What an agile guy can learn from the Project Management Insitute.

The last ninety days have created a significant challenge in my life. My contract expired with a client, and while looking for the next opportunity, I took project management classes to become a PMP. I have mentioned that being an agile professional in a PMP class feels dissonant, but it will make me a better coach, scrum master, and product owner. Many of us in the Agile movement can learn a few things from the Project Management Insitute.  

The publication of the Agile Manifesto revitalized the software business. Projects were bloated and beauractic. Many business processes also still need to deliver the promised value. Agile practitioners wanted to change the nature of work and build great things. The desire to improve work and make organizations run more efficiently created significant friction among the managerial class, raised under different rules. Agile also did an excellent job exposing bad bosses in organizations. Pushback was a natural result. These reformers are now being held to the same standards they preached. Business leaders will cut them loose if they can't show their worth. It is a bitter pill to swallow when an ineffectual leader uses standards they never accepted for themselves to conduct downsizing to save their petty skins.

At first, I accepted this trend as a way to purge poor agile practitioners from the practice. Soon, it was clear that this was a backlash by traditional business leaders against what they saw as a threat. Capital One and the layoff of the Agile Center of Excellence was the first of many business moves that focused on hurting the growth of the Agile reformation. Corporate project cancellations swept through the industry, and I was caught in the resulting downturn for management consultants.

If anything, people in the Agile movement are resilient. Soon, we began to band together and ask how to add value to organizations and inspire change. The word I kept hearing from business leaders was trust and delivery. If the Agile reformation is to succeed, business leaders must trust us to deliver value to customers and shareholders. Any change must have a valid purpose. Instead of burning down the organization, Agile professionals must work within the constraints under which everyone in the business operates. One of the most significant constraints is the need for more trust in many organizations. It explains why numerous processes and procedures are in place to ensure that work gets done with acceptable quality. It is imperative when dealing with budgets and the fickle needs of the marketplace.

The Project Management Institute comes into this picture as it provides various tools used across numerous business environments to manage projects. Instead of rejecting Agile, the Institute has created ways to incorporate agile working methods into projects with more traditional ways of handling schedules and budgets. It was eye-opening and allowed me to put myself in the position of the people I often looked at with a sense of contempt. It was the ultimate revelation that we both wanted the same things but understood how to achieve them differently.

I understand the importance of stakeholder management, the necessity of a change control board or steering committee, and keeping track of earned value. I am grateful to the Project Management Institute for giving me that insight. Now, I understand how to build trust with business leaders and show them that I know how to deliver projects in a way that is easy for business leaders to understand. It was a difficult lesson, but I have given myself the space to make it happen over the last ninety days. Agile and traditional project management techniques are not enemies. Instead, they can be used together in an eclectic approach to ensure that work gets done and that business people trust the Agile professionals in the organization.

It is a challenging but necessary lesson to make me a better professional and leader.

Until next time.