Re: Strange agile articles

Hi Massimo,

I ran into Prince in Europe when working there in 2009-2012, it is not used
much or well known in North America. Here we have the PMI and the PMP
certification, and their PMI-ACP (Agile Certified Practitioner)
certification. PMI-ACP is a wide and thin overview of frameworks (XP,
Scrum, DSDM, etc) and Agile.

I do not know Prince2-Agile, however, it sounds like we have the same
issues, just a different waterfall certification vendor.

General Project Management has some good skills to learn, like stakeholder
management, figuring out agreements that work for both sides, being
organized and procurement. Most of the other "skills" are not needed when
moving to an Agile framework. Instead different skills are valued, people
skills such as coaching, mentoring, conflict resolution, team work and
collaboration skills. Technical skills, well too many to list.

When I train PMs in Scrum I tell them very clearly that there is no project
manager in Scrum. Then we write down all the things PMs do today and we
figure which role will do them in Scrum, PO, SM or Team. I do mention that
when doing large scale Agile with many teams we sometimes have PMs who help
us coordinate events, however there are few of these roles.

So they need to change, and I recommend they "try on" a new role for a
while, and not be forced into a role. Making all the PMs Customers/POs or
making them all Agile Coaches/SMs does not work, and maybe some would be
more effective on the team. In either case there are likely large gaps in
knowledge and behavior that need to be overcome for people to reach their
potential in Agile.

I think what we are seeing is the Prince org and the PMI trying to stay
relevant, and continue to make their constituents feel like they have a
special place in delivery, instead of helping them find a new way to work
and behave. This is causing problems, and will continue to do so until
companies kill the demand for these roles. In one US based insurance
company on their second attempt at going Agile they laid off all the PMs
and then opened new positions like Scrum Master and Product Owner, and the
PMs could apply for those roles, but would have to compete for them. It was
enough to get people out of their PM comfort zone and thinking about how to
change.

I expect we will spend another decade dealing with faux Agile adoption.
Coddled monopolistic markets such as financial services will struggle the
most. Competitive Darwinian markets will evolve faster. So if you don't
want to deal with faux Agile, focus on working with businesses that are
well positioned and have steady pressure from a variety of competitors.




Robin Dymond, CST
Managing Partner, Innovel
www.innovel.net
www.scrumtraining.com
Direct: (804) 239-4329
twitter: @robindymond
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robindymond

