Day: 20 September 2009

NEWS FLASH: Agile does not mean there is no plan

Why aren't all projects run using agile methods? Working in an enterprise where we have maybe 50 applications which all go live at the same time twice a year (as well as another 450 which are also in some stage of the software lifecycle), I was told that it would not be possible to plan such a release without tight control over the planning, and frankly agile methods do not cater for such planning... Erm... I see it a little different. Agile to me means that there is a plan and you know the maximum amount of money that you can to spend. To me it also means there is a fixed deadline. As quality is also fixed (come on, it has to be bug free!), it is scope which changes. Or admittedly to some degree also quality, as you decide that some bugs are tolerable and you can live with them. What is different about agile projects, is that the project plan and scope (functionality) are alive. They are dynamic. They change from day to day as everyone on the project learns and discovers. Just like your day to day plans change as events unfold. It should be illegal for a project manager to state that a project plan is fixed. It shouldn't be allowed that the project manager, upon discovering that a plan needs to change, states that it will not be changed because it has already been communicated to the customer. This view is certainly un-agile. But…

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