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Agility, more than a trend in project management.

Posted by julioruizpmi on May. 26, 2019  /  PMI Dallas articles  /  Subscribe 4

The development of projects under agile methodologies is becoming an increasingly accepted trend in project management independent of the field of action or industry. Every day, professionals are trained and certified in the different credentials offered by the vocational training market such as PMI® certifications and other professional associations, which shows that agility is in force and will continue to strengthen over time. This article provides some insights of Agile and its adoption in organizations, and how this paradigm could have been used in a real project management experience.

The increase and the value of agility.

Everyday, we see in our social networks more professionals with certifications in LEAN methodologies or models, which are principles focused on eliminating tasks that do not add value in our projects. This is also why we frequently see certifications or terms such as PMI-ACP, Safe, (Scaled Agile Framework Enterprise), Kanban, DevOps, Scrum in different levels or types of Master, Product Owner and Developer certifications, P4MR (Agile Adaptation of the Inter-American Development Bank)) and other new levels or certifications that have grown similar to Team Coach, Enterprise Coach, Agile Leadership, Scrum Advanced, among others. The new Agile Guide of the PMI® is my recommendation among all the other methodologies and models.

The PMI®, in the February 2019 edition of PMI Today, reports that there are currently 24,998 certified professionals as PMI-ACP®. A year ago, there were only 19,925 people with the certificate. This is a 20% increase compared to 2018.

In terms of agility adoption, according to the PMI® 2018 Pulse of the Profession report, 71% of the organizations analyzed indicated that increasing agility allowed them to remain competitive. This means that these companies had the ability to quickly detect and adapt to external and internal changes to deliver the relevant results in a productive and effective way in terms of costs. Equally, according to the Pulse of the Profession 2018 report, 77% of the organizations had used Scrum for the development of their projects. However, this doesn't indicate that organizations have stopped using predictive methods (traditional/cascading) since at least 95% have used this type of methods.

On the Scrum side, the organizations have considered the Scrum Master certification of great value. According to the Scrum Alliance Association’s 2017-2018 Scrum State Report, 81% of surveyed companies agree that the Scrum Master certification improves practice and 91% of organizations offer some form of Scrum training. Likewise, there is a high trend where professionals take online training compared to traditional on-site training. Additionally, according to this report, the Scrum Master certification was considered one of the highest paid jobs in America according to 2017 reports and magazines including Business Insider and USA Today. Finally, 81% of organizations are recognizing the value of organizational agility as one of the most important characteristics for a successful organization.

A lesson learned where agility had to be a better option.

When I manage projects, I remember situations or lessons learned independent of the final result, whether it is done well or not. For example, I was the project manager of a digital transformation project which sought to train a certain number of people in digital skills. In this project, the scope was composed of four main deliverables: One e-learning platform, virtual courses for the platform, a training process and a national promoting process for the project.

For the first deliverable, we developed the delivery of the final product, however, the client was never happy and or satisfied, and their complaints were repetitive. In the case of the e-learning platform, we made an initial delivery of this product which was already built with an external supplier and our product satisfied all the technical specifications under the contract. However, the client did not see the value of such delivery because the product was delivered all at once.

What would have happened if the platform had been delivered in another way? I would have delivered this product using an agile life cycle according to the contract and needs of the client (user stories), developed the features (sprints), presented results of these adjustments to the client in an exclusive work session (sprint review) and obtained their feedback to identify improvements in a timely manner. I believe that one of the failures of the selected strategy is to assume that all the requirements of the client are met within a contract. As project managers, we must have the ability to know how to deliver our products to demonstrate the value to the client.

How to be agile in organizations?

First, it is important to establish the difference between the concepts of agility and being agile. I support the definitions given by the Scrum Alliance in the Forbes report, which indicates that agility is the property of an organization to detect and respond to market changes and continually deliver value to customers. While being agile, it is the organizational focus and mentality defined by the values and principles of the Agile Manifesto, often practiced through a frame of reference such as Scrum.

Likewise, it is important to be clear about the difference that exists between the characteristics of the life cycles of the projects in terms of requirements, activities, deliverables, and objectives. The Agile Guide of the PMI® clearly explains the difference between the different life cycles: Predictive, iterative, incremental and agile.

Understanding these concepts, in order to make the transition to agility, it is important to take into account the flexibility as a fundamental key to this process. Many organizations collide and fail in their process of adopting agility, that's why there are many recommendations and one of these is given by Jesse Fewell in his article Being agile with agile.

He said for starting a project aggressively also means being ready to solve issues as the team executes the project and using each issue as an opportunity to find a solution that improves the project process and hand he mentions practical examples to resolve issues like such as delegating the power of the owner of the product if it is very busy, training more people if an expert within the team is involved in more projects or, on creating of "collaboration hours" if the teamwork in different times zones and it's necessary a schedule to meet them together.

Also, Fewell highlights in his article, that organizations are not very flexible when the requirements are not clear or there isn’t a fully structured project plan. According to Fewell, the benefits of Agility is that projects can start with a plan that is not completely done.

Conclusion.

From my perspective, I consider that the fact of having implemented the agility in my project, would have allowed me to increase the satisfaction of the clients of my project. While I achieved the purpose, it was a little disappointing to achieve the goal and the final satisfaction. It is important to remember that agile methodologies do not seek to finish the project faster, but to deliver incremental deliveries of great value to clients to ensure satisfaction with the final product. The world is changing rapidly and in addition to agile models or approaches, disruptive technologies in project management are emerging rapidly, and as a project managers, we must anticipate and train ourselves to be more assertive in the selection of a correct life cycle.

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