Agile Coaching Tips

Hi,



Agile is more geared towards Software Projects where the number of unknowns is high and the requirements are unclear and vague at the beginning of the projects. Such projects in a waterfall environment are subject to so many change requests to the extent that the initial project plan becomes useless. Agile is an iterative approach to solve this problem.



Most users in this forum come from a construction/engineering background (if I’m not mistaken), where the unknowns are low and the industry is mature. Agile does not really make sense in such an environment as there is no need to an iterative approach (bot the customer and the Project Manager know exactly what’s needed).



A couple of articles on the subject:



- Agile Myths Debunked

- When to Avoid Agile

Dear Rafael,



I can’t tell you how Primavera are solving their software development problems, but I assure you that the Agile is a group work that uses brain storming and idea generation techniques to solve problems that individual thinkers can’t solve.



It is certainly not used for debugging software. The road is already paved in software, you have to follow the steps one by one in order to find the bug. But you can use it to generate new ideas for software to penetrate the market and win customer satisfaction.



With kind regards,



Samer

Hi Rafael



Who said the art of irony was dead.



Not me - well said.



Best regards



Mike Testro

.........Agile?..........Do it works?........



You can judge yourself by the speed Primavera/Oracle has solved P6 bugs and provided their excellent graphical reports as soon as requested by their customers. And not to mention how much their customer service has improved, judging from the excellent comments of others at PP forums.



Best regards,

Rafael

Dear Oliver,



Actually this is developed in the defense industry on very large projects. When you have a deliverable without a previous known sequence to reach, then you need to keep agile to change your methods of working and thinking in order to provide for the demands of the client.



Construction project have well known deliverable at the start of the project, that is why agile project management is not common on construction projects.



With kind regards,



Samer

In my experience agile is a very limited tool.



I believe it to be too idealistic and think it only works on smaller scale projects that employ very experienced team members....and in real life you dont ever get a team full of pro-active experienced members.

http://www.controlchaos.com/download/Primavera%20White%20Paper.pdf

Dear Franco,



Thank you for sharing the link.



Agile Project Management definition from wikipedia over the net is:

"Agile Management or Agile Project Management is a variant of iterative life cycle[1] where deliverables are submitted in stages. The difference between Agile and iterative development is that the delivery time in Agile is in weeks rather than months. Since Agile Management derives from Agile software development, it follows the same standards defined in the Agile Manifesto when it comes to collaboration and documentation. Several software methods derive from Agile, including Scrum and Extreme Programming.



"



I took a workshp on "Agile Project Management" with PMI Hong kong chapter last October and it was very dynamic and interactive. The purpose of the workshop was to learn how to complete projects Faster, Better and Cheaper.



Stay Agile,



With kind regards,



Samer