One of the guys from RASI Partners LLC asked a great question the other day, what central advantage does Agile bring to the game that we did not already have? On further discussion he rephrased the question, “what should an executive think is the main advantage to using Agile?”
This person was familiar with the manifesto and the usual evangelical resources.
Theresa Smith blogged about this the other day.
The gentleman was correct to point out that most of Agile’s components pre-existed Agile by many years. Agile isn’t so much the original contribution as the branding; it’s a container class for an assortment of evolutionary contributions.
But still – there must be a singular advantage to Agile vs. not-Agile.
I’ve picked two ways to examine the difference:
1) Compare a well-run Agile project to a well-run non-Agile project.
2) Compare a poorly run Agile project to a poorly run non-Agile project.
By “non-Agile” I mean new product development using a stage-gate process that incorporates formal requirement validation and documented traceability from requirements to design to code to test procedure. A configuration control board would meet at intervals to consider proposed changes to scope. All content, scope, and innovation would be introduced top-down and management would use EVM (earned value management) for programmatic accountability.
Case #1: All things otherwise equal and both projects are well run. In this scenario an Agile project will simply waste less , whether in time spent preparing charts for a Critical Design Review or effort devoted to politicking by CCB members. Both types of project can achieve comparable final results; however, an Agile project will do it with less waste. The bigger the project, the bigger the savings.
Case #2: All things otherwise equal and both projects are poorly run. In this scenario both projects could be at high risk for failure; Agile offers little to prevent that. Instead, Agile provides a faster road to failure when things go south. A conventional project can burn money for years without anyone admitting it’s doomed. EVM combined with stage gate development inevitably misleads executives during the first two-thirds of a project's schedule/budget. At some point executives feel the need to throw good money after bad to salvage the investment…not a good situation to be in. By comparison, Agile offers fewer false indicators of success. Things disintegrate fairly quickly and boldly when an Agile project enters the atmosphere sideways.
My conclusion is that Agile offers executive management two key advantages: First, it is more cost effective because it avoids systematic waste that is otherwise common. Second, it has greater accountability because it puts execution center stage and project managers cannot hide behind EVM reports that might be misleading.