Many Agilist writers and methodology creators make strong assumptions about organizational culture for Agile approaches to be successful. I’ve described some examples of these assumptions in The Lake Wobegon Assumption and Scrum applicability by project characteristics and reference Becoming Agile by Greg Smith & Ahmed Sidkey as a prime example. Read more…
It seems anecdotally accepted in many places in the literature that among software development methodology choices, Agile is better than “waterfall.” Agile enthusiasts often describe waterfall as rigid, wasteful, demoralizing, and old-fashioned. Rarely, if ever, do these writers provide supporting data for these reported qualities but rather, simply assume that Read more…
Years ago, a colleague taught a product management course through our local university extension program. A feature of the course was that they convened a panel of product and project managers as an ask-us-anything resource for their students. One of my favorite episodes serving on that panel was when one Read more…
In the Seattle job market, there are at least 3 different interpretations of the Program Manager title. Two are common in IT and software products companies, although one of those appears outside those industries as well, and the third appears mostly in connection with health and human services, marketing and Read more…
I have previously considered change management and its general application to software projects. Following the principles of pragmatic project management set forth at the beginning of this blog, I have found that the use of change management can be adapted and applies in a wide variety of situations. I have Read more…
If we hypothesize that neither Scrum nor Agile are project management, then what are they and what is their relationship to project management? Answering these questions requires defining several terms. I have previously defined Agile as sets of values and principles governing software product development methods given in a document Read more…
Both basic Scrum and 2nd generation approaches like SAFe and Smith/Sidky[1] make a number of assumptions about the type of work, team composition, location and stability, project governance and other factors. Examples include the expectation of a stable, experienced, co-located team of about 7 members, daily availability of a single Read more…
When Scrum rituals are used without a deep understanding of their purpose, they can degenerate into hollow activities done for the purpose of following the form, but without creating their expected benefits. For example, I have seen many sprint retrospectives following the form precisely that produced nothing more substantive than Read more…
There is a lot to agree with in Leon Tranter’s Myths of agile: “there’s no documentation in agile”. And yet there is a new myth inside the debunking of the original myth. Among the many fine arguments supporting the use of documentation in Agile projects and advocating using Agile philosophy Read more…
While a popular conception is that Agile methodology opposes the creation of documentation, most mature Agilists disagree, including the originator of the Scrum approach. In Sutherland’s OOPSLA ’95 paper, the first to define Scrum, he describes a robust design and documentation phase called the ‘pre-game’ occurring prior to the beginning Read more…