1. Project management in agile
organizations
Lars Irenius & Gabriella Tirsén, Knowit, Sept 19-20 & 26-27
2. The best project managers aren’t just organizers –
they combine business vision, communication
skills, soft management skills and technical savvy
with the ability to plan, coordinate, and execute. In
essence, they are not just managers – they are
leaders. While this has always been the case, agile
project management places a higher premium on
the leadership skills than ever before.
Task Manager or Visionary Leader?
Project Management in Agile organizations
3. Agenda
Day 1 – How to manage
projects in an agile way.
9:00 – 9:30 Introduction
9:30 – 10:30 What is is agile?
10:30 – 12:30 Defining the scope
12:30 – 14:00 Lunch & meeting
14:00 – 15:30 Stage Gate & Agile
15:30 – 16:30 Visualization
Day 2 – How to manage
agile teams in a project
9:30 – 10:30 The agile team
10:30 – 11:00 The project managers
role
11:00 – 11:30 Scaling Agile
11:30 – 12:30 Lunch
12:30 – 13:30 System Anatomy and
multiple teams
13:30 – 14:30 Agile requirements
15:00 – 16:30 Managing delegation
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5. 5Project Management in Agile
organizations
• Replace rule-of-thumb work methods with methods based on a
scientific study of the tasks.
• Scientifically select, train, and develop each employee rather than
passively leaving them to train themselves.
• Divide work nearly equally between managers and workers, so
that the managers apply scientific management principles to
planning the work and the workers actually perform the tasks.
Frederick Winslow Taylor
(1856 – 1915)
Henry Laurence Gantt
(1861 - 1919)
• He linked the bonus paid to managers to how well they taught their
employees to improve performance.
• He believed that businesses have obligations to the welfare of the
society in which they operate
Scientific Management
6. Six Sigma, 1986
A clear commitment to
making decisions on the
basis of verifiable data
and statistical methods,
rather than assumptions
and guesswork.
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organizations
Källa Wikipedia
John F. Mitchell
(1928 – 2009)
7. So what is different
today compared to
1914
(or even 1986) ?
17. What (Cynefin) strategy(ies) shall you
use?
• A trunk cable is damaged during roadwork disabling all mobile traffic over an
arena where a football final is on-going.
• Just before finalization of a project a key project member has a tragedy in his
family and cannot work, disabling release as planned.
• Your main competitor has just launched a new service that gains huge attention
and attracts your customers. You must find a countermeasure to stop loosing
customers.
• A member in one of the teams have a crazy but appealing idea about a new
product.
Project Management in Agile
organizations
17
26. Stage (Phase) Gate model
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organizations
NASA 1960
PROPS 1987
COOPER 1999
27. Gated model to steer project.
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organizations
We have an
idea, lets
check if it
works –
ROI?
It seams to
work
Detailled
plan and
ROI, lets go!
Check if
we’re on
track
Develop-
ment done!
Handover
done, project
close.
Business
Development/production
28. Reduce uncertainty.
Project Management in Agile
organizations
Project
closure
Project analysis Project planning
Execution
Establishment
Execution
Realization
Execution
Hand-over
TG1 TG5
Time
Go/
No-go
Project Delivery Precision
TG2TG0 TG3 TG4
Uncertainty
Time, Cost
and Scope
TG2 – A key investment decision Business Value
28
29. How certain is ROI?
• Cost savings
– Reduced transaction fee?
– Reduced management
costs?
– Reduced licence fees?
– Reduced HW costs?
• Increased revenue
– More volume?
– Better margin?
– More customers?
– Strengthened brand
• System costs
– Development costs?
– Integration costs?
– Deployment costs?
– Operation costs?
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organizations
40. DeLaval
Software Program – Break down of a project
Idea Concept Development Launch
BP1 BP2 BP3 BP4 BP5 BP6 BP7 BP8
Project Epics
(Architectural &
Prioritized
Business)
Releases
(Integration order)
Cost per Epic
(yearly budget)
BP1 BP2 BP3 BP4 BP5 BP6 BP7 BP8
Idea Concept
Development
Launch
Architectural
Epics
Business Epics
Quality
Improvements
Epics
Shorten lead times for first time delivery of customer value, PSI multiple times during project life-time
Shorten lead times for first feedback, opportunity to adapt to changing demands and possibility
to close a project without sunk-cost, etcProject Management in Agile
organizations
40
41. Maybe like this?
• Gate 0 – 1
– Define Product and Architectural Epics
– Risk focus
– Risk eliminating sprints
• Gate 1 – 2
– Break down Epics to Features
– Prioritize focus
– Release planning
– Prioritized sprints
• Gate 2 – 4
– Break down of Features to Stories per sprint
– Continuous sprint releases
– Sprint retrospectives
• Gate 4 – 5
– Project finalization
– Project retrospective
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42. By doing fewer projects concurrently
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