Agile Desire

It is a hot summer at my place, so I think Today we deserve a lighter topic.

After more than 15 years I have been exposed to agile projects it still amazes me how many organizations Today complain they are not agile enough. Project-wise of course. I mostly work with either solution suppliers delivering IT solutions to its customers or for business companies themselves who manage a portfolio of projects and programs, and more than often those projects are delivered by external suppliers. You can call my experience both sides of the barricade, but always IT solutions, and mostly delivered on commercial terms. I noticed each time I start a new project with my new customer organization, I can hear its voice from management '…we don't do enough agile projects in our organization…'. It almost sounds like those organizations believe having more agile projects in their portfolio means higher maturity of project organization. And delivering projects old fashion (scope, milestones) is not cool anymore. Many of those organization create yearly goals for their PMO organizations to have more agile projects than previous year. In this case, this is really getting interesting. In fact, my experience is a number of agile projects in large business organization IT portfolio does not exceed 30%. Why after so many years of agile methodologies existing on this planet and its vast acceptance and adoption in multiple forms around the world, so many companies complain they don't have enough agile projects in their portfolio? Because there is no way they can have more.

Not so Agile projects

To go agile or not is determined by type of projects and company culture on delivery. What I mean certain project can be delivered as agile and other can not. There is no choice: we will deliver this one agile.

Let me give a few examples. Any integration or digital transformation project are hardly delivered as pure agile. You can try, but good luck. The other type of project is a product spin off IT system adjustments. They are mostly short, maximum few weeks, project. The scope is clear and makes little sense to create agile – if contracted externally. However, I have seen companies making those as agile as internal continuous development. They are closed to real Dev Ops delivery model.

Other are migrations projects. If there is a platform or system change or upgrade. All go mainly as milestones. Another example is all analysis, studies, requirements gathering projects. They all are fixed scope, time and cost deliveries. In most organizations, I have also met compliance projects. Like making the existing platform (like trading) compliant after Brexit, or to GDPR regulations. These are not agile delivery. The other big factor not going agile is procurement rules. If project is outsourced and you have to issue RFP to get competitive scope pricing , 90% chances this is not going to be agile.

Conclusion

So, is there a room for any agile project? Yes, but much fewer than organizations would like. Mainly own systems development, providing if we use external companies, they only delivery man-days and skills. There are also some agile declared projects, but when you look ta them this is "agilely powdered" waterfall delivery, because sponsors want to know budget scope and so on. Yes, there is a lot of mimicking. But there is nothing wrong with this. At the end what matters is "project delivered" not methodology it used. By the way I am big fan of hybrid approaches. Taking best from many drawers to fit the purpose.

Have a good agile delivery.

 

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