What is agile project management?
If you search online for ‘agile project management’ you get video of people talking about project managing an agile development process. Well duh. I think we can do better than that.
Project management that had agility would be adaptable, accepting of uncertainty and responding to change, would deliver value at the earliest opportunity, and would bring people together to share knowledge and shape the plan.
How might this approach show itself in something like a project plan? Instead of starting with a high fidelity plan that has unknown gaps, maybe the plan would start in low fidelity, defining the big chucks of the project so all those involved get some immediate value from the plan. Maybe the big chunks are things like scope, time, budget, people. And then as more information becomes available the plan is iterated upon to reach a slightly higher degree of fidelity, and again to even higher fidelity, all the time delivering value.
This kind of approach acknowledges that there are unknowns in the plan and would fuel conversations as people fill the gaps, meaning people have to work together to develop the knowledge. The plan is the output of those conversations but it’s the collaboration that makes the plan a reality.
“I love it when a plan comes together”
Colonel John ‘Hannibal’ Smith