Transforming in waves
Agility is the project team’s ability to quickly change the project plan as a response to customer or stakeholder needs, market or technology demands in order to achieve better project and product performance in an innovative and dynamic project environment.
PMI reports state that agility can produce better outcomes in financial performance, customer centricity, project success, strategy implementation, and benefits realization.
Agility is not a characteristic of a practice or method. It is a competence.
CEOs recognize that their organization’s success depends on the ability to adapt and respond to change. But transforming an organization to achieve greater agility can be challenging. Factors that impact agility include lack of executive sponsorship, inability to change the culture, not taking an organization-wide view, underestimating the impact of change, and failing to support old and new approaches during transition.
PMI recommends transforming in waves, with associated business, technology, and infrastructure groups becoming agile together.
Their Thought Leadership series focuses on how cross-functional collaboration, an innovative attitude, and support are essential as an organization moves through an agile transformation.
If well-trained people, effective processes, and a supportive culture are employed together to build greater agility, organizations have a strong foundation for success.
Achieving culture change is the most important factor in a successful agile transformation. It is critical that the mindset is driven from the highest levels where culture is set. This is why the PMO’s commitment has a vital role.
A top-down or “PMO-first” approach would be much more effective, as it:
- Enables collaboration across diverse enterprise groups;
- Addresses whole business value chains, allowing end-to-end agility;
- Accepts that multiple approaches must be supported at least through transformation;
- Transforms/modernizes current approaches before introducing new ones; and
- Minimizes friction between traditional phase-based delivery and more modern approaches.
“The PMO is uniquely positioned to foster agility by rallying employees, driving greater adoption of fast-fail strategies, building small and nimble teams, and assigning accountability. — Stuart Cullum, Managing Director, Program Delivery Services, KPMG”
In the Project Management field we mostly talk about processes. Agility is a perfect opportunity to talk about people and benefits derived from teams.
