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Carolyn Sanders

Agile and Project Management; it's about doing the right projects right

We think projects are done for the stakeholders, not the project manager.  And we know that doing the right projects is just as important as doing each project right.  Agile helps us do both.

Project Management has been around for millennia (think of the Pyramids), but in the last decade there's been an  evolutionary step: Agile.  Springing from software development practices in the 90s, Agile is a framework - a collection of disciplines and tools - for managing projects. 

It's founded on this manifesto:

  •    Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
•    Working software over comprehensive documentation
•    Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
•    Responding to change over following a plan
   
That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more.  (Agile Alliance)


At Fronde we adopted Agile practices and principles back in 2004.  What first drew us to Agile was the core values of openness, honesty, courage, and money - the willingness to tell the truth and engage with all the stakeholders of a project.  These are our values too.

What encouraged us to dig deeper was the way that it changed project delivery: building incrementally, collaborating intensively, delivering frequently, and changing direction when we needed to.  Our clients loved the increased control they had at every step of the project; and we loved the way the team worked together.  We've run many projects this way (check out our case studies).

What kept us expanding our Agile practice was our relationship with Rob Thomsett, who brought his decades of thought on how to use Agile to choose the right projects and plan them - we found that using his Agile tools, we understood the stakeholders' needs and constraints better.  Our clients liked this approach so much, they asked us to train their project managers too - so we did.

In 2007 we started the Agile Professionals Network in Auckland, and it has now spread to Wellington - watch for a Christchurch event some time soon.  This group of practitioners supports each other in learning and using Agile practices, and our frequent events draw crowds of over 100.

Now in 2009, Agile is so deeply embedded into Fronde that we don't think of it as being something separate: it's just the way we do things.  

Carolyn Sanders is our Principal Consultant on Agile and Project Management.  As a certified PMP (from the Project Management Institute) as well as a certified Agile professional and former programmer, she integrates project management practices and software development practices on our projects as well as training and mentoring our clients in Agile.  She is a member of the working party which runs the Agile Professionals Network in Auckland.  She has an Honours degree in Computer Science from Auckland University.