Just when you thought you were a complete PM, you’re not

Guy Eastoe

• The Waterfall to Agile challenge

• Why PM’s need therapy

• My story

• What attributes we need to develop as coping mechanisms

The Waterfall to Agile challenge

• Tiered hierarchy’s create silo’s of independent, selfish islands

• Gates embed the design and the plan way to early. BDUF

• Status quo bias

Why PM’s need therapy

• So many flavours, like Lean programming, Agile PM, Prince2 Agile, Crystal, Safe, DSDM, LeSS (Large Scale Scrum)

• So many Principles so badly applied, even great ones like:

• e.g. “Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential”

• 3 general categories:• Waterfall Anonymous

• Agile Anonymous.

• Wagile Anonymous.

My story

Many learnings

• If companies can’t make waterfall work, they won’t make Agile work

• The difference between an iteration and an increment, and here’s a slide for the WA’s amongst you.

Increment

Image source: Jeff Patton

Incremental calls for a fully formed idea.

So requires accurate estimation.

Iteration

Iterating from vague idea to

realization allows for learning and

adjustment along the way.

What attributes we need for the agile future

Right brains must dominate.

• Design over pure function

• Story’s over arguments

• Symphony, or synthesis over analysis

• Empathy over logic

• Play over seriousness

• Meaning over material accumulation.