The Agile Practice Guide from PMI

Yes PMI Produced a Guide to Agile

This is a summary of my much longer article about the Agile Practice Guide which you can read on my blog here.

Some of you may be surprised to learn about the Project Management Institute's (PMI) recent collaboration with the Agile Alliance to create the PMI Agile Practice Guide. Groups of volunteers from both organizations worked together to draft and review a document on Agile. The product of their work is the newly published, Agile Practice Guide. A PMI publication, this document is now generally available and is included with the free PDF download of the 6th Edition of the PMBOK.

Why is the Practice Guide Important?

I think the Practice Guide is important because it signals a shift in PMI thinking:

• Agile approaches are here to stay AND PMI wants to remain relevant
• PMI partnered with a recognized authority on Agile, the Agile Alliance
• The PMI ACP Exam is being changed to include questions on the content from the Practice Guide. Previously questions came from 12 sourcebooks.
• The PMP Exam is being changed to reflect questions on Agile from the Practice Guide.

My Quick Review of the Agile Practice Guide:

• PMI is not known for their conciseness and there is a lot of extra material in the practice guide. Though the Practice Guide is 167 pages now, it runs the risk of becoming a bloated and less valuable resource like the 536-page PMBOK Guide.
• My biggest criticism of the guide is that PMI only sees projects. I have ranted about this elsewhere but agile is a mindset and culture change and not just a flavor of project management. Many organizations deliver valuable products without projects (gasp!). Projects are temporary and unique - like starting with a blank sheet of paper. You can read more about the difficulties of seeing only projects here.
• I don't agree with the hybrid approaches that PMI espouses. Scrummerfall and Waterfail I call them! Stop mixing things up and use agile frameworks like Scrum as they were intended to be used. The description of hybrid in the guide was confusing, as was the mixing and matching of hybrid approaches. Personally, I don't think hybrid approaches are effective and I wish people would stop using them (read more at Agile Hybrid Approaches - How to Get Just the Right Mix)
• I also think PMI is off their rocker when they include Earned value in Agile projects - PMI seems to have some weird fascination with Earned Value and they've included it in this Agile Guide. I completely disagree, and I wish those EV proponents would just drop it. Value should be measured when the working solution or product is placed in the hands of the user and costs go down or revenue goes up. There is no value being "earned" in the middle of a project, only costs being incurred and WIP being created. Stop. Please.

How to Get Your Copy Of The Agile Practice Guide

• PMI members should have received an email with instructions to download the PMI Agile Practice Guide. If you didn’t, here is where you can download from the PMI Site or purchase the Agile Practice Guide from Amazon.

More Details - For those of you who want more, read my detailed analysis of the PMI Agile Practice Guide Here.