Wednesday 30 March 2011

Curse Of The (Oxy)Morons: Agile Within A Prince2 Framework

After reading the brilliantly inspired Half Arsed Agile Manifesto I was reminded of a recent phenomenon that has cropped up on CVs throughout the land.


"Adept at managing projects using Agile within a Prince2 Framework" - my first reaction is ha ha ha REJECT. Once I've reached the hundredth CV that contains this absurd claim however, it occurs to me that this is more widespread than I had feared.


Impulses tell me that Agile and Prince2 together in one sentence is like asking Christians and Atheists to co-write the Wikipedia entry on Evolution and yet I've had serious discussions with deadly serious individuals in serious organisations who are insulted when I suggest the contradictions at play. Organisations have hounded me to come in and interview for them; they proudly claim they have "perfected" Agile within a Prince2 framework and then we argue back and forth and suddenly they don't want me to work with them anymore. This doesn't mean that I'm some rigid Agile evangelist - but it does mean that I don't want to work for an organisation that fails to spot the inherent differences between the two frameworks. It also means that organisations don't want you if you fail to pay lip service to their lunacy.


Agile embraces change. It intuitively knows that projects will make mistakes and will require alterations throughout their life cycle. It doesn't erect boundaries and procedures to restrict this. It pre-empts change and hones it. It accepts it as a part of life. Prince2 safeguards against change rigidly and tries to deliver to the granular level every item as promised in the Project Initiation Document. When a change is requested, a committee meeting is held to assess the implications. The only thing they seem to share in common is the joint desire to "deliver a project".


What "Agile within a Prince2 framework" tells me within an organisational framework is somewhere that likes rhetoric such as "control" and "safeguard" at a Programme Management level but wants to appear to be cavalier and flair-driven at development level; in essence, it wants to have its cake and eat it. A project is never "finished" in Agile unless the stakeholder declares so - backlogs can always take extra submissions and work can always continue. You can't plan Agile projects using a Gantt chart if you accept that things will change as you go along. All you can promise is what you will attempt to deliver, on best endeavours, over the next iteration. Using velocity, you can estimate roughly how long the project should take, but only based on the current backlog that you have to work with.


Ultimately, what "Agile within a Prince2 framework" REALLY tells me is:


* An organisation who wants to appear Agile to excite potential investors
* An organisation who wants to appear Agile to tempt talented staff
* An organisation split in two - and both sides headbutting the other across the watercooler
* An organisation who doesn't get Agile or worse, doesn't believe in it but is doing it anyway.


I worry about where the industry is going. I feel like Robert Neville at the end of I Am Legend. The book, not the awful Will Smith film.

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