A Novel Framework for Agile Management

Make sure your project will give the audience what they want

Any project is developed as a product of opposing forces; scope, cost, and time. The ideal project result is ultimately a balance of these three constraints. So, while there are multiple traditional and agile approaches to project management, each one can be viewed as a different prioritization of the values and risks associated with these constraints. Traditional project management attempts to fix scope, cost, and time, minimizing the risks associated with changes.

A false assumption in the traditional approach is that change only comes from within the project, and that requirements gathering and stakeholder contracting will prevent failure. In fact, what is most likely to change over the course of a project is external to the project. Customer needs and priorities change over time, projects learn more about the problem as the project progresses, and new technologies can appear or change. It becomes harder to justify sticking to the plan when the plan itself has become irrelevant. This is not to minimize the approach to change management that traditional project management takes. However, the traditional approach presents change management as external to the project management process by design.

Agile project management takes a different approach to risk management. Developed for the software project management domain in 2001, it recognizes that an inability to change in the rapidly changing environment of software development, was itself a bigger risk to any project than not delivering the scope that was fixed at the beginning of the project. Agile allows the scope to change over the course of the project, in order to deliver the best product possible within the constraints of time and cost.

Adapt or die

Agile is defined as the ability to move quickly and easily, and that is certainly true for Agile projects that allow themselves to pivot quickly and easily as knowledge and circumstances change. The scope of an Agile project, while planned out, is consistently and regularly up for review, discussion, and change. In Agile, change management is an intrinsic part of the project management process. Agile values responding to change over following a plan. “Adapting to change over following a plan,” is one of the four core values of Agile. Novel projects internalize the importance of both planning and adapting by interpreting the core value so that it becomes:

Following a plan promotes adapting to change

Traditional management values planning the work up front and following the plan to completion. A plan can create comfort that the product can and will be delivered as expected. In order to be effective, this strategy requires everything to be known upfront in the planning process. Making changes to the pre-approved plans during the project requires additional steps and approval to occur.

Particularly in the volatile software development industry, Agile management understands that little is known at the beginning of the project, and that being able to respond to change is more important than having a detailed plan. It abandons the comfort of pre-approved plans and embraces the unknown as an opportunity. Novel Project Management builds on this approach to deliver an adaptive framework for Agile management.

Shoot at where the target is going to be

Archery is like the traditional approach to project management. All variables, constraints, and controls must be accounted for before the arrow is released by the archer. Wind speed, target distance, the breathing of the archer all processed into the plan of the shot. Once the arrow is shot, the hope is that all the planning, calculations, and experience of the archer will lead the arrow to its target.

However, what happens when the target is six months or two years away? How good is the plan if an unexpected gust of wind blows? Can the plan be successful when the target is picked up and moved 20 feet away? These are the metaphorical realities that Agile aims to address in mid-flight of the arrow. When ( not if ) changes occur, the plan already includes the frequent in-flight adjustments required to adapt to those changes.

Projects are initiated to tackle new work that has not been done before. The objectives of projects can be very different, but the motivations are almost always the same, improving organization value. First and foremost, Novel projects emphasize that the project is about problem solving and is fundamentally a creative process, just like writing a novel. Creativity is the value generation engine at the core of why projects exist. Novel projects nurture creativity throughout the project and prioritize removing constraints on the creative process.

Novel projects embrace adaptation as a central pillar to the successful execution of any project. Writing a novel rarely takes a linear approach to the product development. Starting with a general outline, a novel grows and adapts as more of the story is written. Each step forward has an impact on what comes next and what is already written. The creative process is hard to predict, and the final product is never exactly like the initial general outline. Being open to creativity requires being adaptive to change.

Planning for creativity

Planning is important. Novel projects do more planning over the course of a project than traditional projects. Traditional projects do the majority of planning at the beginning of the project. Novel projects plan and replan small aspects of the project over the course of the project as part of the cycle of adaptation. It is not improvisation it is experimentation. Improvisation suggests making things up as you go along. In experimentation, a hypothesis is formed, an experiment is planned, conducted, and evaluated. Based on the evaluation, the hypothesis is either supported or rejected. And then the next experiment is planned. It is this structured process that leaves room for adaptation to new knowledge that forms the basis of scientific discovery.

The Novel approach is that following a plan must support responding to change. That means that the processes and tools of this framework incorporate evaluating results and then planning the next experiment. They assume that circumstances will change, new knowledge will be learned, and that informs the next step of the project. Putting the majority of the planning at the beginning of the project ignores all of these opportunities for learning and improvement that will occur over the course of a project. Plans can become out of date the day after they’re written, and following the wrong plan is the greater risk than adapting to change.

Planning takes place at two levels; the strategic and the tactical. Strategic planning addresses what the project is, and what value it brings. Tactical planning addresses how the project achieves it. Strategic planning is important in the beginning, to establish the goals, vision, and expected outcomes of the project. Planning anything beyond this level at the beginning of the project would restrict the tactical options available to the project team, and would be dependent on being able to predict the future. Since Novel projects maximize the creative opportunities available to the project team, tactical planning is left to the individuals performing the work.

Divide planning, and conquer

At the beginning of the Novel project, the planning is focused on setting the strategic vision and boundaries of the project. This is to establish a clear definition on what the project is, and what it is not. The outcome is an agreement on the overall scope of the project. It is not about developing the requirements, user experience, or any of the creative aspects of product generation. That will be accomplished later, at the tactical level, as more information is acquired.

Throughout the Novel project, tactical planning occurs to determine what is to be done to accomplish the project vision, and how it is to achieved. These tactical plans must be regularly re-evaluated for consistency and alignment with the project vision. They must also be informed by the reality on the ground, and backed up by metrics of performance and progress. Good intelligence information is the foundation of good decision making. And good decision making is required for successful adaptation.

By establishing a strategic vision early on, Novel projects establish a fixed scope that can be estimated and funded. Within that fixed scope, the creative opportunity and tactical planning is handed off to the project team to learn and adapt as necessary to achieve it. Running a Novel project requires placing trust in the individuals and interactions of the team performing the work. The team must create and evaluate plans as the work is conducted, with no guarantees of success or pre-approved product documentation. What is gained is the unrestricted creative potential of people and ideas. And that is the most valuable resource of any project.