Next week the PMI launches the 6th edition of its Guide to the PMBOK. Changes for this edition include an Agile Appendix and Agile Introductions to each of the Knowledge Areas. I hope people find them useful. I co-wrote them with Jesse Fewell around this time last year and we have been waiting for the guide to make its way through the PMI standards publication process that includes translation into 11 languages.
I believe some agile approaches can be used on every project. These include more frequent: communications, validation of solution increments, and review and adaptation of process. However, not everyone shares my view and so the agile coverage in the PMBOK Guide – 6th Edition is focussed in the Appendix and Knowledge Area Introductions, leaving the bulk of the guide unchanged with its coverage of single-pass, iterative and incremental approaches to projects. Yes, the PMBOK Guide already talks about iterative and incremental approaches, if any critics would read it.
Anyway, for people looking for additional agile coverage, the PMI in partnership with the Agile Alliance is also publishing an Agile Practice Guide that is referenced by the new PMBOK Guide. This dedicated book for project practitioners who are implementing agile (quite often in traditional, plan-driven environments) aims to provide additional practical guidance. I was honored when the PMI and Agile Alliance asked me to Chair the author group for writing the new Agile Practice Guide. It’s not often you get an opportunity to lead a group of industry experts in creating a new guide that will be used by thousands of practitioners.
We had a great set of authors including: Jesse Fewel, Becky Hartman, Betsy Kaufman, Stephen Matola, Johanna Rothman, and Horia Slusanschi we also had a very helpful research and guidance team including: Karl Best, Alicia Burke, Edivandro Conforto, Dave Garrett, Roberta Storer, and Stephen Townsend.
From August to December last year we wrote the new Agile Practice Guide as a team. Meeting face-to-face a few times and pairing to write and review each chapter. Collaborative writing like this is slow and sometimes painful as we all have our own styles, pet peeves, and limited availability for volunteering time on unpaid efforts. When you multiply these foibles by the 7 authors and overlay everyone’s time availability to discover little or no common time slots, the challenges of writing anything become clear.
Another challenge was pleasing our sponsoring groups. The Agile Alliance understandably wanted to ensure we did not attempt to document some incremental-waterfall abomination that missed the agile mindset and values. Likewise, the PMI was keen to ensure we did not denigrate plan-driven approaches, contradict elements of their other standards, or define terms differently than the PMI Lexicon of Terms. We also had to align with the upcoming BA Standard and writing style standards. Luckily people could see the potential help such a guide would bring and the credibility of an Agile Alliance and PMI sponsored collaboration. If it was easy it would likely have been done already.
At the end of December 2016, we sent a draft out for Subject Matter Expert review. Around 60 people split equally from the agile community and the project management community reviewed our little book and sent in an unexpectedly high (over 3,000) number of comments. Some were high praise “At last a guide to bridge the divide, great job”, some were not so kind “This section is hippy BS”, most were genuine feedback like “In section 3 you said first consider doing x now in section 5 you are suggesting first doing y”.
We spent several weeks reviewing and applying the feedback comments and the guide improved tremendously as a result. With the handoff date for publication looming we did not have time to apply all the suggested comments so we prioritized them, met and worked through as many as we could up to the ship date, retaining the remainder for the next edition. The Agile Alliance Board of Directors and PMI Management Advisory Board (MAG) reviewed it and gave us the all-clear to release (after a few more tweaks). We had our Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
Not everyone who reviewed the final draft was happy. Some “agile enthusiasts” thought we went too far discussing the application of hybrid approaches. Some “traditional enthusiasts” thought we undermined plan-driven approaches too much. I saw this as validation of us hitting our target market of practitioners just trying to be successful with agile teams in sometimes less-than-agile-friendly traditional environments. Our task was an analog of theirs. When we managed to annoy both ends of the project execution spectrum to about equal degrees we had arrived right where we needed to be!
I am used to having my work criticized. I stopped trying to please everyone years ago and now write my true convictions and they seem to resonate with a few people which is great. I felt bad for the other writers though, especially those that had not published many articles before. Representing the Agile Alliance or PMI and being part of a contentious guide is a daunting task. Publishing something for general use takes courage and exposes your thoughts and work. So, you want your first publication to be accepted not criticized. We had a challenging timeline and set of constraints and am very proud of what everyone produced. It is v1 of the guide and we are looking for volunteers to implement many of the other great suggestions we did not get time to implement and to further the guide with their own suggestions.
The PMBOK Guide – 6th Edition will be available as a free download for PMI members and to purchase in paper form. The new Agile Practice Guide will be available as a free download for Agile Alliance members and PMI members and also to purchase in paper form. Both are available on September 6th.
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