Use agile in uncertain environments

Projects with uncertain requirements and volatile environments benefit from Agile methods.

With the rise of mass-production after the Industrial Revolution and the onset of scientific management by Frederick Winslow Taylor, the predominant project methodology was rooted in excruciatingly detailed plans for well-understood problems. Once a Ford automobile had been painstakingly designed, no question remained about the features or the manufacturing implementation. To build efficiency, document the entire process and ensure rigorous conformity to your perfect standard. Then the problems began to arise.

Waterfall project methodology, as this system was later named, perfected a process for environments where all the variables could be identified and carefully weighed. But when the process didn’t conform, when the environment was quickly changing and the requirements were fuzzy, Waterfall leaked. Companies would authorize expensive software projects and, months later when the software was released, discover that all the expense was for nothing; the product was irrelevant. Sometimes it was because the intended customer no longer felt the need, more often the customer never adopted the product because it was, from their perspective, unusable.

Software companies first adopted a new project methodology to address the problems that resulted when Waterfall was applied to the wrong situation. But as the Agile method has proven its worth in situations were Waterfall freezes, more industries are rethinking the way they manage projects. While Agile does not replace the efficiency of Waterfall, it does apply a reorientation for projects that Waterfall is naturally weak in addressing ((Tycho Press)).

Entrepreneurs have a new tool in the Agile methodology that’s better suited for their cause than Waterfall. Whether the entrepreneur is launching an entirely new business or a new offering at an established company, the entrepreneur has a framework to make his team’s efforts faster, more efficient, and constantly improving. If the entrepreneur attempts to apply Agile as a panacea to every project woe he’ll find that it falters when lengthy foresight and accurate detail are required, but for the everyday work of finding what customers need and delivering it, Agile is his best friend. Just so long as he doesn’t use it for the new building project - his employees don’t need an iteratively built restroom.

Agile is Relativity’s bread-and-butter, but the dense lingo of Agile is likely a barrier for those who aren’t in the software business. Having used the system for both work and home life, (though never in its purest forms) I am thoroughly over the initial hype. I’ve missed Gantt charts, formal requirement specifications, and project schedules. Even when Agile is aptly applied to the right projects it causes friction; I’ve regularly heard developers complain that we’re so feature-focused that we don’t write quality code and therefore have dozens of defects (again today at our Engineering All-Hands actually). If you’re suffering from Apple’s latest iPhone defects, you can blame the Agile methodology for popularizing a method that encourages Apple to release features with bugs for its customers to find.

References

Tycho Press. (2015) Scrum Basics: A Very Quick Guide to Agile Project Management. Tycho Press.