Month: August 2010

Agile Project Management, Teams

Correct but not Sufficient

Project management has matured with many professional organizations, certifications, and bodies of knowledge, yet we still hear of numerous project failures. What has gone wrong; is project management broken? I don’t think it is broken in terms of any of it being fundamentally wrong, but certainly flawed in the view that good project management ensures success. You see, what project management with all its plans, estimates and reporting omits is a good recognition for the huge impact people play in projects. Consider for a moment the roadblocks we encounter on projects, the most common and toughest to resolve are people related. Yet the classic project management guides focus more on Earned Value than Influencing, more on KPI’s than Knowledge Transfer, […]

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Agile Project Management, Books, Events

PMBOK 5 – Accepted

Well, what an on / off / on-again relationship this has turned out to be. After explaining how I was rejected from the PMI PMBOK v5 initiative previously, I received news this week that I have been accepted onto the content creation group for the next version of the PMBOK v5 Guide. I am not sure if this is a result of me expressing my concern to the PMI that the roughly 60% of PMI members who are engaged in IT likely want some better agile project management guidance and there seemed no one on the committee to provide that. Or simply the ripple down selection of more candidates inthe content creation categories.  Anyway, I am grateful for the opportunity […]

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Agile Project Management, Planning, Teams

5 Things to Think about After Stand-up

Following my post on 5 Things to Think About Before Stand-Up, it is only right that I follow it up with the 5 things I think about after Stand-up. 1) Issues – Anything that was reported as a blocker, impediment, or issue to making progress needs removal or avoidance. Agile employs a “constraints view” of production systems similar to Eli Goldratt’s Theory of Constraints where the role of the manager is to remove impediments from the process. The impediments or blocker issues reported at stand-up should become the project managers To-Do list to ensure their resolution. 2) Velocities Deviations – We know the task estimates so when a 2 day task has taken 4 days and is still going with no end […]

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Agile Project Management, Planning, Teams

5 Things to Think About Before Stand-Up

Stand-up meetings are familiar to agile teams and as the saying goes “familiarity breeds contempt” or at least complacency. It is all too easy to drift into a daily routine of holding a stand-up meeting without getting the full set of benefits out of it. So this led me to consider: what are the 5 most important things to think about as a project manager before stand-up? (If you are using Scrum and have a Scrummaster role that is distinct from the project manager, then I would suggest these are things the Scrummaster should be considering) 1) A View of the WIP – A view of the work in progress is critical to understanding the items reported from the team. If you […]

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