- My thoughts on Agile are, it's great.
Like Agile is a set of principles and a manifesto,
and I agree with, like everything in it.
I think that it's popular because it works.
It's largely effective.
When used effectively, just like any process.
So, I think generally when it comes to processor tools,
my attitude is the more options for tools, the better,
because then we as project managers and we as teams
can choose the right tool for the job.
And I think there are many cases in which Agile is
absolutely the right tool for the job,
and there's other cases where there's constraints
that make it really hard to adopt.
So, I think as project managers we should always be
open to learning and adjusting,
whether it's a tool, a process, a methodology, a manifesto.
We should always be trying to integrate that thinking
into how we're doing our job.
- I think Agile in of itself is great.
I think it's a cool thing.
I think when Agile goes sideways is when
people get their hands all over it.
And I think that's a good and a bad side.
People will often take "Agile", air quotes,
and then just try to slap that process onto
whatever they're doing.
And whatever situation or organization isn't
having been apart of the digital transformations
happening in the commercial bank of Capital One,
I've seen that sometimes you just can't slap
a process on something and know that it's
going to fix it.
Sometimes it takes some baby steps.
You're going to have to coach it along and
you may have to use small elements of it
in order to prove it out and show that it's successful
and helpful to the team, to then build and continue
to scale the process over time.
And so I think in that aspect,
when people can tinker with it, that's great.
I'm never a fan of anything, whether it's Agile,
or any other kind of process or tool, or anything
when we just take it and kind of like
blindly slap it on top of the work we're doing
hoping that it will add some extra layer of value or
that it will fix the problems that we're currently having.
- I think Agile is popular now, and has been for a while,
because it's different.
It's more fun.
There's less documentation,
which most people don't like doing.
But also because it's at least an attempt
to try to do something different.
We've learned over decades that the old ways
of running projects tend to fail a lot.
And so this is a new way of trying to avoid that failure.
I'm not sure that it has really improved
our success rate that much in the big picture of things.
But, it gives us another tool to work with.
And I think, ultimately, the thing with Agile
or any methodology is not to
really strictly try to adhere to it,
because I think once we put ourselves in any box,
we're gonna end up with some problems.
But rather adding it to our toolbox,
and making it just another piece of the puzzle
that we can draw on to come up with some project success.
So, any given project might really benefit from some
Agile principles, but at the same time,
we might need a little bit of Waterfall in there
to keep things on track.
And we have to be comfortable
drawing on whatever will work
for that particular project.
- Well it's so popular because it's the latest silver bullet
quite frankly.
Agile is the latest thing that senior managers
see as a quick-fix solution to delivering value quickly.
And of course there's so many benefits to Agile,
It's not new.
It's been around for 17 years.
It was created by some software developers
who were sick and tired of being told
what to do by bureaucratic project managers.
And everything within the Agile manifesto
is still relevant today, but it's not new.
It's a common sense approach to getting things delivered.
Now as we move through and as we evolve in project delivery,
it's only right that we'd have new tools, new methods.
And every project manager needs to get
their Agile badge.
You need to understand the different mechanisms
for doing things.
You need to know how to run a stand-up.
You need to know how to run a hackathon.
You need to know how to be visual and run sprints.
That's just part of your tool kit.
But fundamentally, if you're not a good person,
helping people, coaching people, and are able to
produce and maintain progress to a plan,
then in the wrong hands,
Agile is still just something else that can break.
So, Agile is part of your project management tool kit.
You need to do it,
but it's not a quick-fix solution to delivery.
It demands an equal amount of adherence,
and an equal amount of discipline to make sure that
you deliver the outcomes as stakeholder's expect.
- This is sort of a tricky question because
that's mostly what I do.
I think Agile is really popular at the executive level
because people see it as, you know, it's a solution.
It's a silver bullet. It's gonna give me the ability
to change my mind all the time and
I can get everything faster and everyone will be happy.
And that stuff is true, but it's only true
if you can transform your organization into
an environment that will allow it to survive.
I think a lot of people understand
that the traditional way of working has a lots of flaws.
It was built for a certain time period that
we don't have the same situations right now,
especially if you're doing knowledge work
or any kind of software or web development,
things change really really fast.
So we have to be able to adapt to that
and Agile gives us the promise of that.
I think it's a really important way of working,
but I also think it's important to understand
that Agile is just a set of tools.
Try to put a discipline practice in place.
Figure out what things don't fit well with your organization
or what things need to be modified.
And then make a change.
But don't just change it out of the box
because people have spent a lot of time
and a lot of years figuring out how to
make that stuff work.
But all the Agile practices are meant
to be adapted for any organization.
- Agile has become popular because it is one of those
new ways of thinking about how to do business.
It's also one of those catch phrases that make
it easier to sell things to other customers.
I think everyone attempts to do Agile
but there's no real way of making something truly Agile.
You hear things of it being called Agifall,
or yes, I do a blended version of what Agile really is.
I think if you are working for a company
where you solely get to focus a lot on the dev work,
Agile can be successful because you have the ability
to incorporate the entire team.
But for a lot of us,
we're working on full service projects
where you have to be able to do
strategy, design, UX, UI, marketing all at the same time,
and that kind of breaks down the true components
of what Agile is.
So I think in order for Agile to be successful
and why it's continuing to be popular
are there's things about it that make
project management easier.
You have the different ceremonies
that give you the reasons why you can continue
to talk, and adapt, and build the project,
and it makes things continuously move on and on together.
So, take the pieces of Agile that work best for you
but don't feel like you have to force yourself into a box
just because someone said you need to be Agile.