LEARNING
commentators and researchers
have also asked whether this most
contemporary vision of agile project
management can be adapted and
used in business more widely. Just
as agile project management has
pitched itself against more
traditional ‘waterfall’ techniques,
leadership based on agile principles
and values has been seen as a
similar foil for traditional top-down,
command-and-control, business-
knows-best approaches to running
organisations.
As these debates continue, with
almost cult-like status afforded to
a variety of alternative approaches
and systems, how can leaders
navigate the hype and focus on the
principles that will add most value,
especially in less obviously agile
environments, such as traditional
manufacturing or the public sector?
Agile project management is
most of ten compared and
contrasted with more traditional
waterfall techniques and systems,
such as Critical Path Analysis,
Prince2, Six Sigma or the use of the
humble Gantt chart. Waterfall-
based systems follow a sequential,
linear process, which consists of
several discrete phases or a critical
path. No phase begins until the prior
phase is complete, and phases do
not overlap. Proper planning and
documentation are a must; project
requirements and roles must be
clear upfront, and everyone
involved in a project must be well
aware of those requirements.
P ro d u c t d e f i n i t i o n a n d
processes are stable. It’s a
methodology based on the
assumption that time spent at the
beginning of a project outlining the
design and requirements will allow
the actual project to flow fast and
smooth, like a waterfall, when it
comes to implementation. Think
Abraham Lincoln’s famous advice
that, if he were given six hours to
cut down a tree, he would spend
the first four sharpening the axe.
Like waterfall, agile project
management is an approach rather
than a system or technique in its
own right, although plenty of
structured project-management
tools and systems — such as Scrum,
72 // Future Talent
At its essence,
agile is about
developing
a project as
an iterative
process
rather than a
pre-set plan
Kanban or Design Thinking — have
agile principles at their core.
At its essence, agile is about
developing a project as an iterative
process rather than a pre-set plan.
Execution is integrated with planning,
so that working prototypes become
a means of marking project progress
and of testing — and further iteration.
Flexibility, change and adaptation
are embraced rather than avoided.
It involves a relentless focus on
customers and, crucially, requires
high levels of commitment and
collaboration from motivated,
self-regulating and cross-functional
teams. Agile practitioners generally
see the commercial environment
as being far more complex and
unpredictable than planning to cut
down a tree. They are more likely to
take heed of Mike Tyson’s sage
warning that “everyone has a plan
until they get punched in the mouth”.
I
t’s easy to see why more
traditional waterfall-style
command-and-control
management structures
are under pressure. Bureaucracy and
hierarchy seem increasingly at odds
with the fleet-of-foot world of tech
L