The Biggest (in my opinion) Myth: Agile and scrum are novel improvements to traditional project management, tailored for the software industry.
Truth: Agile and scrum were developed to allow IT projects to indulge in all the scope creep they wanted..[1]
Mr. Hatfield argues that the IT industry developed Agile and Scrum in response to easy-to-miss, seemingly small, changes to software that led to "configuration management nightmares." This led, according to Mr. Hatfield, to:
...the introduction of tactics that "max out" project team communications, including co-location and employee roles that define the nature of their interactions with their colleagues, customers, and the technical agenda. But I have to ask: If the technical baseline was thoroughly and clearly defined at the project's start, and only changed formally, would any of this really be necessary[?][2]
It seems, as one commenter noted, that Mr. Hatfield was baiting Agile and Scrum enthusiasts to debate the point. I should also note that Mr. Hatfield is only expressing his own opinions and does not represent PMI. One of the first of PMI's new "Communities of Practice" is dedicated to Agile.[3] With Agile now being applied to legal work, and traditional, "waterfall" style project management criticized as poorly fit for legal work, this is an interesting debate to follow.[4]
[1] Michael Hatfield, Taking on Project Management Myths, Part 5, Voices on Project Management, Nov. 11, 2009, available at http://blogs.pmi.org/blog/voices_on_project_management/2009/11/taking-on-project-management-m-3.html (last visited on Dec. 3, 2009); Michael Hatfield's profile is available at About Bloggers, Voices on Project Management, http://blogs.pmi.org/blog/voices_on_project_management/about-bloggers.html (last visited on Dec. 3, 2009).
[2] Id.
[3] PMI.og: Get Involved: Communities of Practice, http://www.pmi.org/GetInvolved/Pages/Communities-of-Practice.aspx
[4] Paul C. Easton, Dialexia Throws Down the Gauntlet: Agile versus the EDRM and PMI PMBOK, Legal Project Management, Sep.29,2009 (last visited Dec. 3, 2009).
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