I’m a PMP and have to manage different projects using different ’styles’ based upon the need, complexity, and product to be delivered. To assume that, as a PMP, I have all the tools necessary to ‘develop/build everything’ would be proof that I wasn’t paying attention when I was learning about PM. As someone said in an earlier post, PMI does not deal with how the work is to be done, but in how to manage the process to ensure a greater possibility of success. How the work is to be done is really dependent upon the nature of the project and the team. Just as I wouldn’t use every tool in my toolbox to drive a wood screw, every tool/process in the PMBOX is not appropriate for all projects.

In our development efforts we’re attempting to use more ‘agile’ methodologies while working in an environment (government) that wants to see everything planned out prior to releasing funding and before work can begin. Since we’re spending other peoples money there’s wisdom in the approach but only to a point. My current view is that agile methodologies can be applied most effectively in the execution and control portions of a project where the actual work is accomplished while the appropriate PMI methodologies for the project can be effectively applied in the initiating, planning, and closeout portions of the project.

This approach may be overly simplistic to many but I’m open to learn. Thanks for the time.

Love the re-framing of the Arthurian legend in Scrum terms.

As I read this, I was reminded of another compelling story. I have just re-watched (multiple times now) the Matrix trilogy last week. The movies works on some many levels – one is the control system that is used by the machines to control a human mind, to subjugate the body to the power generation system. An interesting parallel can be made to most oppression systems. However what struck me is that in the Matrix movie the machines had devised a “perfect world” which the human mind rejected, therefore the next best solutions was the matrix of control of an imperfect world at the height of human civilization (circa 1999).

However we the audience find out that it is not a perfect control system – Zion has formed, rebellion is happening. In the 2nd, movie we find out that the machines have a Architect program that has accounted for the imbalance in the equations of control and has designed a mechanism of death/birth that leaves the machines in control with acceptable losses. This happens to be an iterative process.

I’ll now pop out of the story to refer to Bridges Transitions model: Ending, Neutral Zone, New Beginning. This Neutral Zone in Bridges model is a chaotic time where the person generates new ideas. “Chaos is the primal state of pure energy for every true new beginning” – William Bridges

Now back in the Matrix – Reloaded. Neo must make a choice: 1) save Trinity or 2) save Zion (the free-humans). There are cost to each decision. Save Trinity and the machines crush the city of Zion and all free-humans; Save Zion (the concept) and Trinity (his love) dies. To chose Zion he will be allowed to choose X number of people to start again.

We find out the the machines have accounted for the imbalance in the equations, that lead to the creation of A Neo, that it has happened before and will happen again. The choice is predetermined to create a reset – reboot of Zion and the continuation of control. What the Architect doesn’t account for is that in the neutral zone (his office outside of the simulated world Neo, makes a new choice – to save the girl (come-on, the hero always saves the girl! – stupid machine).

Neo chooses love over another iteration of oppression.

The questions I have are these.

Can someone else free me of oppression or is it a choice only I can make?

If someone else frees me from oppression – is this another from of control?

I tend to see the PMI as being more in the norming-performing part of the cycle, with groups like the Agile Alliance being in the storming part. What many people fail to see, is that frameworks for understanding life (and project management) are only useful as long as they are useful – and not a second longer. We can’t expect to reach the “performing” stage and stay there forever. That’s the big lie that oppressors always promote.

The thing I like most about the Agile Manifesto is that it encourages us to continue to work through the forming and storming stages with every project and task.

I became a PMP because my employer and primary customer valued the PMBOK. I became a CSM so that I could show them how to realistically tailor the appropriate parts of the PMBOK to get real, valuable work done with less overhead.

It seems to me, though, that you’re presenting an inevitable path which ‘agile’ must take. Look at any enterprise started with honourable goals in mind — religions, the US Government (well, that’s arguable), PMI — eventually organizations grow to the point where their primary goal is one of self-preservation and growth for the sake of the sake growth. The original intentions fail to keep hold. Will the Agile Manifesto stand the test?

Also, can you think of a society or point in history where the oppressed didn’t want to just become the oppressors? It seems to me this is human nature.

Mike: The ways of domination are far more subtle than one may think at first, and the oppressed, even the best informed one, may not always be aware of the oppression. A french sociologist named pierre Bourdieu uncovered a form of domination called ’symbolic violence’ that is at the root of most societies. Dominated groups (women, aliens, lower clas, homosexuals, you name it) tend to conform to the domination by incorporating (in what is called an habitus), even in the physical sense, the domination. It is a characteristic of society to perpetuate various symbolic dominations through discourse, ideologies (think of the representation of women in advertising).

This is different still, with the desire for crossing the domination barrier, and in my opinion a much more common form of stagnation.

Unfortunately, I see more and more Scrum as an new form of the domination, even more so here in France where it is relatively new and.

regards,
Arnaud

The opposite pole of rigidity is chaos, not principled adaptability. It might be less important to choose one approach over another than it is to choose one and apply it steadily. Both excessive rigidity and absence of any guiding principle can make good people frightened and ineffective.

I spent the last 18 months “fearful …, terrified of making mistakes, outwardly exhausted and inwardly cowering” as you describe. It wasn’t due to hidebound process orthodoxy but to the lack of any effective process. The organization prided itself on not doing BDUF, minimizing PMI-style practices, not producing IEEE-style deliverables, and being utterly disinterested in objective benchmarks like the CMM – as if their rejection alone were a badge of merit.

The professed desire to work “in an agile/Agile way” unaccompanied by constancy of purpose became a general-purpose cudgel that could be used in any circumstance. In the resulting chaos the only rational response was to take as little initiative as possible and try to remain unremarkable.

Given that both rigidity and chaos can create similar behaviors, it seems like the IEEE and PMI might not be the real villains, and flight to their polar opposite not the solution. Form valued over substance under any banner causes problems, but an organization needs some agreed way of working, whether tacit or explicit, to function effectively.

Response: Thanks for the comment, and for sharing your experience.  “Being Agile” is not an excuse to do things badly; it is to be regretted that some people will use it that way.  I have seen similar things you describe.  There is nothing agile about this approach though; it is simply bad craftsmanship.  Agile is a very disciplined way of working, but the discipline is established by the team and the business for what makes sense in their context; it is not an imposed, one-size-fits-all discipline.  I hope I made it clear in my post, but if not I’ll reiterate here: the PMI, IEE, whoever, are not the villains.  Those that blindly comply to work practices that make their lives unhappy and don’t produce value are the villians.  That applies as much in a chaos culture as it does in a control culture.  I’d like to ask you this: what did you do to change the situation you were in?

I have found that Scrum is all things to all people. The revolutionary mind (like yours and mine) see in Scrum a real chance to change the world. Not of just work, but of everything.

Government’s run by Scrum would be far more effective, fairer and infinitely more accountable.

It all depends on what the business is, and what value matters.

On the subject of oppression – it may seem a little harsh, but I personally feel that anyone who does not realise they are oppressed deserves what they get (I mean this in the context of western working culture). There is so much more information available now that empowers the individual, to ignore it is careless.

We all owe it to ourselves to seek to know ourselves and seek to be at peace with that which we discover – or change it.

keep on keeping on
Mike