Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility

Project Lifecycles Cover

Does your agile project feel like a death march, with immovable deadlines, long backlogs, and no time to do the work right? If so, you're not alone. Fake agility has your project by the throat and won't let go.

You don't have to work like this. Instead, you can design your approach to manage the project, product, and organizational risks.

Neither a waterfall nor an agile approach fits all projects in all organizations. Given your risks, use your culture to create as much agility as possible. You can design your project lifecycle and deliver what your customers need.

This book will help you learn how to:

  • Assess your project, product, and organization risks that affect how you can choose to work.
  • Determine which feedback loops and decisions your project and product need for success.
  • Recognize an agile team culture and characteristics.
  • When to consider which lifecycle.
  • How to design a lifecycle that works for you in this project, with this team, for this product, with as much agility as possible.

Don't settle for fake agility and a joyless workplace. Buy this book now to incorporate real agility into your work.

Table of Contents

  1. The Shameful Secret: Fake Agility is the Norm
  2. How Culture Influences Risks and Tradeoffs
  3. Serial Lifecycles
  4. Iterative Lifecycles
  5. Incremental Lifecycles
  6. Combination Lifecycles
  7. Agile Approaches
  8. Increase Agility in Any Approach

Why I Wrote This Book (the Preface)

The Preface, © 2023 Johanna Rothman

A colleague called me and asked, “Is it reasonable to take agile training all online?”

I said, “As long as your team is taking the training with you, sure. Especially if you're part of a distributed team. You don't need to be all in one place to have a successful agile team.”

“No,” he said. “You don't get it. I'm taking ‘training' by watching videos. Myself. Just me and my computer. There's no training. I'm just watching. And I'll get a certificate at the end!”

I'm sure I swore or something equally useful as a response. But this guy's a character, so I thought I'd check. “You're not teasing me, are you?”

“No, I'm not. I'm totally for real.”

I asked several questions about the principles behind his training and learned that the trainers had dressed up a waterfall approach to look like a well-known agile approach. There was no idea about cross-functional teams. No learning about the product and the process. And not enough emphasis on defining and delivering value to a customer on a regular basis.

Worse, there was little to no emphasis on the customer's experience once they received an increment of value. That meant they had little to no useful feedback about the product as they developed it.

This is fake agility, agile-in-name-only. And that's what my colleague was being “taught.” (I hesitate to say he learned anything at all useful.)

Fake agility is why people rant about agility and demand to return to a waterfall. (They haven't really left the waterfall.) It's also why people want to work alone, so they can manage their careers.

Agile approaches don't have to be like that. Worse, we shouldn't call these ideas agile anything. We can call them by the names they deserve, which is the lifecycle name.

If you suspect you have fake agility where you work, consider the ideas in this book to learn what you're doing and make it better. You can create a more agile culture in your project and for your product that will work better than anything dressed in fake agile clothing.

And if you persist, you might be able to influence your manager to start creating a better product development culture, regardless of whether it's real or fake agility.

Use this book to see and experiment with more ideas about how to manage your projects, create products your customers enjoy using, and create a better culture for success. Regardless of your lifecycle.

Buy the Project Lifecycles Ebook and Print Book Now

On my store in both ebook and AI-narrated audio formats.

You should be able to find the book at all the regular (and irregular!) retailers, plus the library of your choice. Specifically:

  • Leanpub. You can get discounts on multiple copies there.
  • Amazon in ebook, paper, and hardcover.

If you prefer to buy books elsewhere, here's a universal book link: https://books2read.com/projectlifecycles.

(Books2read remembers your preferred store.) The book is live on Kobo, Smashwords, Google Play, Barnes and Noble, Apple, and anywhere you prefer to buy books. (If you can't find it at your preferred bookstore, please let me know.)

I'm so pleased the Pragmatic Bookshelf is also carrying the book.

Libraries can order the book in any format: ebook, print, or hardcover.

Podcasts/Livestreams/etc

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