The oxymoron of agile project management

Submitted by skeptic on Mon, 2018-06-18 12:36

Talk of "agile project management" is just lipstick on a pig. Project management is the worst thing thatever happened to IT. It's time for it to back out quietly.

CIO magazine - who ought to know better - came up with this bizarre statement:

Integrity and ethics in IT

Submitted by skeptic on Wed, 2018-06-13 20:47

IT is not an intellectual puzzle put there for you to show how clever you are, divorced from the social and moral implications of your work.

I've blogged on personal accountability before:

Mincing money: the boundary between Agile and project funding

Submitted by skeptic on Wed, 2018-06-06 22:34

There is a boundary problem where the "Product not Project" structure of standing teams and streams of work meets the Project/business-case structure of programme/portfolio management and financial governance.

At that boundary, management needs to create white space to stop the two models clashing, and to mince up the money, turning big project gobs into steady team streams.

A layman's definition of Devops

Submitted by skeptic on Wed, 2018-06-06 07:48

I was asked for a 30 second elevator pitch in DevOps for a non-IT boss. Here's what I came up with. Have at it.

Agile is the approach of working with complex systems anywhere.
Lean is the approach of optimising the flow of work anywhere.
DevOps is the application of Agile and Lean to the acceleration of value work through IT.

Challenge the level of ceremony in process

Submitted by skeptic on Tue, 2018-06-05 09:09

Reduce the level of process and hand it to the people.

I've been involved in enough ITIL adoption efforts to know they don't all work. Mostly that is because they are done to people, not by people; and they micro manage people as clerical workers instead of empowering them as knowledge workers.

DevOps Balanced Scorecard Dashboard

Submitted by skeptic on Tue, 2018-06-05 08:50

Here is my DevOps Balanced Scorecard Dashboard

Image

The metrics are only examples of suggested topics. Any availability/stability/reliability metrics are good for Quality

The Knowledge Academy

Submitted by skeptic on Tue, 2018-05-29 09:23

Here is the kind of predatory vendor who screws the IT training market. Unfortunately the course publishers still do business with them.

Ten agile principles that screw up conventional project management

Submitted by skeptic on Mon, 2018-05-28 21:54

I've been blogging about how we need to shed traditional project management ways of working.

Here are ten Agile principles that sit badly with conventional project management methodology:
1. no known defects, prioritise defects over new
2. product not project
3. bring the work to the teams, stop disbanding and reforming teams

The IT Skeptic's 12th birthday

Submitted by skeptic on Wed, 2018-05-16 01:04

It is the 12th anniversary of the beginning of the IT Skeptic persona and blog. Each anniversary I pause to reflect on the blog and on my own life.

The latest IT fad: SRE

Submitted by skeptic on Sun, 2018-05-13 20:38

SRE is the latest IT fad. It's useful but not transformational.

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