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Agile Approaches Can’t Save Impossible Projects: Fixed Cost, Scope, Date

You’ve got an impossible project. You have no flexibility. The project is a fixed-price, fixed-scope, fixed-date project. And, you have a specific team to do the work. (There are other impossible projects. Such as when you have a collection of people who multitask among several projects.) Can an agile approach save these projects? No. An agile …

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Three Ways to Manage “Extra” Work in an Iteration

Many of my clients use an iteration-based agile approach. And, they have these problems: They “push” too much into an iteration. They use velocity, not cycle time to estimate.  They rarely finish everything before the iteration ends. They have to manage extra work—work they had not estimated—in the form of an emergency or production support. …

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Where I Think “Agile” is Headed, Part 4: What Does “Agile” Mean?

I started this series asking where “Agile” was headed. (I didn’t like what I saw at the Agile 2019 conference.) Part 1 was about the 4 big problems I see. Part 2 was why we need managers.  Part 3 was about how people want a recipe. This part is about what “Agile” or “agile” means. …

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Where I Think “Agile” is Headed, Part 3: What Is The Recipe, The Right Answer?

I started this series asking where “Agile” was headed. Part 1 was about the 4 big problems I see. Part 2 was why we need managers. This part is about how people want a recipe, The Answer, for how to get better at “Agile.” Before we can address what an answer might be, your need …

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Where I Think “Agile” is Headed, Part 2: Where Does Management Fit?

In Part 1, I wrote about how “Agile” is not a silver bullet and is not right for every team and every product. This post is about how management fits into agile approaches. Too often, managers think “agile” is for others, specifically teams of people. Teams need to figure out how to manage their WIP, …

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