Agile Project Management: Creating Innovative Products, Second Edition

Chapter 4. Adapting over Conforming

A traditional project manager focuses on following the plan with minimal changes, whereas an agile leader focuses on adapting successfully to inevitable changes.

Traditional managers view the plan as the goal, whereas agile leaders view customer value as the goal. If you doubt the former, just look at the definition of “success” from the Standish Group, who has published success (and failure) rates of software projects over a long period of time. Success, per the Standish Group is “the project is completed on time and on budget, with all the features and functions originally specified.”¹ This is not a value-based definition but a constraint-based one. Using this definition, then, managers focus on following ...