Agile, Innovation, and the Project Manager

Global competition and unprecedented economic turmoil have created demanding innovation challenges for companies, industries and nations. Change is occurring at an astounding rate. What role, if any, does professional project management have to play in leading innovation efforts while dealing with change? Many believe that project management is a hindrance to innovation, but the mistaken belief is found in the actual practice rather than the potential value. This paper will look at the role of project management methodology, particularly “agile project management” as applied in the context of software teams in fostering and enhancing innovation projects and their results. Based on eight years of leading an agile team that focuses on innovation projects, the author will relate the principles and practices of a high-functioning agile team to time-honored elements of A Guide to the Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK). Introduction – Change is “In the air!” Have things really changed that much? Are we truly experiencing change at a greater rate today than at other times in human history? Sometimes it is helpful to reflect on just how much the world has changed in recent years. How many of us remember film? Travel agents? Land lines? Readers Guide to Periodical Literature? Newspapers? The last 25 years have witnessed the birth of the personal computer, the internet, social networking revolutions and many other technology-based innovations. Each successive increment of Moore’s Law doubles the capacity of basic computing power and storage while reducing the size and cost of various hardware options. The era of faster, better, cheaper hardware brings with it a dark side: complexity and high-expectations. Sophisticated and demanding customers have high expectations for fast delivery of ever-higher-quality innovations. The cost of switching from one supplier to another has never been lower leading to a viciously competitive environment. The future belongs to those companies that innovate well and innovate quickly. The question arises: What role does professional project management have in leading innovation projects? Often, traditional project management approaches are overwhelmed by the speed, ambiguity and demands of today’s innovation initiatives. Yet, without professional project management, many innovation projects stumble. These projects fail to keep executive management support, fail at critical time junctures and fail to deliver the quality, scalability and sophistication in demand by business and consumer users. The IT Industry regularly suffers massive project failures. The bigger the project, the more likely the failure. We need new approaches to project management without abandoning the timeless principles of project management excellence. “Agile Project Management” and “Agile Software Development” are two oft-used and oft-abused buzzwords in business today. There is little doubt of the need for agility, but what is agility and what form does it take when it comes to project management? Project Management Professionals (PMPs®) are schooled practitioners of the iterative nature of projects. Planning, executing and measuring (in the form on Monitor and Control) while fostering good stakeholder communication, managing budget, managing scope, tracking time and schedules, managing human resource development and needs, and controlling quality – when done well – are all things we attribute to project management excellence. However, even the most experienced project managers feel the pain of being “under the gun” while adjusting to a rapidly changing economic landscape while undertaking even more compelling innovation projects. It is possible to rapidly innovate while enjoying the benefits and value of professional project management. While valuable, an agile approach is not a panacea. All methodologies including agile methodologies do not, by themselves, solve any problems. Properly done, modern iterative and incremental approaches (a.k.a agile