On May 15 I presented on “Decomposing large programs into agile projects” and “Mapping the PMI Processes to Agile Best Practices” at the Calgary APLN meeting. I have uploaded the slides in PDF format and also a zip file containing the hyperlinked Process Groups / Knowledge Areas mapping to Agile practices. (You will need to unzip the PowerPoint slide and Word files into the same directory for the hyperlinks to work correctly.)

Calgary APLN May 15 Slides.pdf

PMI Agile Mappings.ZIP

The timing of the presentation was very close to Michele Sliger and  Stacia Broderick’s release of their new book “The Software Project Manager's Bridge to Agility”. I was hoping we could give a copy of their book away as a door prize, but the book was available about a week too late. However, I received a copy this weekend (thanks Michele, Stacia) it looks good and I look forward to reading it. We also have some copies on order as door prizes for future meetings.

I recently returned from the Agile Alliance Board meeting in Boston. Three times a year we meet as the board to review progress, plan Agile Alliance programs, conferences and member services. This latest meeting was my favourite. Not only did we get lots done in the two day period, but the process (mainly open space) worked really well and rather than committee work being frustratingly slow, it progressed well, and I came away energized by the whole experience!
We had many good discussions including:

Conference 2009 Update – Next year’s agile conference will most likely by in Chicago, at the Hyatt downtown hotel. Options are being kept open and the venue would work well with between 1200-2400 attendees.

  <Todd Little explains the dynamics of conference venue selection>

Click the "Contine Reading..." link below for more updates.

At the next Calgary APLN meeting I will be discussing how the PMI framework maps onto Agile best practices. Yikes, what brought me to this!

Well, back in October at the Calgary APLN planning meeting we asked attendees what they would like to hear about this year. People made suggestions and voted on the topics, the top 5 were:

1) Using Agile on distributed teams
2) Team collaboration / motivation / accountability
3) How to decompose large programs into agile projects
4) Mapping the PMI Framework to Agile best practices
5) Fitting agile into the constraints imposed by the business

The first two have been covered; last November Jane Robarts spoke about her first hand experience of managing distributed agile teams and in February Gerard Meszaros spoke about team collaboration. Both were excellent talks and we have an experience report based on topic 5 “Fitting agile into the constraints imposed by the business” scheduled for June.

This leaves “3) How to decompose large programs into agile projects” and “4) Mapping PMI Framework to Agile best practices”.

Not surprisingly, we had no volunteers for the PMI to agile mapping so on May 15 I have the dubious pleasure of presenting on these two topics; weaving the risk reduction concepts of smaller, more agile projects with the connects-and-disconnects of PMI to agile processes.

When I saw the topic “Mapping the PMI Framework to agile best practices” my first thoughts were; “Don’t” and ‘Why would you want to?” it seemed akin to mapping horse-and-cart operating tips to car driving tips. They are just different and have divergent philosophies.

However, I can see that asking for mappings helps provide a familiar context for new knowledge. It also reassures people that everything in our old process is covered-off in the new process and there are no gaps. So, to help provide context, but not to imply equivalence, mapping the PMI framework to agile methods will be explored with the connection points and gaps identified. I will be careful to emphasize the viewpoint shifts in addition to the process differences.

If you can, please join us for what I hope will be an informative and entertaining presentation. Spaces are limited so register in advance to reserve your place. www.calgaryapln.org. For those that cannot attend in person, I will post the slides and resources here after the presentation.