Agile Development meets PPM

I just returned from the 2006 Project & Portfolio Management Summit. It’s an event that is put on by Gartner every year where they roll-out their annual analysis of the PPM market. Since this is Pacific Edge Software's primary market, it was critical that we made a good showing. And since were a small company in this market (CA, IBM, Microsoft, Compuware, Mercury and others have acquired their way in over the last couple years), we decided we wanted to look and feel different from the others.

So, I presented "Worlds Collide: Agile Development meets PPM." PPM advocates tend to have a traditional project management and methodology focus. I was expecting my talk to be a bit on the controversial side as PPM-types tend to focus on change control, well defined business processes, approvals, and lots of other things that repulse most agile types. I was pleasantly surprised.

I basically structured my presentation as a case study on Pacific Edge. We are a hardcore agile shop with respect to product development but apply many Project and Portfolio Management best practices as well. One of the surprises was the number of attendees that were familiar with Agile development. When I queried the audience, it was well over half. I had several approaches me after the presentation to discuss how they could incorporate more agility into their PPM processes. While the perceived informality of agile approaches is perceived as a problem with the tactically oriented, its value in making quick, good-enough decisions outweighed the risk with most.

For me, this is a clear sign that agile is well on its way into the mainstream. When CIOs of large organizations are discussing the details of Scrum, we have truly arrived!


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Be agile about agile!

The democrats and republicans are doing a fine job of "fire-bombing" the centrists in both their parties (I grabbed that quote from an article "It's not easy being George" in this month’s Vanity Fair). And, as I scan the agile groups and blogosphere, it seems the methodologists are doing it as well. Some of us take the "extreme" in extreme programming too literally, and others are holding on to some of agile developments long disproved stigma for far too long. My approach always has been (and hopefully always will be, unless of course I turn out like my father, which all of us eventually do...) a pragmatic one. There are many things I love about Scrum and agile - driving elaboration and development off the backlog, test-driven development, burndown charts, and much more. And there are a some that I could do without (self-organizing teams, developers and testers are interchangeable, ... I blog on these later). An agile approach needs to be tailored to y...
Read more

When Do You Need Agile Product Portfolio Management?

Image
First, let’s define Agile Product Portfolio Management. Agile Product Portfolio Management is a dynamic approach to managing a company's suite of products. It involves continuously evaluating and prioritizing products based on shifting market demands, customer feedback, and business goals. It integrates principles of Agile methodology - such as flexibility, rapid iteration, and cross-functional collaboration - into portfolio management. The focus is on adapting quickly to changes, making swift decisions based on current data, and ensuring that resources are allocated efficiently to maximize product success and overall business value. It's about maintaining a balance between long-term strategic vision and short-term market realities, ensuring the product portfolio remains relevant and competitive.  Agile Portfolio Management is needed when your business and product line achieve a size, complexity, and maturity where decisions can no longer be locally optimized for individual pro...
Read more