Month: August 2013

Agile Project Management, Leadership, Lean, Metrics, Planning, Risk Management, Teams

9 Ways PMOs Can Help Agile Projects

It may not always be apparent but the goals of the Project Management Office (PMO) and agile teams are well aligned. Both groups want to get to the same destination: namely successful projects and happy stakeholders. However, things often come adrift as soon as the best direction to travel in to get there is discussed. The PMO might expect lots of planning and some documentation to confirm everyone understands the approach. An agile project team might want to build some proof-of-concept models to test feasibility and get confirmation of understanding. So, very quickly the two groups can disengage and have difficulty generating alignment again. This is one reason agile teams don’t always see the Project Management Office (PMO) as a […]

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Agile Project Management, Books, Events, Games, Leadership, Lean, Metrics, Planning, PMI-ACP, Risk Management, Teams, Travel

Next PMI-ACP Exam Prep Class with Mike Griffiths

My next PMI-ACP Exam Preparation course will be November 18, 19, 20 in Calgary, Alberta. The course will be capped to 15 people for better Q&A and will take place at historic Fort Calgary which is close to downtown on 9th Avenue and has free parking. Since I am offering the class in my home town I have no travel costs and can offer the course for a discounted price of $1,290 for 3 days including lunches and snacks, my book, color printed workbook, sample exam questions, and USB stick of additional materials. (You can deduct another $60 if you already have a copy of my PMI-ACP Prep book). The course has a 100% pass rate and uses Turning Technologies […]

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Agile Project Management, Books, Leadership, Lean

Methodology Wars – Contradictory Constraints or More Options?

Some rifts are occurring in AgileLand – a world supposedly driven by cooperation, trust and appreciative inquiry! Debate is arising about first generation agile methods (XP, Scrum) and newer upstarts like Kanban and the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). Perhaps because market shifts carry training and consulting revenue with them, but a few people don’t seem very happy, as evidenced by some recent blog posts. Ken Schwaber’s UnSAFe at Any Speed article describe SAFe as a RUP based dinosaur focussing on processes and tools rather than individuals and Interactions. Ian Mitchel summarises the Scrum vs SAFe debate well in his piece Method Wars and speaks to his own SAFe experiences. David Anderson wrote a post on how Kanban is Anti SAFe […]

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