Organizational Attitude Toward Changing the Plan

Perhaps the primary difference between classic and agile PM is in the organization's attitude toward changing the primary project plan via contingency plans. Classic PM expects the primary (i.e., initial) project plan to be pretty good. Functional areas plan their resources and other activities around the primary project plan and hardly give notice to the contingency plans, if they even exist. Thus, changes to the initial plan are not usually welcome news to management. Logically, management accepts the changes, but there is often the undercurrent of judgment that the project manager did not do his job well enough up-front, and that that is the real cause of the change.

An environment that implicitly views changes in the primary project plan as negative creates inherent delays in dealing with the issues that prompted the changes.

In the agile environment, we don't expect to stay with the original plan for the course of the project. We expect that the primary plan will point us in the right direction, but that course changes will be required to navigate the uncertain landscape (see Figure 8-4). Thus, when the project manager executes a contingency plan (i.e., diverts from the primary pathway), management is not surprised. There is more support, there is less questioning, and there is minimal delay in approving these key decisions.

Figure 8-4: Project course changes in an agile versus classic environment.

In most companies, major project changes are a blood pressure– raising exercise that is frowned upon. Since there is a negative connotation associated with these course changes, project managers, sponsors, and technical leaders alike are reluctant to champion them until it's too late. When these course changes do get under way, they're usually frantic and frustrating for the project team, creating more incentive to sweep the next one under the proverbial rug. It is for all of these reasons that course changes on projects are usually not as effective as they could be. To be successful, we need to break away from the stigma that change is bad, or is the result of bad planning. Creating, communicating, and discussing appropriate risk management plans is an effective way to do this. Creating them demonstrates a forward-looking project management perspective. Communicating them tends to pull in the interested stakeholders. And discussing them generates the energy and support necessary to make the plans happen.

Agile Strategy

Keep your team looking forward by working with them to develop network diagram–based contingency plans, and then communicate and discuss these with both your team and external stakeholders.

Agile PM calls for any number of possible business scenarios to be put in front of the project manager. As discussed previously in Chapter 3, you need to make the project the business. Visualize the benefits of getting to market first and the downfalls of coming in second. Let the project manager combine her intimate knowledge of the project with the business realities, and let her imagine how she will lead the team and company to success, including how she will manage risk. Encourage the use of appropriate mitigation and contingency planning. Get management sign-off on the risk pathways, and let the project manager run with them. Finally, try to remove the attitude roadblocks associated with making changes to the primary plan.