This Focused Performance Weblog is a "business management blog" containing links and commentary related primarily to organizational effectiveness with a "Theory of Constraints" perspective. TOC is noted for its applications in Project Management and Multi-Project Management (Critical Chain) and Operations Management (Drum-Buffer-Rope), as well as in Marketing, Strategic Planning and Change Management (TOC Thinking Processes). If you are on an archive page, current postings are found here.
Agile Task/Process Mgmt vs Project Management -- Long time blog correspondent Glen Alleman has recently acknowledged an understanding of agile software development that's "dawning on him"...
"In a recent exchange on Agile Project Management, it has finally dawned on me that when the agile software development advocates speak of project management they are not actually speaking of project management. They are speaking of managing software development..."[Be sure to read the rest...]
Yup. Pretty much a similar conclusion I came to back in 2003, when I had time and energy to ponder such things (as well as a vested interest in promoting Critical Chain Project Management and its potential as a PM overlay for agile efforts).
"While on the subject, I've been recently trying to wrap my head around the various flavors of agile software development, and what they describe as "agile Project Management" (which has more of a sound of "task" or "process management" to my ears). There's been an excellent discussion of this in the Newgrange PM discussion list, which starts in the YahooGroups archive here."
"One of the things I think I'm seeing in Davids' book is a distinction between "agile" work methodologies and practices and project management that can wrap around them to make promises...a distinction that I've come to myself. The things that fall into the agile approach are about work/task management for a certain type of work, and don't really meaningfully address the promise-making and promise-keeping aspects inherent to project management."
Of course this assumes agreement that a major function of project management is about making promises, and understanding the health of and/or modification to those promises in an attempt to keep them.
"Agile Software Development" is a set of processes governing how software development tasks are organized and performed. But software development is only part of a project, even if it is a software development project.
"I believe that it's crucial for developers to understand more than just their team processes and start learning about business process in general. Two positive things will result from this. First, they will learn how to better interface their process with the higher-level processes. Second, they will get an appreciation for the more strategic efforts of the company and how their development teams can, and do, contribute to higher goals. This knowledge will make them more valuable to their company. For new hires working within lower-level processes, this understanding will help them quickly discover whether they are compatible with the company. There is no shame in admitting that the way you prefer, or are willing, to work is so incompatible with your personal process that neither you nor the company will benefit with you on board. I would rather know this as soon as possible, rather than having it pointed out to me at my performance review, or worse, at my exit interview.
"Process is important, but there is not just one process for all. An enterprise has many processes, at several levels. Understanding how these processes need to work together is a critical awareness, one that is too often ignored. When you understand real process needs, you understand that the specific process you follow is not as important as whether it plays well with the others."
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