urvile
Golden Member
Slightly OT.
Oh. no. It's not agile project management. It's Scrum. Vastly different from a traditional PM viewpoint. Which is why they had so much difficulty with it.
They are used to buy server -> install server -> configure server -> go to the pub and celebrate our glorious victory. It is clear concise steps and is ideal for a base lined waterfall style of project management.
We still create a schedule (typically this would exist as a backlog of items with times against them. Typically these times would be unrealistic but whatever) because you have to so you can quote the project but Scrum then gives you flexibility. So the client will get the best bang for their buck so to speak because at the end of the day it is all about the client.
This includes using automated QA like mocking and unit testing to cut dev time and remove professional testers because they cost a lot of money and that is typically the first thing the client doesn't want to pay for. Documentation falls into that category also. The company I used to work for didn't do anything unless the client was paying for it.
Once I worked on a major project that switched from waterfall to continuous integration half way through. Oh the humanity.
Personally I think agile has it's flaws in particular the way requirements are handled but it is useful for making sure the client gets exactly what they want. The last thing you want to do is deliver a system and have the client say "um this is not actually what we wanted" as my boss used to say at that point you have done your dough. 🙂
The thing is as soon as you go over budget you are funding the development with the company's profits and they don't like that very much.
What I am getting at here is the PM would rather fight us because
a) he or she didn't understand agile and
b) covering their arse this is important because if something goes wrong they need to be able to prove that they stuck to their traditional PM methodology. In other words they did their job. The last thing they want to do is get left holding the bag if the project goes over budget.
finally c) they don't want to admit they don't know what is going on
I could seriously go on about this crap all day but I won't. 😛
Although to be fair. A lot of people did/do see agile as a cowboy methodology and these project managers we were working with would not have seen the value in it and in some ways it is a cowboy methodology. I spent years working under a very process heavy waterfall methodology and initially I thought agile was a cowboy methodology too. I didn't like it in particular the way it handles requirements as user stories.
After a while though I grew to love it. At least for software development. It cuts your costs and provides flexibility, bi-weekly sprint reviews etc. For things like systems engineering it can be problematic. OK that's it. 🙂
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