What is Agile?!

Have you considered the meaning of the word agile?

As found in the Cambridge dictionary, agile is an adjective which describes the movement or mind in the following way: “able to move your whole body easily and quickly” and “able to think quickly in an intelligent way”.

Brief history of Agile

Currently agile concept is associated with the Agile manifesto from 2001, but the research shows that agile was part of the work of mathematicians and statisticians as early as 1930s: Walter Shewhart, physicist and engineer, introduced the Plan-Do-Study-Act cycles to improve products and processes and later on he mentored W. Edwards Deming who created the Plan-Do-Check-act cycle and used incremental approach in Japan while working for Toyota. Deming was hired by Toyota to train the management on lean, iterative and statistical methods for quality improvement in 1950  and later on he contributed extensively at the development of Toyota Production System (Rigby, Sutherland & Takeuchi, 2016).  Deming’s contribution on Toyota is so important that the Japanese Union of Scientists and Engineers created the Deming prize in 1950, while much later in 2005, the chairman of Toyota, Dr. Shoichiro Toyoda, accepting the American Society for Quality’s Deming Medal, celebrated the value of Deming’s teachings:  “ Every day I think about what he meant to us. Deming is the core of our management” (The Deming Institute, 2019).

Iterative and incremental approaches for building products were also explored at NASA and IBM Federal Systems Divisions as early as 1950s, respectively the NASA Project Mercury run between 1961-1963 was managed through half-day iterations and by adopting Extreme Programming, the continuous integration and test driven methods were also implemented (Abbas, Wills & Gravell, 2008).

Nevertheless the famous paper written by Dr. Winston W. Royce is providing an iterative  framework to manage software projects by describing five steps: program design comes first, document the design, do it twice (this steps introduces simulations and pilot programs), plan, control and monitor testing, and involve the customer: “it is important to involve the customer in a formal way so that he has committed himself at earlier points before final delivery” (Royce, 1970,  p.335). 

VDO and Agility

As discussed above, Agile has been integrated in Project management to achieve faster results, prioritize on customer needs, shorten the feedback loop and build flexibility around changes for quite some while now, so there is no surprise that the new definition of project success as proposed by Project Management Institute refers to one key aspect of agile, such the value: “delivered value that was worth the effort and the expense” (PMI, 2024).

Along with the value delivered to customer, Agile has also improved the communication with customer, time of delivery or decision-making process, leading to empowered and happier employees, while the digitalization has been sped up (Jadoul, Mahadevan & Risch, 2021).

In this compelling environment, Project management offices also go through a transformation in their effort of providing project and program governance aligned to strategy to increase productivity, return of investment, delivery of competitive products faster to the market.

Bridging the vision of the C-level executives and the teams who are turning this vision into reality, the PMOs are not only paving the new way of work, but also empowering the employees and keeping them engaged, while setting the pace through collaborative roadmaps, processes built bottom-up to facilitate collaboration and building the bigger picture of efficient organization operating with the customer needs in sight.

As such we see the growing rate of Value Delivery offices (VDO) which are mainly concerned with the delivery of value in Agile environments and the development of Agile capabilities and mindsets in organizations, mentoring Agile roles (Scrum master, Product owners) to be more efficient in their roles, while adapting to customers’ needs (PMI, 2021).

Through the lens of value delivery, PMO structures may have different responsibilities:

• to foster the value delivery and goal-oriented capabilities: PMOs ensure that project teams, vendors, suppliers understand, aquire and apply project management capabilities while adapting processes to each project to deliver quality and value;
• to maintain the „big picture” perspective: PMOs need to develop and prioritize the portfolio around the business strategy and they also need to educate their teams and management on best practices of prioritization and maxizing benefits from projects. The KPIs and metrics used for projects are in need of alignment with the business objectives and overall organizations’ vision.
• to implement continuous improvement, organizational change management: Any action taken by PMO is intertwined with organization’s processes, people behaviour and expectations so organizational change management plays a crucial role in establishing successful PMOs structures, hence the PMOs need to understand, implement and maintain best practices in OCM so that the value of their work is perceived correctly by both employees and management.

The Agile transformation in PMOs

As the demand for Project management professionals is raising and expected to reach 2.3 million people each year by 2030, PMOs need to posseses skills to drive change and deliver strategic value (PMI, 2023) while navigating the challenges from the past years (pandemic, unstable economic situations, war consequences).

In the Job trends report from 2024, the most sought after power skills for Project management professionals are the agility and resilience, thus confirming the need to flexibility and adaptability to handle the current multitutde of challenges in the business environment.

PMOs may need to handle two different scenarios on how to adopt Agile mindset within organizations.

The first scenario may be that the organization already has Agile teams working according to Agile frameworks and their ways of working need to be aligned to other structures of the organization not (yet) operating in Agile way, hence the PMOs need to bridge these different structures of an organization.

The second scenario may be that the organization is willing to adopt Agile and therefore an entire transformation of processes, ways of working, communication between departments, change in the role and functions is needed and the best drivers for such transformation could be the PMO.

And such Agile PMOs differentiate themselves from the other types of PMOs through the activities taken to support the adoption of Agile principles and mindset throughout the organization:

• provide a governance for the projects around Agile concepts, KPIs and metrics to facilitate value delivery;
• educate teams on Agile frameworks and different roles within Agile teams;
• collaborate with C-level executives to drive strategies to enhance the Agile adoption in the organization;
• align the strategic objectives with the projects goals and selection of projects, build a collaborative culture around Agile principles, flexibility and adaptability.

