Firstly, we should start by clarifying that ‘agility’ is not the exclusive domain of teams using ‘agile frameworks’ such as Scrum, AgilePM, SAFe or other agile frameworks. Common project management approaches (or sometimes unfairly described as ‘traditional’ approaches) such as PRINCE2 or PMBOK, can also be agile and adapted to integrate the principles and practices promoted by many agile frameworks.   Hence, this article and the tips provided are appropriate for all project environments.  Though do keep in mind, the degree of ‘agility’ for any one project may be limited by factors such as the development approach selected and the nature of the business environment.

For now let’s focus on these following focus areas to aid project managers who are wanting to apply agile concepts:

1. Be the servant leader
2. Embrace the agile principles
3. Develop an effective team
4. Finish on time
5. Active business engagement

Be the servant leader

Servant leadership is a term that holds a view that the best way to lead a team is to be a servant to the team adopting a facilitative and collaborative approach.

We should also consider that an important leadership attribute is to remain focused on the future.  The servant project manager avoids adopting a strong ‘management control’ approach, instead adopting a more ‘active listening’ approach.  Listening to team requests and issues and ensuring these are being appropriately serviced, whether it be a business constraint needing to be addressed, or an aspect blocking the team’s capability or delivery.

As a servant leader, the project manager is less likely to request progress reports, instead observing progress information on team boards. It is the project manager’s role in this environment:

• To ensure everyone is being looked after and they have what is needed: be it resources, access to business roles, the right skills to perform their work.
• Creating a happier, more effective and productive team, bonding the team.
• Monitoring collaboration levels and allowing the team to share responsibilities, self-organize and take decisions suitable to their experience and role.
• Monitoring these attributes to ensure the effectiveness of the project and their capacity as a servant leader.

In summary the project manager as a servant leader is creating an environment for the team to feel truly empowered and responsible for the way they work and what they produce.  ‘Leadership’ is an attribute focused on the future, the vision, and the ‘why’ as opposed to ‘management’ which is described as a discipline that tends to be focused on the ‘how’, ‘when’, and efficiency.  The project manager needs to ensure that an appropriate balance of servant leadership and management attributes are applied to facilitate the integration of agile concepts, but also applying an appropriate level of management control.

Embrace the agile principles

At the outset of any project a project manager may discuss or conduct a workshop with the project team to define how the application of agile principles will be achieved. These may be principles agreed by the team or drawn from an existing agile framework.  For example the AgilePM, agile project management framework, outlines the following as its principles:

• Focus on the business need
• Deliver on time
• Collaborate
• Never compromise quality
• Build incrementally from firm foundations
• Develop iteratively
• Communicate continuously and clearly
• Demonstrate control

Some tips for applying such principles:

• Agree the principles with the team early in the project and how they will be applied
• Make sure everyone understands their importance
• Encourage all team members to flag up if they believe any principle is being broken
• Consider including reviews of how principles have been applied during each increment review.

Surveys do exist which the team can collectively use to assess how well these principles are being applied. Our AgilePM – Agile Project Management training and certfication provides such a survey as part of the AgilePM framework.

Develop an effective team

The effectiveness of the application of agile concepts will be dependent on the knowledge and skill level of each team member.

Some key success factors for effective agile teams:

• Empowering roles to make decisions, based on their expertise, within explicit boundaries agreed early on in the project
• Ideally team members are co-located, enabling face to face communications, though we recognize this is challenging, more so in today’s Covid-19 world.
• Avoid swapping team members, as constant change puts the project at risk
• Core skills within the team to develop fit for purpose products, however, don’t forget team members also need good communication skills and willingness to collaborate
• Size of the development team, the optimum size many people advocate is seven +/- two people (AgilePM – Agile Project Management training suggestion)
• Ensure team members understand their role and are accepting of it

A common mistake in building agile capability is sending team members to a short course, and then hoping by magic things will change.  Agile training programs are very important, though enhancing capability should continue beyond a single agile course.  The focus of most agile training programs is around building awareness and exploring the how.  The ‘hard stuff’, which is application of learnings will occur in the workplace (or at home if working in a virtual world). Therefore, building capability also means workplace support, which may be through an agile coaching program. Our agile coaching program is designed to enable an agile approach and ensure the agile approach and practices selected are suitable and applied with consideration of the project and business environment. In some cases this coaching role may be adopted by the project manager, should they have the appropriate experience and coaching skills, or engaging a person with the appropriate experience and skills to support the capability development of the agile team.

Some further tips:

• Make sure roles are visible to all from start of the project
• Discuss responsibilities for each role with role owners
• If the project manager is in multiple roles, be aware which role you are fulfilling

In summary, quality solutions are best delivered by skilled empowered people working collaboratively as a team to meet a shared objective.

Finish on time

Always difficult to achieve in any environment, with research statistics regularly showing many projects as ‘challenged’ in achieving performance targets. Some tips to hitting time targets:

• Prioritize the work to be done
• Timebox the work
• Always hit deadlines
• Build confidence through predictable delivery

Prioritization is a key technique that provides flexibility around features to consistently achieve timelines, an important factor of business success.  Further it allows focus on what the business actually needs, when it needs it, what items will provide significant benefit to the business, as well allowing to set realistic expectations for the completion of a project increment.

A simple and effective prioritization technique is the MoSCoW technique.

M – Must Have

S – Should Have

C – Could Have

W – Won’t Have

Prioritization can be applied at different levels of the project (benefits/project increment/sprint) and its products (product/requirements/acceptance criteria).

‘Must Haves’ define the minimum useable subset which is guaranteed to be delivered. ‘Should Haves’ and ‘Could Haves’ are used as contingency to deliver the ‘Must Haves’. ‘Should Haves’ and ‘Could Haves’ being sacrificed or deferred to later timeboxes where effort estimates are deemed to be inadequate. Caps can be assigned for ‘Must Haves’, ‘Should Haves’ and ‘Could Haves’, example it may be agreed ‘Must Haves’ should not be more than 60% of effort.

As a servant leader the project manager can facilitate discussions on priorities with product owners, business roles, development team members and empower the team to take prioritization decisions at certain levels.

Prioritization is a key part of planning. Remembering also, planning activities are always highly collaborative and estimates are always more accurate if the right people, those doing the work are involved in estimating effort.

Project managers, need to ensure development team members have plans and progress visible to all, measuring progress through focus on delivery of products, rather than completed activities.

© APM Group Limited

Active business engagement

It is important for the success of the product that the project manager facilitates the involvement of business roles, as these roles provide the business direction. Ensuring business roles are actively engaged and commitment levels are maintained throughout the project. This also means facilitating day-to-day involvement of business roles in the iterative development of the solution.

Do note, active business engagement can sometimes be constrained where commercial, contractual arrangements do not allow for an outcome focused approach and instead focus on overly detailed control mechanisms.  This can restrict collaborative working, iterative and incremental development.

In an agile environment where a product evolves over time, do not underestimate the time and level of involvement required from business roles.  It is important to induct business roles in the values, principles and mindset of an agile development environment. Agile awareness programs for the wider business are an important part of building a supportive environment for teams adopting an agile approach.  It is also a direct investment in the business’ future, as awareness programs of this nature can initiate conversations across the business on how agile ‘ways of working’ and thinking can be used as a strategy to enhance the organization’s agility. That is, to sense and respond to change faster, in order to enable continuous value to its customers.

Business agility: “The ability of an organization to move and adapt quickly in response to shifting customer and market needs.” – AgileSHIFT, Axelos