TEI 078: Traditional vs Agile project management for product managers–with Chuck Cobb

Listen to the Interview Project management is an important tool for product managers and an area where we have choices. I often hear Agile practitioners talk about the evils of more planned methodologies, like Waterfall and Stage-Gate. Like most things, these areas are not so black and white and the nuances are important. My guest, Chuck Cobb, is the perfect person to address these topics. He is the author of the best-selling book “The Project Manager’s Guide to Mastering Agile” as well as four other books on Agile Project Management and Business Excellence. He has also developed a very successful online training curriculum on Agile Project Management, including a free course he is offering to listeners. In this interview you will learn: * how to compare waterfall and agile approaches, * the problems agile project management strives to solve, * why both planned and adaptive approaches need to be used, and * common issues encountered when adopting agile project management.   Practices and Ideas for Product Managers and Innovators Summary of questions discussed: * Let’s start by describing the two big general concepts we are discussing – traditional vs agile project management. To start with, waterfall and agile are widely misused terms. In a strict sense, waterfall was developed by Winston Royce in the 1970s. It means a phase-gate approach with approvals between phases. In today’s world when people say waterfall, the word is used loosely and generally it means anything that’s plan-driven and not agile. The term agile also has many different meanings to different people. Many people talk about agile as if it were a specific methodology. Scrum is very widely used and when people say agile they typically mean Scrum. So the word agile has some broad meanings as well. Many people see the choice between plan-driven and agile as mutually exclusive and that’s not accurate. It’s more like a continuous spectrum of alternatives from heavily plan-driven at one extreme to heavily adaptive at the other extreme. It’s more a matter of fitting the methodology to the project and to the business rather than force-fitting a project and a business to one of those extremes. * When should a plan-driven approach be used? A plan-driven approach works in situations that have low levels of uncertainty, like building a bridge across a river. If you have a situation that is relatively straight-forward, it’s well-defined, it’s repeatable, a plan-driven approach is a good choice as you can take the lessons you’ve learned on one project and do better on the next project because it’s similar and follows the same model. * When should agile be used? Agile works best in environments with high levels of uncertainty. An example is finding a cure for cancer. If you were to develop a project plan for finding a cure for cancer, it would be ridiculous to try to develop a detailed plan with schedule and cost information. There’s just too much uncertainty. It’s a wasted effort to try to develop a detailed plan. In that kind of situation, people are more concerned about the goal of finding a cure for cancer than they are about having a detailed cost and schedule breakdown of what it’s going to take to get there. It’s based on an empirical process control model. The word empirical means based on observation, meaning that as you go through the project, you’re continuously adjusting both the product and the process to complete the product. * Often when waterfall and agile approaches are discussed, the conversation quickly becomes one of “waterfall is bad” and “agile is good.” Is it that simple? No, it’s not. Saying agile is better than waterfall is like saying a car is better than a boat. They are two different things, and each has advantages or disadvantages based on the env...