Agile Project Management ... It's Project Management ... with Dancing Shoes

Some long-time practitioners rightly are concerned that the new emphasis on agile methods might erode project management discipline. Our take is to think of it as "project management plus" - an addition, never a replacement.

If you’ve seen the April issue of PM Network, you may have noticed our PM College ad celebrating the launch of our Agile Project Management courses.

These courses not only provide a launch pad to the practitioner hoping to achieve PMI’s new Agile certification, but they give companies a practical, focused way to introduce agility into existing programs in a sensible, scalable way.

We’ve grown up in and with the project management discipline and we’ve seen the results when companies apply that discipline to execute strategies and meet objectives. So while we recognize the need for more
agile responses to a changing world, we aren’t throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Traditional project management tools, methods, and discipline are the foundation of our profession. It’s similar to music: first you study the classics, then you can learn to improvise.

Our concept of “an agile future” is described more fully in our 2008 book on the topic. But recently, research interviews of the 28% of PMO leaders who indicated they were using agile PM methods in their PMO indicated a strong trend. Due to the changeability of markets, objectives, priorities and staffing, PMO leaders   increasingly want their teams to be ready to turn on a dime. That’s just the way business is today. As an example, we learned that the majority of companies responding to our interview request regarded merger and acquisition as their primary expansion strategy. One PMO director remarked: “You can’t plan ahead for these types of initiatives. Sometimes we don’t know about an acquisition until it’s released to the press.”

Because our program encourages teams to learn an agile approach together, using issues from the projects they are currently working on, it is hands-on experiential learning at its best. Wondering if agile may be right for the challenges you are facing? Our new white paper, PMOs Move Toward Agility, may be of interest.