Agile methods are powerful approaches that bring many benefits to how we undertake project work. However, they are not immune to misuse or failure. The following list of 5 common pitfalls are often seen in organizations switching to agile. “To be forewarned is to be forearmed” as they say, so look out for these pitfalls and if you see any developing, a side step can be useful to help avoid the mistakes of others.

1) Agile as a silver bullet - Yes, agile methods can save time, increase business buy-in, and create a high quality product, but they are no silver bullet. They will not bend space or time and allow you to deliver more work that is possible within the constraints of limited time, budget, and resources.

Deciding to switch a doomed project to an agile approach will not make it succeed. You may fail faster, or at least discover realistic progress indicators (velocity) earlier than with a traditional approach, but unachievable goals will remain unachievable. By all means use an agile approach to salvage a core set of valuable functionality from a failing project, but don’t expect agile methods to miraculously make the impossible possible.

2) Agile as an excuse for no discipline – Contrary to some people’s beliefs, agile methods do not abandon discipline and jump straight to coding without the need for plans and estimates. Agile methods involve many high discipline activities and techniques like Test Driven Development, Wideband Delphi estimation, and bi-weekly iteration planning and estimation sessions take a lot of discipline.

If team members are pushing back on estimating or cannot explain the release plan, these are warning signs that they may not be following the agile practices. Instead they could be using agile’s preference for low ceremony documents as an excuse for avoiding doing the disciplined activities that make up each of the agile methods. Hold them accountable, ask for their estimates and request their retrospective findings.

Why so much Communication?
“We work with bits not atoms”. This phrase speaks to the distinction of IT projects from physical construction. Our tools and processes manipulate ideas, concepts, and models, not steel, concrete, or plastic. Given the intangible nature of software, it is no surprise we need more focus on communications, collaboration and information sharing to keep everyone informed and aligned towards a common goal.

Agile methods recognize this increased need for communication and provide a variety of tools and checkpoints to help avoid the classic project mistakes of mismatched expectations and confusion. In the absence of a visible physical product to point at and measure, we need to be constantly confirming understandings and aligning ideas against increments of the final solution. Otherwise we get the “That’s not what I asked for” or “That’s not what I need” of yesteryear’s IT projects.

Why So Often?
Daily Stand-Up meetings are common on agile projects, not because IT folk are more forgetful than other workers and need to discuss work goals and results more often; but instead because the potential for misunderstanding is higher when working on novel, hard to describe problems. Stand-Up meetings keep the team informed of work and issues that change quickly and also provide a forum to raise obstacles to progress so they can quickly removed before they unduly impact performance.

Why So Many Demo’s?
Software projects typically contain a lot of uncertainty. You would have to be clairvoyant to accurately predict the final business requirements of an organization 18 months out into the future in today’s rapidly changing business environment. So agile methods accept some requirements are likely to change and rather than have a change control process that should really be called a “Change Suppression Process” they welcome new ideas and then seek priority within a backlog of requested features. Obviously changes cost money, but if it is more important than some previously discussed item, then why not incorporate it and deliver some late breaking competitive advantage?

Agile methods promote the frequent demonstration of software for a couple of reasons. One, to get feedback and make sure it is fit for business purpose. Quite often it is not until we see something that we can better articulate what we really need, now with reference to a visible prototype. Another reason is that it is often during these demonstrations we learn about business changes and new requirements. Many times I have heard comments along the lines of ‘Oh, and for product ABC we will need to way of entering X” when this has been news to us. That’s OK, visual demo’s tap into the right hand side of our brain, not used much in analytical, left brain list making and requirements gathering. It is the combination of lists and visual cues that frequent demo’s provide that create our final views of what the system should encompass.

I am posting my recent Gantthead articles here for those of you without Gantthead access. This is also a ploy on my part to keep some regular contributions coming to this site during the short Canadian summer while I am out enjoying the trail running and mountain biking prime time. Summers in the mountains here are just spectacular and every event and race in the high elevations is crammed into a short 2-3 month window.
 
So, for now I will post my recent Gantthead articles to keep the content rolling. There are also some exciting developments at the PMI I am itching to tell you about, but am sworn to secrecy under a non-disclosure agreement for now, but stay tuned.

Recently I volunteered to help write the PMBOK v5 Edition and encouraged other agile project managers to get involved in the initiative also. Well, last week I heard back that my application to serve on the PMBOK v5 Core Committee was not successful.

The email explained that because they “…had received over 250 applications from a highly qualified group of candidates.  Unfortunately, we had more qualified candidates than available positions…” but I can’t help wondering if my “PMBOK v5 - Raise a Little Hell” post might have set off a couple of alarm bells with them too.

Anyway, apparently they are still looking for people to work on the Content Committee and Review Committee so perhaps I will get a spot there; I hope so since I enjoyed my involvement in the PMBOK v3 Edition.

I would be really interested to hear from anyone in the agile community who was successful in gaining a spot on the core PMBOK v5 committee. I hope there are some agile proponents represented. So please drop me a line if you were successful.

As one door closes another one opens, and Gantthead.com the online project management portal and recourse site with >470,000 members, has launched an agile newsletter called “Agility Now!” and have asked me to help.

I have been writing for them for a couple of years now as part of Doug DeCarlo’s eXtreme Project Management department and so was thrilled when they offered me the role. Each month the newsletter will contain new articles on agile project management and highlight agile blogs, tools, and events of interest to agile project managers.

Fellow PMI Agile Community of Practice cohort Jesse Fewell will be contributing a regular “Agile People” article too and I am looking forward to seeing how it develops. To sign-up go to Gantthead.com, My Account, Subscriptions and Notifications, and select the “Agility Now!” Newsletter.