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A different response for me ...
Normally, I get to try to reign in the pro-Agile/anti-Waterfallers. I'm not going to this time (Wow, H**l must have frozen over! 
)
Instead, I get to point out 3 really great pieces in this article.
First, is the phrase in the title "don't mistake the map for the journey". Bloody excellent! Far too many managers (project and sponsor) forget that the project plan is a guess. It's an estimate of where the project is going to go. A map created by a blind cartographer based on hearsay. The mark of a good PM is not the ability to follow the map. Nor even to make the map. It's the ability to survive when the dragons are stumbled on. The great PM can run into a dragon and have no one realize it. PMs play the variance game ... sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. Beware of the dragon, for you are crunchy on the outside and chewey on the inside.
Hope you don't mind but I'm going to steal that phrase to use on some of my sponsors & company leadership.
Along the same line are the two types of PM; the project manager and the project bureaucrat. There is a reason that the PMBOK is a framework not a methodology. And why any good methodology has a step to modify itself before being used. Following any methodology blindly only shows that you don't understand it enough to adjust it to the situation.
Finally, in the article you state "Agile approaches are appropriate for creative, inventive projects". Someone who finally gets it!
Agile does have its place. Structured/Waterfall also has its place. Use the either one in the wrong place and you are fighting yourself. The good PM knows which to apply and when. That's why we're not operational managers. We're supposed to be flexible!
Glen Ford, PMP
http://www.trainingnow.ca
)Instead, I get to point out 3 really great pieces in this article.
First, is the phrase in the title "don't mistake the map for the journey". Bloody excellent! Far too many managers (project and sponsor) forget that the project plan is a guess. It's an estimate of where the project is going to go. A map created by a blind cartographer based on hearsay. The mark of a good PM is not the ability to follow the map. Nor even to make the map. It's the ability to survive when the dragons are stumbled on. The great PM can run into a dragon and have no one realize it. PMs play the variance game ... sometimes they win, sometimes they lose. Beware of the dragon, for you are crunchy on the outside and chewey on the inside.
Hope you don't mind but I'm going to steal that phrase to use on some of my sponsors & company leadership.
Along the same line are the two types of PM; the project manager and the project bureaucrat. There is a reason that the PMBOK is a framework not a methodology. And why any good methodology has a step to modify itself before being used. Following any methodology blindly only shows that you don't understand it enough to adjust it to the situation.
Finally, in the article you state "Agile approaches are appropriate for creative, inventive projects". Someone who finally gets it!
Agile does have its place. Structured/Waterfall also has its place. Use the either one in the wrong place and you are fighting yourself. The good PM knows which to apply and when. That's why we're not operational managers. We're supposed to be flexible!Glen Ford, PMP
http://www.trainingnow.ca
Posted by PMPsicle
Updated - 28th May 2009
