The Project Manager's Guide to Mastering Agile: Principles and Practices for an Adaptive Approach

PART 5

Case Studies

IN ANY BOOK OF THIS NATURE, it's always useful to go beyond theory and concepts and show how companies have actually put these ideas into practice in the real world. Of course, there is no canned approach that works for all companies—each of these case studies is different and shows how a different approach may be needed in different situations. It also includes a chapter on “Not-So-Successful” case studies, which shows some of the problems that can develop in an agile implementation.

Chapter 18 – “Not-So-Successful” Case Studies

You can learn just as much or more from situations that don't work very well as you can from more successful implementations. Agile is a very difficult thing to do and is based on the principle of “Fail early, fail often.” For that reason, these case studies should be regarded as learning opportunities rather than failures. There's another saying that I really like: “If you have never failed at something, you're not trying hard enough.” This chapter contains some case studies of companies that were not so successful in implementing agile.

Chapter 19 – Valpak Case Study

Valpak is an example of a company that has done a major transformation of its whole business around a highly agile approach using the scaled agile architecture. It illustrates how a company has successfully scaled agile principles and practices to an enterprise level and how it has begun to thoroughly integrate agile into many aspects of their business.

Chapter 20 – ...