Little Logos

A great short punchy article by Kent McDonald on Agile Project Leadership - “What is Agile, Really??”

McDonald covers 7 areas of Project Leadership, each of these is a good reminder about key areas of team management that apply mostly to software developement but can also apply to other team-based activities.

His “Words to Lead By” are:

• Collaborate
• Iterate
• Serve the Team
• Consider Context
• Practice Excellence
• Reflect and Adapt
• Deliver Value

The general thrust here is to keep moving forward and empower the team. But the best reminder was about the importance of “Context” - and here a quote is appropriate:

Unfortunately, what works great in one project may not work as well in other situations. There are usually many environmental factors that play a large role in how effective a practice is on a given project. Because of this, I usually prefer to use the term appropriate practices or good practices to emphasize the fact that there really are no best practices across all projects.

Teams need to consider context when choosing which processes, practices, and techniques they use so they can be sure they are doing the things that will make them successful and are not doing the things that they do not need to do. In fact when it comes down to it, perhaps considering context is the only real best practice around.

A key point that may not be immediately obvious is that project teams need to determine what practices, processes, and techniques they are going to employ during a project, and be willing to change those practices as they learn more throughout the life of the project. Project teams often work within an organizationally defined process they believe they must follow to the letter, many times to the detriment of the project. Usually if those project teams examine reality a little bit, they will find they have some latitude as to what practices they adopt from the organizational method.

I think this needs to be kept at the forefront - especially when working with contractors whos last project experience context may not fit with their current project and organisation.