I was looking back at some prior essays on Agile and came across the April 2012 PMNetwork magazine. Specifically I was attracted (again) to page 58 for an interview with some agilists on the state of the practice.
Agile project management embraces both “doing” agile and “being” agile—and the latter is the hardest. It defines a different management style: one of facilitation, collaboration, goal- and boundary-setting, and flexibility.
... agile is changing the way organizations measure success, moving from the traditional iron triangle of scope, schedule and cost to an agile triangle of value, quality and constraints.
Doing agile and being agile: Good insight, but these ideas are certainly agile but not unique to Agile.
- To my way of thinking, all enlightened project managers have been doing this all along, or they should have been.
- Fixed price, for a fixed scope, in a fixed schedule is ok if you're in "we've done it before" or some kind of production, but not if you are trying to cure cancer, etc.
It's the best the team can do, with the resources committed, towards achieving project goals that will ultimately lead to business success.
Who says what's "best"? In the Agile space, that is a collaboration of the project team, the sponsor, and whoever holds the customer/user's proxy. That's the key:
- The customer/user--through their proxy--gets an input to the value proposition because they may use or buy the outcomes, but the customer/user has no money at stake; it's other people's money, OPM
- The sponsor also gets an input because it is their money at stake. (The sponsor may be a contracting office, as in the public sector)
- The project team gets an input because they are in the best place to judge feasibility.
That's why I associate myself with best value: It's OPM with metrics that align with a value proposition leading not only to project success but to business success as well.
Buy them at any online book retailer!
