By Harold Kerzner, Ph.D., Senior Executive Director for Project Management, IIL
The intent of this blog is not to enter into the debate of whether or not Agile and Scrum are outgrowths of project management, but to show some of the similarities that between them that have increased their rate of success. There are three similarities that I will discuss.
Executive Understanding
Years ago, executives viewed techniques like project management as something that was nice to have rather than a necessity. As such, project management was seen as a fad that could disappear quickly. This resulted in limited support for any and all techniques like project management, except in a few project-driven industries where project management was a necessity.
The growth of project management, as well as Agile and Scrum, is largely due to a better understand of these techniques in the top floor of the building and the accompanying support. Consider the following words used by executives in describing project management:[1]
- An international, multicultural and global approach
- Allows us to capture best practices
- A technique for continuous improvement
- Selling customers on our project delivery process is just as important as selling them the deliverables
- The processes increase our credibility as a trusted partner
- Allows us to have repeatable success and accelerate the time to value for our customers
- The processes provide us with a competitive advantage
- The processes shorten our time-to-market
- The processes allow us to create a more integrated and agile organization
- The new processes allow us to eliminate unnecessary steps that we used before
- We can now provide our customers with end-to-end multiservice solutions
- We are now making decisions based upon facts and evidence rather than just guesses
These comments could very well reflect how executives see Agile and Scrum today rather than just project management. For many of the companies that speak these words, managing traditional, Agile or Scrum projects is more than just a typical career path. In these companies, once every few years, there is an assessment as to which four or five career paths are a necessity for the company’s growth over the next decade. In these companies, project management, Agile, and Scrum mastery are now seen as some of the four or five strategic competencies necessary for the firm to grow. The support for these processes now exists at the senior-most levels of management.
Trust
Within the last decade, significantly more companies have begun trusting project leaders to make both project and business-related decisions. For decades, many of the business-related decisions were made by the executives, project sponsors or business owners. Simply stated, there was an inherent fear that project leaders would begin making decisions that were reserved for the executive levels of management. Decision-making controls were put in place.
Today, we believe that we are managing our business by projects. Everything we do in the company can be regarded as some sort of project. As such, project leaders, whether in traditional project management, Agile or Scrum, are seen now as managing part of a business rather than merely projects, and are expected to make both project and business decisions, within certain limits of course.
Methodologies
When mistrust prevails, executives maintain control by developing rigid methodologies for managing projects. The methodologies are based upon rigid policies and procedures, and every project manager on every project must follow the same policies and procedures described within the methodology. While project leaders may be allowed to make “some” decisions, all critical decisions are made by the project sponsors or the executive levels of management.
Today, rigid methodologies are broken down into four components; forms, guidelines, templates and checklists. As a project leader, picture yourself walking through a cafeteria. On the shelves are all the forms, guidelines, templates and checklists that make up the methodology. Because of the trust placed in you, you have the right to select only those forms, guidelines, templates and checklists that you need for your project. This is a freedom that did not exist years ago.
Agile and Scrum activities, as well as many forms of traditional project management, use the term “framework” rather than methodology. Frameworks are flexible and allow the project leader and the team to select which of several tools will be used on a given project. There may be as many as 50 tools from which selections can be made.
In my opinion, the biggest reason why Agile and Scrum have been successful is because of the trust that senior management has placed in the hands of the project leaders, or Scrum Masters as they are called in Scrum. Accompanying this trust is the freedom to use only those portions of the framework that are appropriate to satisfy a particular client’s needs.
These three similarities are greatly enhancing our success rate on traditional, Agile and Scrum projects. Are there other similarities? Most certainly there are. But in the author’s opinion, these appear to be the most critical today.
[1] Adapted from Harold Kerzner, Project Management Best Practices: Achieving Global Excellence, IIL, and Wiley Co-publishers, 3rd edition, 2013; Pages 13-15
Harold Kerzner, Ph.D. is IIL’s Senior Executive Director for Project Management. He is a globally recognized expert on project management and strategic planning, and the author of many best-selling textbooks, most recently Project Management 2.0.
