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Agile seems like a mystery to many. It has an unfamiliar vocabulary and practices. To outsiders, it feels like an exclusive club. However, when we step back and inspect agile, we see that it follows common, recognizable patterns from our daily lives. Imagine it is Thursday evening. Your family is planning the upcoming weekend. There […]
Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life searching in vain for a unifying theory of physics. The project management profession has had a similar quest—defining a methodology, set of practices, or principles that could successfully guide any project. Like physics and nature, project management is ubiquitous. Projects address simple, complicated, and complex problems. […]
The project charter is a foundational deliverable created during the project’s initiation phase. The charter documents the project’s purpose, planned direction, and what is initially known. It may be called a charter, proposal, grant, or request. It may be a formal contract or a less formal document. Regardless of the format, articulating the project’s intent […]
The project management plan (Plan) is a powerful tool. It describes how the project will be executed. It should be tailored based on the project’s context and needs. A good Plan reduces the likelihood of misunderstanding, conflict, and disappointment. Unfortunately, in the rush to start a project, insufficient time is often devoted to creating the […]
Frederick Winslow Taylor shaped the field of management science. He believed systematic and scientific methods could be applied to managing operations and production. His work inspired the formation of the Harvard Business School and the modern assembly line. The Academy of Management named his Principles of Scientific Management as one of the 20th century’s most […]
Disciplined Agile® (DA) and the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®) are two popular, second-generation agile methodologies. They build on lean-agile thinking; and standard Scrum, Kanban, and DevOps practices. They offer practitioners tools to extend and mature their agility beyond the team to programs and the broader enterprise. They emerged about a decade after the Agile Manifesto. […]
Servant leadership and self-organizing teams are foundational Agile characteristics. However, defining these principles is like explaining gravity to a child—clear, tangible descriptions are elusive. The image of an English butler still comes to mind when I hear “servant leader.” We can use simple rules to deconstruct, visualize, and describe these abstract concepts. I think the […]
To successfully transform our organizations and adopt new ways of working, we need to understand how we got here. The study of management is a social science. It influences our thoughts, management practices, and organizational behaviors. Social sciences provide valuable insights. But they are not always testable, timeless, or universally applicable. Adam Smith’s “Wealth of […]
Agile was initially conceived to deliver software projects more quickly. We have now learned to apply these principles and practices well beyond technology. Leading enterprises are now focusing on business agility—building the organizational capability to respond more quickly to the ever-changing competitive landscape. Seventeen technology thought-leaders from around the world gathered at the Snowbird ski […]
Agile is a mindset described by a set of values and principles. It traces its roots to Lean, which is also foundational to other modern management theories. Lean’s primary focus is delivering value quickly and eliminating waste. Toyota was a Lean pioneer. Out of necessity, it needed to be very efficient to compete. It dramatically […]
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