When Agile Fails?

Every PM bears a roadmap at the kickoff which chalks out all the components and expectations towards the project objective. If it is pitched with correct course & clarity it enables project team to drive the stakeholders according to the needs of project.

Initially comes SOW, which is mandated to describe brick and mortar of the project and defines the circumference of deliverables with DOs. Apart from what approach shall be used, the SOW should be analyzed by respective stakeholders. This has to be done at the elementary stage and should be phased out throughout the project delivery.

Problem builds up when the players review SOW as a big picture and start relating it with deliverables directly during the planning commencement. While, upon actual start of deliverables working, project bible is shelved in some sacred virtual folder or presentation on cloud, hardly to be reviewed by the stakeholders. Height reaches when people fail to fetch it out for millstones assessment. & neither PM does.

Teams should ideally follow progression of planned items and keep evaluating it during the course of project, which in result facilitates on-hold items to be completed. The illness is brought into the agile project when stake holders keep bringing up additional items into the roadmap during the course of review instead of cross matching it with actual SOW bullets. This is okay to be happening but it misuse the agile process and pushes PM to complete the items that were not included in the initial draft of deliverables agreed in the SOW. This inadequate adaption to change and lack of smart leadership may lead to unrealistic expectations of goals and will eventually result in backdrop of project. Even, some project do roll out successfully but with high cost and delays.

Bottom line: The key is to manage iterations smartly. The minor line between continuous collaboration for improvement and the predefined roadmap is the main and crucial element for all Agile Managers to keep in mind. A slight deviation or mishandling due to un-controlled iterations will result in delayed or disrupted project delivery and at times brings financial loss to the project as well.