Assess the Project Team Readiness
"Are the project teams ready to function within agile project management?" is a question that can be answered by conducting a "Team Readiness" assessment for each team member. Executives, business managers and the PMs need to determine:
• Team members' ability to make independent decisions
• Team members' commitment and capability to collaborate and work as a group
• Degree to which the team members can communicate in person
• Degree to which the stakeholder is willing and able to become a team member
• Team members' ability to problem solve and come up with new ideas
• Team member's knowledge and experience with the application area and the tools for creating the project result
Analyse Existing Product Development and Project Management Methodologies
The organisation's culture, structure and methodologies will determine the effort required to transition to agile project management. Therefore, it important for executives, business managers and PMs to clearly understand:
• Which existing processes, tools and templates for executing projects can be applied to the agile project management framework?
• How will jettisoning certain processes and structure impact the business?
• How much effort and investment in time and resources will be required to develop new tools, templates and processes?
• Will the metrics and measurement techniques to determine project success (or failure) need to change?
• Will reporting methods be different for agile versus traditional projects?
• How will stakeholders and customers react to the change?
• How will the existing culture and organisational structure be impacted by agile project management?
Organic Implementation: One Small Project and One Team
Once the company makes the decision to give agile project management a try, it is critical not to turn the implementation into a "big bang" project. Instead the company should select a small (and relatively easy) project from its "innovative projects portfolio" and build a team to execute the project. This will require assigning the right PM (see "Assessing PM Readiness" above) and the most experienced team members (see "Assessing Project Team Readiness" above) to the project. Once the team has been formed, it goes through formal training to learn about agile and led by the PM with the help of the project sponsor(s), executes the project in an iterative manner using agile methodologies.