AGILE : More Than Just SCRUM
As a Senior Program Manager, I spend a significant portion of my workday engaged with project and program management. During the 15+ years I’ve been in this profession I’ve encountered a variety of approaches to managing projects. It’s especially interesting to me how these approaches rise in popularity and may become considered the “new perfect way”. One of the current popular approaches is “AGILE”. I’m glad to see that aspects of this software development process are being considered valuable, but I have a few concerns / caveats: (1) AGILE is actually a collective term for several somewhat different approaches and (2) it’s not suited for all projects or teams.
In terms of exploring my first point, AGILE may refer to any of the following PM methodologies:
- Agile Modeling / Unified Process
- Dynamic Systems Development Method (DSDM)
- Essential Unified Process
- Extreme Programming (XP)
- Feature Driven Development
- LEAN
- Prince2
- Scrum
- Velocity Curve Management
I would also add that principles from Rapid Application Development (RAD) and even 6Sigma belong in this list. Most people use AGILE interchangeably with Scrum, which is probably the best-known approach within AGILE.
To address my second point, in subsequent articles I will go into the characteristics of each methodology, along with providing some guidelines for identifying AGILE-friendly projects. In the mean time, keep those comments and questions coming!
I suggest a short trip to visit the Agile Manifesto: http://agilemanifesto.org/ and the associated 12 Principles of Agile Software http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html.
Agile depends on a couple of core truths to be successful:
1) Building and nurturing strong relationships across all of the relationships throughout the business
2) Developing a strong trust between team members
If these are missing, then core philosophies of Agile (interactions, collaboration, responding to change) will fail to add the value necessary to make the process truly “Agile”.