I've got a bit of a break from my proposal work, so some thoughts on my disconnects with the current APM discussion. Although we use - and even practice - lean, agile, and adaptive in our everyday work, it's become clear there is not a shared understanding of many things having to do with Agile Project Management:
- Is Agile Project Management, agilely managing projects, any project?
- Is Agile Project Management the management of an agile software development project?
- Are the methodologies like Scrum project management processes or software development methods. Ken Schwaber says in his recent Cutter agile list newsletter that Scrum "is used to build software." A nice definition of a software development methodology. One poster stated Scrum is not a software engineering lifecycle method, no matter what Ken says. Uhm...
Why haven't we been able to close the gap between "project management" and "agile project management?" Maybe the two camps aren't actually talking about the same thing. Here's my take (maybe extreme) on this, in the absence of any formal definitions...
Project Management is a set of processes, defined in several guides, for "managing" the activities that are encountered in project work. These process are broader than the production of code.
Agile Project Management is a set of methods used to augment the methods used to develop software. They are focused on managing the development of software in a work environment built around agile coding practices.
Having failed miserably to convince anyone there is a difference, I might come to believe one of two things:
- There is no difference, and all my experiences in managing non-software projects is irrelevant to the conversation. I need to get with it,"...and understand the new paradigm of agile project management, is project management. "
- There is a difference, and the agile project management folks have too narrow a view of project management (based on agile software development methods). This view has yet to be exposed to the broader population of project managers, like myself who work in non-software centric domains - for the most part.
Either way, both domains should benefit from improvements in process and methodologies resulting from applying those processes. But so far the basic terminology seems to be getting in the way.