

What you can do, taking a page from Agile and Critical Chain methods, is