Agile Matters

Outside of a work environment, we often come across people who wonder what’s so difficult about project management, as, after all, we all have to exhibit some degree of being able to manage things in our normal lives.

What we suggest is the difference, though, is the scope of the project, and the fact that it will usually have predefined goals and outcomes, rather than having a vague sense of wanting to change things. For example, a basic project could be to travel from point A to point B.

Using some project management methodologies, we could break this project (journey) into “bite size” chunks, and assess how effective we were being at each stage - thus adopting a fairly basic project management approach to the matter at hand. This is the opposite of setting off at a time you think will allow you to get to point B before you need to be there, as you can then update your project plan according to how far along you are at each stage.

So even the simplest of tasks can benefit from some elementary project management practices.

So, with our definitions for the individual words “project” and “management”, we should simply be able to put these together to come up with an adequate definition for the phrase “project management”. Here goes - “the process of managing a planned undertaking”. Seems about right, so let’s have a look in slightly more detail.

Project Management is about being in control of a scheme that has been planned to deliver something pre-defined to a business or organisation. This may or may not involve the definition and planning for the scheme. This is much more in line with our Agile philosophy, though of course it doesn’t take into account the various other Agile elements, such as flexibility, incremental delivery etc. As an overall definition, though, we think it works just fine.

For the second part of our definition of the phrase “project management”, we’re going to define the word “management”. Again looking at a dictionary, their definition is “the process or an instance of managing or being managed”. Not especially helpful, so let’s look at the definition for “managing”, which is “having executive control or authority”.

This is a bit more like it, as it defines the process of management as that of being in ultimate control of whatever it is that is being managed. Further, a “manager” can be defined as “a person controlling or administering a business or part of a business”, which seems to be getting more in line with what we might think of as project management.

Those of you with a keen sense of language will realise that the phrase “project management” is made up of two words - “project” and “management”. This is hardly a groundbreaking discovery, but it’s surprising how easy it is to forget there are 2 components to the phrase, both of which requiring their own focus and attention.

To start with, we’ll define the word “project”. A dictionary definition is “a plan, a scheme”, or “a planned undertaking”. This seems fine, and covers pretty much everything that you might describe as an actual project for a business or organisation. Usually, you might add in such parameters as “time bound” and “within budget”, but this may not be essential depending on the actual project itself.