#19: How does project management work in Agile? with Julie Chickering

This week, Brian Milner is joined by Julie Chickering to talk about the wild world of Project Management.

Overview

Brian Milner and Julie Chickering discuss how the world of project management can blend successfully with an Agile approach. There seems to sometimes be an attitude that it’s an either/or decision with these two. In this podcast, we take a look at how to blend them, how project managers fit in, and how these two disciplines can coexist.

Julie brings her experience to this discussion having come from the project management realm. 

Listen now to discover:

• 3:42 - Brian asks Julie about the general distrust between these communities
• 6:15 - Julie shares that 50% of the PMP exam now is on Agile practices
• 8:38 - Julie brings up the dreaded status report - Green / Yellow / Red
• 12:10 - Julie brings up the politics of Green / Yellow / Red
• 15:10 - Julie talks about the cost of poor quality
• 16:26 - Are we in the Agile community making PMs feel wrong?
• 17:22 - Brian discusses Outcomes vs Output
• 26:10 - Brian asks about PMs who are in companies making transitions. What happens to the project managers?

Listen next time when we’ll be discussing...

Brian and Mike Cohn share some of the best questions from their live coaching calls on the Agile Mentors community.

References and resources mentioned in the show

• Monty Python
• Project Management Institute
• The Cowman and the Farmer Should be Friends from Oklahoma!
• HBR article on Output vs Outcomes
• From Project Manager to Scrum Master - 3 Tips for Making the Transition
• Agile Project Management by Jim Highsmith
• The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility by Michele Sliger and Stacia Broderick
• PM Illustrated: A Visual Learner’s Guide to Project Management by Mike Griffiths - free on Kindle

Want to get involved?

This show is designed for you, and we’d love your input.

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• Got an agile subject you’d like us to discuss or a question that needs an answer? Share your thoughts with us at [email protected]

This episode’s presenters are:

Brian Milner is SVP of coaching and training at Mountain Goat Software. He’s passionate about making a difference in people’s day-to-day work, influenced by his own experience of transitioning to Scrum and seeing improvements in work/life balance, honesty, respect, and the quality of work.

Julie Chickering is a certified Scrum Trainer as well as a CST, PMP, PMI-ACP CSM, CSPO, and Path to CSP Educator. She believes that Agile practices are packed with potential — to enable business agility, and breakthrough results. Julie loves to help people implement agile even when the environments are messy, people are complicated, and situations are challenging. She brings real-world experience working with people at all levels to adopt and roll out realistic Agile strategies organization-wide.