On Tue, Oct 11, 2016 at 10:49 AM, Massimo Manca [email protected]
[extremeprogramming] <[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
> Il 11/10/2016 07:51, Robin Dymond [email protected]
> [extremeprogramming] ha scritto:
> >
> >
> > Hello Massimo,
> >
> > The article linked is not from a scrum alliance trainer. Anyone can
> > submit an article to the scrum alliance for posting. No idea how this
> > one got past the reviewers, probably because the staff are mostly
> > event planners and support staff, not trainers and coaches, we are all
> > free range. I don't know if it will be removed, however I think it
> > does not belong on that site.
> Hello Robin, I know what happened because I am following the thread on
> LinkedIn and I start the thread here to share what is happening.
> About the author you wrote what scrumalliance wrote but he results to be
> a "certified SCRUM master" so I think for this reason there was no
> control on his article:
> https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/profile/pmude but this is my
> personal feeling.
>
> I also use agile methods and processes since '90s (starting with lean
> methods in a factory and then in R&D department) experimenting, doing
> right and wrong things and so on. But seems to me recently things are
> going worst and there are many signals I receive from collegues working
> with companies from India and Brazil so I shared these info with the group.
>
> If you know Prince2 and Prince2-Agile I would know what you think about
> them if you think them real agile project management processes and
> eventually why.
>
> I personally used Prince2 because was required in some tenders I
> participate and I don't feel it agile at all. I feel Prince2-Agile just
> a way to make-up Prince2 to say "hey guys, it is agile you don't need to
> migrate to SCRUM and others" because anyway training and publications is
> a single company (participate by UK government) business.
> But I may be wrong and I would like to hear more opinions on them.
> >
> > If you want to read what trainers and coaches are saying read the
> > comments, which are highly critical and go on far longer than the
> > article, look for CST or CEC in their handle.
> >
> > Also would like to point out that there are CSTs like myself who have
> > been on this list (and many others) for a decade. Thanks to the
> > efforts of numerous people here the Scrum Alliance offers technical
> > training in TDD, CI, pairing, refactoring, etc, sometimes taught by
> > people on this list. It is also by far the hardest training to sell,
> > as developers would rather learn a new tool (ie swift, aws, oracle)
> > then learn to test drive their code.
> I know also if I have a personal opinion about trainings and
> certifications. I think that we could say an agile process is really
> agile when we don't need to follow a real training. I mean that a short
> printed guide, a set of use cases and a set of exercises/simulations
> would be more than sufficient to start. Of course you may say that it is
> not very far from to follow a training... but take it as a general thought.
> About certifications: I think before to train others, trainers would
> need to apply for several years, in Europe there are too many certified
> agile trainers (I don't speak only about SCRUM) that really have little
> to do and to share ending with solutions and examples not far from the
> scoreboard.
> >
> > My opinion is the article is a POS, and certainly does not represent
> > the opinion of any agilists who I know and respect.
> >
> > Any change effort suffers from relabelling, where people attach the
> > new labels to old roles and behaviors. We see this often in Agile
> > adoption. Learning new behaviors is hard and takes time. It often also
> > requires structural changes to the organization. Most of the hard
> > changes needed, like eliminating silos (ie separate testing dept) have
> > little to do with XP. They are organizational design problems that
> > stem from legacy structures and mindset, like those on display in this
> > article.
> >
> > Robin Dymond, CST
> > Managing Partner, Innovel
> > www.innovel.net <http://www.innovel.net>
> > www.scrumtraining.com <http://www.scrumtraining.com>
> > Direct: (804) 239-4329
> > twitter: @robindymond
> > Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/robindymond
> > <https://www.linkedin.com/in/robindymond>
> >
> > On Oct 10, 2016 8:01 AM, "Massimo Manca [email protected]
> > <mailto:[email protected]>[extremeprogramming]"
> > <[email protected]
> > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
> > There are other funny folks promoting Prince2 and Prince2-Agile as agile
> > project management processes.
> > I used Prince2 in the past because in UK and West Europe is a common
> > requirement in public tenders but I didn't see any agility in it. They
> > just write down how to organize and manage a project with the lesson of
> > the "old school" and maintaining a hierarchical structure.
> > Instead I know Prince2-Agile only because when was published I received
> > the booklet. Seems to me an old "command and control" PM over SCRUM so
> > is a heavier SCRUM defining much more roles and using stages and
> > milestones to control the project status.
> > I am interested also to hear comments on them.
> >
> > Il 10/10/2016 03:01, Charlie Poole [email protected]
> > <mailto:[email protected]>
> > [extremeprogramming] ha scritto:
> > >
> > > I particularly enjoyed this...
> > >
> > > > The Agile Scorecard is a reflection of disciplined "Agile values"
> > >
> > > The author was quite right to put "Agile values" in quotation marks,
> > > apparently wanting us to understand that this is a parody, or so one
> > > can only hope. :-)
> > >
> > > Charlie
> > >
> > > On Sun, Oct 9, 2016 at 4:08 PM, Massimo Manca
> > > [email protected]
> > <mailto:[email protected]><mailto:m.manca@
> micronengineering.it
> > <mailto:[email protected]>>
> > > [extremeprogramming] <[email protected]
> > <mailto:[email protected]>
> > > <mailto:[email protected]
>
> > <mailto:[email protected]>>> wrote:
> > >
> > > Hi guys,
> > >
> > > I think you have LinkedIn profiles as me, so may be you already read
> > > these things but in the last couple of days happened that several
> > > trainers published articles about agile processes introducing measures
> > > and artifacts having nothing to do with agile.
> > >
> > > This is the link to the worst one published by scrumalliance.org
> > <http://scrumalliance.org>
> > > <http://scrumalliance.org> (but I
> > > know it because I found a post on LinkedIn).
> > >
> > > https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/octobe
> r/the-agile-scorecard?feed=articles
> > <https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/octob
> er/the-agile-scorecard?feed=articles>
> > > <https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/octob
> er/the-agile-scorecard?feed=articles
> > <https://www.scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2016/octob
> er/the-agile-scorecard?feed=articles>>
> > >
> > > There is also this post about a way to manage projects in a way
> > > that is
> > > a mix of agile and old fashion project management:
> > >
> > > https://www.linkedin.com/nhome/updates?activity=619071041247
> 2827904&goback=&trk=hb_ntf_REPLIED_TO_YOUR_COMMENT
> > <https://www.linkedin.com/nhome/updates?activity=61907104124
> 72827904&goback=&trk=hb_ntf_REPLIED_TO_YOUR_COMMENT>
> > > <https://www.linkedin.com/nhome/updates?activity=61907104124
> 72827904&goback=&trk=hb_ntf_REPLIED_TO_YOUR_COMMENT
> > <https://www.linkedin.com/nhome/updates?activity=61907104124
> 72827904&goback=&trk=hb_ntf_REPLIED_TO_YOUR_COMMENT>>
> > >
> > > I think we could discuss a little bit about these facts and trying to
> > > understand why happened.
> > > Do you agree?
> > >
> > > Massimo
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > ---
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