The best way to implement an Agile transformation is to implement Agile at the level of organization rather than just at the level of departments or teams (McKinsey, 2023).

Each transformation for Agile adoption may have two distinct phases: one phase to establish the new Agile way or working and the supporting processes so that teams understand the goal and adapt to this new operating model and a second phase corresponding to improvement and maturing the way Agile is understood, practiced as part of the organizational culture.

For both of these phases, the involvement of leaders is crucial and since the successful PMOs need to build a direct reporting line with the C-level executives (PMI, 2013) so the Agile transformations need the early support of leaders.

In order to foster Agile practices and mindset, leaders need to possess the following skills and capabilities (McKinsey, 2023):

• leaders need to evolve new mindsets and behaviours, creating a culture that supports collaboration and innovation, providing a better nderstading of employees’ purpose and potential;
• leaders need to support the new way of working by allowing teams to be autonomous and to take decisions, while being accountable for the results in front of customers;
• leaders must enable the Agile culture in their organization and communicate a shared goal for the entire organization so the employees’ may feel empowered and capable to thrive in such culture.

Agile PMOs play a crucial role in establishing the Agile culture since they represent the bridge between the teams and executives and in order to achieve these, the Agile PMOs need to align with the C-level management on key drivers for the Agile transformation (McKinsey, 2023): 

• purpose and mandate answering the “why” of the transformation, ranging from building new capabilities to finding more efficient ways of collaboration and integrating best practices;
• role of the Agile PMO and direct reporting line with the CEO for a better alignment on purpose and support from top management;
• responsibilities of the Agile PMO and possible Agile roles to cover within the organization: Agile coach to ensure teams receive the education on Agile principles and values, change manager to guide the organization through the transformation, delivery managers to transform roadmaps into products, methodology owners to continuously improve and refine the agile practices.

Nevertheless for a successful Agile transformation, PMOs need to adopt Agile practices at in key dimensions of the organizations and work with the top management on how to successfully drive these towards better results.

McKinsey proposes a model to capture these required changes in all 5 dimensions defining an organization: strategy, structure, people, technology, processes.

In some organizations, strategy is sometimes visible only at the top level, but in Agile organizations, the strategy needs to be cascaded to each individual so they can feel motivated to contribute to the success of this strategy, give feedback and communicate with their management on improvements or process changes to support the strategy. Agile enhances this type of collaboration and the PMOs are the agents managing this communication which is more inclusive, interactive and less formal.

One other important dimension that requires adaptation to grow the Agile practices is the structure of the company: Agile is promoting the autonomous, empowered teams capable to lead their activities end-to-end and build fruitful collaboration with customers. Top management needs to support their employees, provide them the means to execute their work and make them accountable for their work and results, but without assigning a blame culture. Again PMOs are the main players in setting this environment and guide the teams through this new way of working while opening a direct line of communication with the top management for them. 

The people dimension is the most important in any organization and such the top management, middle management and PMOs are the supporters of the Agile transformation while growing their own skills in Agile principles, facilitation techniques, building trust with their teams, transparent communication. The teams are empowered to take their own decisions, own the product lifecycle end-to-end and develop in key areas to support their own development and the organization.

In an Agile organization, processes are light-weight, bottom-up and designed for efficiency in order to facilitate the collaboration across various departments. Top management along with the PMOs need to assess the efficiency of processes, their maturity level and adoption across organization to support the Agile transformation and make the changes that reflect this new of working.

The technology, nonetheless, is playing an important role in an Agile transformation, especially in the digital and remote era, where teams are geographically dispersed: teams need to make decision faster, in a transparent way, have a direct communication channel with the customers and to capture their feedback, so the systems are mainly data-driven and predictive.

To sum it up, the Agile PMOs may face challenges in their journey to implement Agile transformations across organizations, but the success of such programs depend on the alignment between PMOs and the top management of the organizations. Both entities would be required to sharpen their abilities to translate strategic decisions into actionable tasks for employees, while setting up a culture of collaboration, transparency and empowered teams where individuals receive the support to learn and apply best Agile practices in their daily activities for building successful products and delivering value to end users and customers.

 

References:

1. Cambridge dictionary https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/
2. Rigby, D., Sutherland, J. & Takeuhci, H. (2016) The Secret history of Agile innovation, Harvard business review https://hbr.org/2016/04/the-secret-history-of-agile-innovation
3. The Deming Institute https://deming.org/reflections-on-the-fabric-of-the-toyota-production-system/
4. Abbas, N., Wills, G. & Gravell, A. (2008) Historical Roots of Agile Methods: Where Did “Agile Thinking” Come From? Conference: International Conference on Agile Processes and Extreme Programming in Software Engineering
5. Royce, W.W., Managing the Development of Large Software Systems 1970,Proceedings, IEEE WESCON p. 1-9.
6. PMI (2024) Maximizing Project Success: elevating the impact of the Project Profession. Elevating the impact on our world
7. Jadoul, Q., Mahadevan, D.,  & Risch, P. (2021) How Agile can power the frontline excellence, McKinsey https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/how-agile-can-power-frontline-excellence
8. PMI (2023) Global Project management: Job trends 2023
9. PMI (2024) Global Project management: Job trends 2024
10. McKinsey (2023) https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/mckinsey-explainers/what-is-agile
11. Project management institute. (2013). PMO Frameworks https://www.pmi.org/learning/thought-leadership/pulse/pmo-frameworks