PMP Agile Life Cycles - Part 2

Agile projects have a variety of ways to undertake them - learn how project teams harness the agile characteristics and options to select the best approach

Characteristics of PMP Agile Life Cycles

In an agile environment, the team expects requirements to change. The iterative and incremental approaches provide feedback to better plan the next part of the project. However, in agile projects, incremental delivery uncovers hidden or misunderstood requirements.

The graphic below illustrates two possible ways to achieve incremental delivery so the project aligns with customer needs and can be adapted as necessary.

In iteration-based agile, the team works in iterations (timeboxes of equal duration) to deliver completed features.

The team works on the most important feature, collaborating as a team to finish it. Then the team works on the next most important feature and finishes it. The team may decide to work on a few features at a time, but the team does not address all of the work for the iteration at once (i.e., does not address all of the requirements, followed by all of the analyses, etc.).

In flow-based agile, the team pulls features from the backlog based on its capacity to start work rather than on an iteration-based schedule. The team defines its workflow with columns on a task board and manages the work in progress for each column.

Each feature may take a different amount of time to finish. Teams keep work-in-progress sizes small to better identify issues early and reduce rework should changes be required.

Without iterations to define planning and review points, the team and business stakeholders determine the most appropriate schedule for planning, product reviews, and retrospectives.

Agile life cycles are those that fulfill the principles of the Agile Manifesto. In particular, customer satisfaction increases with early and continuous delivery of valuable products.

Moreover, an incremental deliverable that is functional and provides value is the primary measure of progress. Agile life cycles combine both iterative and incremental approaches in order to adapt to high degrees of change and deliver project value more often.

Agile Suitability Filters

Various assessment models exist to help determine the likely fit or gaps for using agile approaches. These models assess project and organizational factors associated with adoption and suitability and then provide scores indicating alignment or potential risk areas. ​

Example of a PMP Hybrid Life Cycle Project

A pharmaceutical company that had a time-consuming U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval process tagged onto the end of its development process and its entire life cycle looked like in the graphic below.

While project teams undertook drug trials in an agile fashion, they had to present the drugs to an external group to perform the FDA approval process. A consultant helped to integrate the FDA approval process portion into the agile development process to create a more streamlined hybrid approach.

The short version of the story is that because FDA approval is required to be completed at the end of the development process or repeated after any change (this includes even after the most minor change), the process had to remain at the end as a separate phase. Integration using the iterative process was unsuccessful.

However, the consultant created some useful quick-start guides and testing protocols that shortened the final FDA approval process.

Characteristics of Hybrid Life Cycles

It is not necessary to use a single approach for an entire project. Projects often combine elements of different life cycles in order to achieve certain goals. A combination of predictive, iterative, incremental, and/or agile approaches is a hybrid approach.

The figure below depicts the basic, pure approaches to project types that combine to form a hybrid model. The early processes utilize an agile development life cycle, which is then followed by a predictive roll-out phase.

This approach can be used when there is uncertainty, complexity, and risk in the development portion of the project that would benefit from an agile approach, followed by a defined, repeatable roll-out phase that is appropriate to undertake in a predictive way, perhaps by a different team.

An example of this approach is the development of a new high-tech product followed by roll-out and training to thousands of users.

Combined Agile and Predictive Approaches

Another approach is to use a combination of agile and predictive approaches throughout the life cycle.

In the figure above, a combination of both predictive and agile approaches are used in the same project.

Perhaps the team is incrementally transitioning to agile and using some approaches like short iterations, daily stand-ups, and retrospectives, but other aspects of the project such as upfront estimation, work assignment, and progress tracking are still following predictive approaches.

Using both predictive and agile approaches is a common scenario. It would be misleading to call the approach agile since it clearly does not fully embody the agile mindset, values, and principles. However, it would also be inaccurate to call it predictive since it is a hybrid approach.

Predominately Predictive Approach with some Agile Components

The figure above shows a small agile element within a chiefly predictive project.

In this case, a portion of the project with uncertainty, complexity, or opportunity for scope creep is being tackled in an agile way, but the remainder of the project is being managed using predictive approaches.

An example of this approach would be an engineering firm that is building a facility with a new component.

While the majority of the project may be routine and predictable, like many other facility projects the organization has undertaken before, this project incorporates a new roofing material.

The contractor may plan for some small-scale installation trials on the ground first to determine the best installation method and to uncover issues early while there is plenty of time to solve them and incrementally improve processes through experimentation and adaptation.

A Largely Agile Approach with a Predictive Component

The graphic above depicts a largely agile approach with a predictive component. This approach might be used when a particular element is non-negotiable or not executable using an agile approach.

Examples include integrating an external component developed by a different vendor that cannot or will not partner in a collaborative or incremental way. A single integration is required after the component is delivered.

A government department had a credit insurance application development project. The multi-year project was to replace its aging underwriting system with a new, more responsive user interface and system integrations.

