I do not understand the paragraph,
"Every IT professional has banged up against the sponsor who, at every juncture, wants to remind us that you said it would cost X!. Now we set up the relationship that that the sponsor is telling us the number they imagine. Theres no guarantee we can deliver within that investment or timeframe, but we can make sure the sponsor understands that business case justification is their job, and ours is to apply the expertise and creativity to deliver the results."
This makes it sound like representatives of the sponsor are not on the Agile team right from the start. If representatives of the sponsor were on the team right from the start, wouldn't that help ensure that the roadmap is being driven both by business requirements as well as by what the agile team thinks makes sense over time? I must be missing something here.
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I don't know of any project framework where a sponsor is considered to be on the project team--and why should one? Typically the sponsor is someone in leadership and that person is busy leading the business unit (or business itself) and doesn't have the time for daily project activities.
Sponsors role and responsibilities have to be defined and signed off. It does not help if it is then delegated downwards. Sometimes it is meaningless paperwork. Yes and often the sponsors representatives ask the time and cost questions when they have to. When they did not understand the magnitude of the project. Mostly in my experience they just want the job done and it better be done within the cost estimate/budget you provided.
What Rick is saying I feel is that project managers (not just Agile types)need to get the Sponsor to take some ownership of the project. This is in the perfect world of course and does not always get done. In Standish Chaos reports disinterested sponsors are a big reason for failed projects. Every CFO and CEO needs to do Project Management 101. The project is not the project managers - it belongs to the business! If there is no Business Case - it should be simple - no project. Sponsors get behind the project and treat like it is yours!
You think that the CEO of Standard Oil should be involved in every project within the company directly? I think a lot of the so called project managers should deal in reality and understand how business operates. \
You want the mayor of New York to be involved in every project that is signed off by the mayor?
Likewise, tell me how you respond to a RFP that requires a fixed price and estimated duration/completion time and a milestone schedule. I had to respond to a hundred of these before I retired.
You want the mayor of New York to be involved in every project that is signed off by the mayor?
Likewise, tell me how you respond to a RFP that requires a fixed price and estimated duration/completion time and a milestone schedule. I had to respond to a hundred of these before I retired.
I'm trying to find the section of my commentary, or the comments attached, in which it's recommended that the CEO should be involved in every project...we're all using the word "sponsor" deliberately, both because it's accepted usage (taking the place of the passive "stakeholder" so beloved of PMI and waterfall practitioners), and because we understand that the sponsor is frequently NOT going to be a high-ranking executive.
The question about the fixed bid estimate and duration is the most commonly asked in organizations migrating to agile. The obvious answer is "are you giving fixed price estimates and durations now? How's that working out for you?" This is one of the conventions that waterfall supporters trot out to show how impossible agile is, but in further examination everyone agrees that fixed bids before discovery can't possibly work, and so we're back to a "we do it that way because we always did it that way" conversation. Yes, it's hard to convince CFOs and other business sponsors who are accustomed to fixed bids to take a little more risk and sign up for the unknown. Reality is, however, that they're signing up for the unknown every time they start a project - the question is, are we going to pretend we can know the future or acknowledge that we can't? The dark secret about fixed bids / schedules is that we agree to lie to the customer and they agree to pretend to believe us...this is no way to do serious business, and, I'd guess, if dr.k were to review his experience as a VAR, he'd acknowledge that fixed bids do nothing more than shift the burden of iuncertainty on the provider and away from the sponsor.
The question about the fixed bid estimate and duration is the most commonly asked in organizations migrating to agile. The obvious answer is "are you giving fixed price estimates and durations now? How's that working out for you?" This is one of the conventions that waterfall supporters trot out to show how impossible agile is, but in further examination everyone agrees that fixed bids before discovery can't possibly work, and so we're back to a "we do it that way because we always did it that way" conversation. Yes, it's hard to convince CFOs and other business sponsors who are accustomed to fixed bids to take a little more risk and sign up for the unknown. Reality is, however, that they're signing up for the unknown every time they start a project - the question is, are we going to pretend we can know the future or acknowledge that we can't? The dark secret about fixed bids / schedules is that we agree to lie to the customer and they agree to pretend to believe us...this is no way to do serious business, and, I'd guess, if dr.k were to review his experience as a VAR, he'd acknowledge that fixed bids do nothing more than shift the burden of iuncertainty on the provider and away from the sponsor.
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