Despite the fact that agile has become a popular approach to project management in recent years, there still is a great deal of confusion surrounding its implementation. In The Project Manager’s Guide to Mastering Agile, Charles G. Cobb provides a clear, comprehensive guide to the principles and practices of agile. By illustrating the method’s many different adaptive frameworks, Cobb proves that organizations can blend agile with traditional project management techniques for improved outcomes. While Cobb focuses mostly on the software development process, he also demonstrates that agile can be used in a variety of other business contexts.
Cobb explains that:
- The agile approach to project management is becoming ubiquitous. Due to the evolving nature of work and technology, there has been a widespread adoption of agile in the last 10 to 15 years.
- The role of project manager is changing. Rather than engaging in traditional plan-driven, command-and-control management, the duty of project managers has become empowering their teams with the right processes and tools to deliver customer value.
- Agile comprises an iterative, adaptive development process. As agile is designed to develop projects where there is a great deal of uncertainty, planning occurs throughout the process instead of just in the beginning.
- Flow is essential to agile. In order to quickly deliver value to customers, agile teams must communicate openly, break project workloads down into small, management chunks, and constantly remove bottlenecks.
- There is a chasm between agile and traditional project management. As agile and traditional management techniques are complementary rather than competitive, project managers today must learn to blend both processes together.
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