The bulk of the project was undertaken using an agile approach with continual business input. The premium rate calculations were handed down from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) as a 200-page specification.

The steps were very clearly explained with little opportunity for confusion (or interim result confirmation by the business) and were coded up by a separate team working its way through the calculation steps.

The two teams collaborated on the input variables required for the calculation and how to consume and display the output values, but beyond that, the calculation team worked in a largely predictive manner.

When the calculation team's portion was complete, the outputs from the premium rate calculations were displayed on the screens and in the reports. Then the business users provided feedback on the appearance and use of the information.

The two teams ran concurrently, but had little need for interaction. Having them physically close to each other made it easier to check in on development progress, but largely they were separate sub-projects.

Hybrid Life Cycles as fit-for-purpose

Project teams may design a hybrid life cycle based on project risks. For example, a campus construction project may have multiple buildings to improve and build.

An incremental approach would focus resources on completing some buildings earlier than others, accelerating the return on investment. Each individual delivery may be sufficiently well known to benefit from a predictive life cycle for that building alone.

The goal of project management is to produce business value in the best possible way given the current environment. It does not matter if that way is agile or predictive. The question to ask is: “How can we be most successful?” Is feedback needed as the team produces value? If so, increments will help.

Is it necessary to manage risk as ideas are explored? If so, iterations or agile will help. When the organization cannot deliver intermediate value, agile approaches may not be useful. That is okay—agile for the sake of agile is not the goal.

The point is to select a life cycle or a combination of life cycles that work for the project, the risks, and the culture. Agile is about customer-based delivery on a frequent basis. That delivery creates feedback for the team. The team uses that feedback to plan and re-plan the next chunk of work.

Hybrid Life Cycles as Transition Strategy

Many teams are not able to make the switch to agile ways of working overnight. Agile techniques look and feel very different to those who are accustomed to and have been successful in a predictive environment.

The larger the organization and the more moving parts, the longer it will take to transition. For that reason, it makes sense to plan a gradual transition.

A gradual transition involves adding more iterative techniques to improve learning and alignment among teams and stakeholders.

Later, consider adding more incremental techniques to accelerate value and return on investment to sponsors. This combination of various approaches is considered a hybrid approach.

Try these new techniques on a less risky project with a medium- to low-degree of uncertainty.

Then, when the organization is successful with a hybrid approach, try more complex projects that require more of those techniques to be added. This is a way to tailor the progressive hybrid transition to the organization's situation and specific risks and the team's readiness to adapt and embrace the changes.

Mixing Agile Approaches

Agile teams rarely limit their practices to one agile approach.

Each project context has its own peculiarities, such as the varied mix of team member skills and backgrounds; the various components of the product under development; and the age, scale, criticality, complexity, and regulatory constraints of the environment in which the work takes place.

Agile frameworks are not customized for the team. The team may need to tailor practices to deliver value on a regular basis. Often, teams practice their own special blend of agile, even if they use a particular framework as a starting point.

Blending Approaches

As an example of tailoring agile frameworks, one of the most common blends in widespread use involves a coordinated use of the Scrum framework, the Kanban Method, and elements of the eXtreme Programming (XP) method.

Scrum provides guidance on the use of a product backlog, a product owner, scrum master, and a cross-functional development team, including sprint planning, daily scrum, sprint review, and sprint retrospective sessions.

A Kanban board helps the team to further improve its effectiveness by visualizing the flow of
work, making impediments easily visible, and allowing flow to be managed by adjusting work in process limits.

In addition, XP-inspired engineering practices such as use of story cards, continuous integration, refactoring, automated testing, and test-driven development, further increase the effectiveness of the agile team.

In summary, the blend of practices from these various sources produces a synergistic result of higher performance than each individual component in isolation.

Project Factors That Influence Tailoring

Sometimes project attributes require tailoring an approach for a better fit. The diagrams below identifies some project factors and tailoring options to consider:

Tailoring Options to Improve Fit Project Factor Tailoring Options
Demand pattern: steady or sporadic Many teams find that using a cadence (in the form of a regular time-box) helps them demo, retrospect, and take in new work.

In addition, some teams need more flexibility in their acceptance of more work. Teams can use flow-based agile with a cadence to get the best of both worlds. Rate of process improvement required by the level of team experience Retrospect more often and select improvements.

The flow of work is often interrupted by various delays or impediments.  Consider making work visible using Kanban boards and experimenting with limits for the various areas of the work process in order to improve flow.

The quality of the product increments is poor. Consider using the various test-driven development practices. This mistake-proofing discipline makes it difficult for defects to remain undetected.

More than one team is needed to build a product To scale from one to several agile teams, with minimal disruption, first learn about agile program management or formal scaling frameworks. Then, craft an approach that fits the project context.

The project team members are inexperienced in the use of agile approaches. Consider starting by training team members in the fundamentals of the agile mindset and principles.

If the team decides to use a specific approach such as Scrum or Kanban, provide a workshop on that approach so the team members can learn how to use it.