#### 32 min talk and the rest is QA

It's a little hard not to be perplexed by Agile proselytizers who intone the Agile is not a silver bullet mantra and then proceed to recommend it for everything. They're like developers who recommend Perl for everything and wonder why people don't take them seriously.

Learn how to tell the proselytizers when to shove it.

By the time this talk is done, you'll understand what Agile is really about and when to use Agile, Lean, and Structured project management techniques.

- Supporting teams doing agile
- Earlier talk: Agile Companies go POP - People Organization and Process
- Companies call themselves Agile even though the teams should be.
- Companies keep saying "we should be agile" but keep forgetting to ask: Why?
- Related article: When agile is the wrong choice for your organization
- Project management is for delivering a product and controlling the costs.
- Simon Wardley blog
- Simon Wardley on Medium
- Uncertainty Versus Maturity
- Novelty phase: What can we do?
- Stability phase: How can we do it?
- Commodity phase: (things that are interchangeable) When can we start?
- Utility phase: Consume as needed. (like electricity or water) SaaS, PaaS, AWS
- Porject management types: Structured, Lean, Agile

### Structure Project management

- PRINCE2
- CCPM - Critical chain project management
- Six Sigma
- Waterfall
- Well defined, well-understood projects.
- Reduces cost of divergence

### Lean Project management

- Six Sigma
- Deming cycle (PDCA = plan–do–check–act )
- Scrum
- MVP - Minumum Viable Product
- Lean Startup
- Reduce cost of waste

### Agiel Project management

- Scrum
- Kanban
- Scrumban
- XP (Extreme Programming)
- Reduces the cost of change in uncertainty

- If you build a nuclear reactor, do you want to fail fast?
- If you don't have change and uncertainty, do not pick a project management that optimizes for that.

### The cost of divergence

- RSM Tenon
- Intel Pentium FDIV bug
- 1981 Hyatt Regency walkway collapse
- 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
- 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster

### Controlling Costs

- Agile project management reduces the cost of change.
- Lean project management reduces the cost of waste.
- Structured project mangement reduces the cost of divergence.

- Sunk costs
- You don't want your HR or accounting department to be Agile
- Agile Manifesto
- Scaled Agile Framework

### Agile checklist

- Is it OK to "fail fast"?
- Is there change/uncertainity?
- Access to stakeholders/customers?
- Are there only parts of the project which cannot fail?

Speaker is owner of All Around the World.