Lynde Bourne has a nice post at PMI Use Military Ideas to Get Buy-In From Your Project Team. All good stuff. Having been a VERY MINOR military leader in the 1970's (C/159 ASHB, 101st Airborne) I must add that no military leader operates on his (or her own).
The leader is ALWAYS guided by the higher level strategy - the mission. All the way up to POTUS.
The Mission Brief is what sets all actions into play. Yes changes are made on a minute by minute basis sometimes. But in the back of the leaders mind is always the mission.
How can we adapt to the emerging situations while maintaining the mission?
Army Leadership: Competent, Confident, Agile, FM 6-22 (FM 22-100) is the starting point for the current army leadership processes.
Without the mission stated in terms understandable by those tasked with implementing the mission, chaos results. Yes the Right of One Objection, Decentralized Execution Planning, and Participatory and Evolutionary Plan are the basis of military leadership.
But Planning toward what goal? What is the mission of this planned effort?
Many if not most agile thought leaders have yet to address that aspect of being agile, save Jeff Sutherland, who was a military leader.
While there is a myth that small group actions evolve on their own at the tactical level, these self organized, self-guided, self-correcting groups always act within the higher mission. They are not rouge. And if they are, they are violating orders. But the notion of a higher mission - acting on the intent of the commander - is missing for all the discussions around agile I've participated. There is a sense, that Agile somehow provides the independence needed to make your own decisions. It does, but those decision must fit inside the mission.
In the project management world, that mission is the needed capabilities of the resulting project. With that in place, the agile development team has a place to stand and can ask and answer the question - does what we're doing support the mission? Or does what we're doing provide the needed capabilities requested by the commander.
Here's Patton's request
With this stated capability, agile teams can then go and deliver. But they NEVER loose sight of the mission and its stated capabilities.
