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Michael Dehoyos is a team manager and editor at the Phd Kingdom and Academic Brits. He helps businesses unlock their full potential by taking different approaches and opening their perspectives to new ideas. Also, he is a writer at Origin Writings. He can be reached at mich.dehoyos@gmail.com. |
Introduction by Max WidemanFor some time now, "agile" has been promoted as a more modern form of project management. That is, since the Project Management Institute's PMBOK Guide, version 6 (2017)[1] to be more precise, where the term "agile" is sprinkled through its 976 pages of text, to refer to a type of project life cycle methodology. Frankly, I have some difficulty with accepting this as an improvement for managing the project.
You see — there has always been confusion amongst practitioners in seeing the difference between managing a project through its logical life span ("cycle" if you must), and adopting a sequence for the building the actual product or asset. Earlier versions of the PMBOK Guide explicitly excluded pontificating on this part of creating an actual product or asset. That is understandable because "managing the project" is reasonably consistent throughout all projects. However, "managing the creative sequence" of any specific type of new asset varies widely from industry to industry, as well as due to their various environments, sponsors wishes, and so on.
As I read through Michael Dehoyos's article, I have the distinct feeling that he is speaking mostly regarding the challenges of managing an asset's development, rather than that of managing the project through its life span. Nevertheless, his advice is both invaluable and welcome in those projects where applicable, specifically in Information Technology.
1. PMBOK Guide,v6, © 2017 Project Management Institute, Inc. All rights reserved. See para. 1.2.4.1 Project and Development Life Cycles, p19, states: "Adaptive life cycles are agile, iterative, or incremental. The detailed scope is defined and approved before the start of an iteration. Adaptive life cycles are also referred to as agile or change-driven life cycles. See also Appendix X3
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