Towards understanding agile in project management

Agile is recognised as beneficial to successful project delivery and team performance, and new APM research digs deep to uncover the advantages – and challenges. Here, Project presents some of the authors’ findings…

Most of the participants who engaged with our research suggest that they view agile as promising and beneficial. Our data was gathered from a systematic literature review of 353 academic papers on agile in the project management domain; six case studies, including 31 interviews in a range of project settings; and an online survey of project managers that attracted a total of 604 responses from a wide range of industries. Almost 70 per cent of survey respondents claim they are going to practise more agile in their projects in the future.

The potential for agile in project management

In contrast to the traditional or waterfall approach of project management, agile is recognised as offering enhanced transparency, visibility and even ‘honesty’, due to better sharing and management of information, which then serves to improve decision‑making. The teams are empowered in a sense to ‘vote’ on the plan, enabling them to have their voice heard and to share the detailed information they have. This is also shown to give the teams purpose and motivation.

It must be stressed that being agile does not mean ‘being without a plan’. This is a common misconception among organisations adopting agile, and an ‘excuse’ often claimed by teams who either don’t understand agile or are attempting to cut corners. On the contrary, many interviewees claim that, because of the enhanced transparency, communication and team alignment within agile projects, agile project teams and individuals are more disciplined and have shown improved productivity and responsibility. Agile team members are motivated and accountable to each other, making them more collaborative and flexible, and better at sharing resources in an atmosphere of ‘gentle competitiveness’ shaped in the workspace.

The benefits of improved visibility and the more controlled reaction offered by agile are not only found among project teams; stakeholder communication and collaboration are also enhanced through implementing agile and shifting to agile mindsets. In terms of the suitability or potential use of agile in project management, a relatively common view (reported by some of the participating practitioners) is that the use of agile depends on the industry, scale or environment of a project.

However, other experienced project and agile professionals disagree, taking the view that the core value is in how agile thinking is applied and how it is used for communication and collaboration. Agile, if not limited to specific tools or methods, can be used in a wide variety of projects and organisations with suitable tailoring and appropriate organisational support. We have found agile being used effectively in a range of industries and project types.

Agile can be suitable for complex problems. We found that, contrary to the common misunderstanding, agile can be scaled, and can work well for large and complex projects when well applied. This is because, when team size goes up, in contrast to traditional project management, agile can maintain the communication required to remain relatively stable. Agile makes a large number of teams align with the project’s goals. Using current frameworks, such as the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), can offer a structure for interdependency and collaboration. Interviewees from Case A (see sidebar) claim that their agile project teams have the greater flexibility needed to cope with changing complexity and uncertainties, including fast people turnaround, which for large projects can happen quite often.

The efficiency and efficacy of agile come from its features of transparency and reiteration, and result in less risk and more predictable outcomes. Agile avoids the problem of ‘diffusion of responsibility’ and promotes ‘respectful roles’. And the core agile values of flexibility, adaptability and responsiveness mean agile methods can be successfully applied to various types of projects in a tailored way.

This is an edited extract from the APM and University of Southampton research report Understanding Agile in Project Management.

A case study in agile

Case A is an interesting, large‑scale project (in terms of budget, timespan and people involved) embracing agile and so far succeeding in implementing its use within a contrasting sector (ie defence/central government) with a hierarchical organisational structure and waterfall project management as traditions. The project involves creating an ecosystem for medical services for the UK defence and military at international scale. The long‑term project involves a budget of £200m and hundreds of team members, with a blend of in‑house professionals and contractors.

The project started as a traditional waterfall project and then switched to agile after both internal and external stakeholders realised that the project was costly and barely delivered. Despite a slow and difficult transition period, the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) was adopted and adapted to coordinate all project members involved, as well as other main stakeholders. Gradually, since 2017/2018, it has successfully developed a set of mechanisms, including flexible contracting and supportive induction/training for staff, and has been delivering project objectives effectively – nine out of 10 project deliverables set in its most recent 18‑month PI planning have been achieved, meeting the quality requirement and within budget, despite the pandemic.

The adoption of agile has advantages in terms of flexibility, adaptability and responsiveness, as it offers more transparency and visibility, and a more controlled reaction. Stakeholder communication and collaboration are also enhanced through the use of agile and agile mindsets. One interviewee who has served 30 years in the organisation claims that such a remarkable success has never been achieved before, and due to the complexity and uncertainty involved for this large‑scale project, it would not be feasible without agile. “It’s the only programme in 30 years that we… just bucketed a load of capability together and said this is what we’re going to deliver… and I’m delivering that to performance, cost and time for the first time ever.”

THIS ARTICLE IS BROUGHT TO YOU FROM THE SPRING 2022 ISSUE OF PROJECT JOURNAL, WHICH IS FREE FOR APM MEMBERS.