Agile and scrum are a passionate point of discussion. Just check out Michael Hatfield's
recent post, where he contends agile is just an excuse for scope creep Taking on Project Management Myths, Part 5, or see Lynda Bourne's post Agile: The Great Debate.
Despite the controversy, the number of people using agile approaches and scrum has spiked in the past three or four years, according to Jimi Fosdick, a certified scrum trainer at Danube, Portland, Oregon, USA.
When I talked to him a couple weeks ago, he said although there's a way for traditional project management methodologies to coexist with agile and scrum, challenges remain:
Organizational Structure: Companies aren't usually set up to handle the way the work is done in scrum and agile--and that's a very difficult thing to change.
Corporate Culture: Scrum is built on the principles of self-organization and self-management. So the development team doesn't really have a boss or a manager telling them what to do. And that's very scary for a lot of organizations. There's a prevailing belief--left over from the scientific management of the 1950s and 1960s--that unless you're watching what your people are doing, they won't complete the task at hand.
False Assumptions: Many of the policies and progress metrics in place in organizations and the artifacts and reporting required, are often counterproductive and run contrary to scrum. Some tasks--like needing sign-off on a full requirements document before development can start--interferes with the ability to do something in an agile way.
Read more on agile from Voices.
recent post, where he contends agile is just an excuse for scope creep Taking on Project Management Myths, Part 5, or see Lynda Bourne's post Agile: The Great Debate.
Despite the controversy, the number of people using agile approaches and scrum has spiked in the past three or four years, according to Jimi Fosdick, a certified scrum trainer at Danube, Portland, Oregon, USA.
When I talked to him a couple weeks ago, he said although there's a way for traditional project management methodologies to coexist with agile and scrum, challenges remain:
Organizational Structure: Companies aren't usually set up to handle the way the work is done in scrum and agile--and that's a very difficult thing to change.
Corporate Culture: Scrum is built on the principles of self-organization and self-management. So the development team doesn't really have a boss or a manager telling them what to do. And that's very scary for a lot of organizations. There's a prevailing belief--left over from the scientific management of the 1950s and 1960s--that unless you're watching what your people are doing, they won't complete the task at hand.
False Assumptions: Many of the policies and progress metrics in place in organizations and the artifacts and reporting required, are often counterproductive and run contrary to scrum. Some tasks--like needing sign-off on a full requirements document before development can start--interferes with the ability to do something in an agile way.
Read more on agile from Voices.
There is a great book and articles that address how to deal with this issue:
"Becoming Agile" by Greg Smith
and Articles & Whitepapers & webinars can be found at:
http://ow.ly/12b8A
Thanks for the information.... but establishing an effective organisational structure for the project is crucial to its success. Every project needs direction, management, control and communication but also a different organisational structure from operational management. This structure should be flexible and is likely to require a broad range of skills for a short period of time.