Being Predictable in Agile

Many executives come from a background of managing a project in a traditional style. These people are often influenced to produce multi-year and their traditional roots may leave a desire to establish long-term milestones for these long projects. Agile may not have much appeal to these executives. They want to be able to have predictability for their projects so they could plan ahead as they may be used to from previous project experience. To contribute to this desire of predictability, agile produces a working product with each sprint. This is something that these executives can rely on.

In traditional project management, everything goes according to a plan. For example, if a company wants to create some new software then an executive is given money to deliver that software. Budgets, timelines, milestones, and such are then created to flesh out how the software will be created from start to finish. However, if there are issues with the plan then some of the previous planned and the software ends up taking more resources than initially planned.

If an agile team was given a project for creating software for its company, there wouldn’t be a detailed outline or milestones established. Instead the team would be working with just the deadline that they established with their product’s owner. Of course during the project’s life cycle there will be difficulties such as relying on unreliable sources or having to make changes here and there. However, the team will be able to work with a functional piece of software that improves over time with each sprint.

Instead of relying on one plan to follow through one over a lengthy period, it may be better to work with something that delivers bit by bit. This is where the predictability in agile comes from. You know what you have and what works with each sprint. There isn’t always a detailed plan to work with but instead just a deadline. This doesn’t solve all the problems with project management, but it does give a very different approach from a traditional view.

Sources:

"Agile at Work: Planning with Agile User Stories." www.lynda.com/Business-Skills-tutorials/Agile-Work-Planning-Agile-User-Stories/175074-2.html. Accessed 11 Nov. 2017

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