About Agile Agile Programme and Project Management

Effective Project Management

Agile - effective scalable project and programme management

• Delivering projects in short, controlled capital increments
• Balancing ability to be responsive to change with predictive project and programme planning
• Scalable to the largest projects in the world

Scaling Agile to large projects demands balance between the ability to be responsive to change with an absolute business requirement for certainty requiring elements of predictive programme management and control.

The last few years have seen interest in Agile and Lean approaches to project and programme delivery rise dramatically, with large businesses and Government increasingly looking to carry out projects in ways that commit them to smaller capital expenditure and provide better visibility of tangible return on investment. Many organisations have now adopted and remain committed to the practice of Agile or Lean approaches alongside, or as an alternative to, traditional project management methods and realise that characteristics of Agile have a variety of benefits.

• Incremental delivery of value and regular opportunity to assess progress
• High quality, effective results delivered earlier and released on time
• Focus on business value and priorities defined by end users

IndigoBlue has unrivalled experience in successfully delivering large Agile projects.

We provide:

• Day-to-day management of the project
• Milestone-based planning and tracking
• Change management process
• Changes to stakeholder engagement and reporting
• Changes to the commercial model for third party engagement

Controlling Agile Projects

Standard approaches to planning and tracking for incremental delivery do not meet the business needs of organisations. They focus on team performance and output and lose sight of the wider issues of commitment and reporting and provide insufficient visibility of issues, risks or strategic change.

ADAPT and CONTROL is IndigoBlue’s Governance Framework. It provides the definitive approach to planning and tracking for incremental projects and is proven on some of the UK’s largest Agile projects.

How to scale up Agile

As project team size increases (for example, over 100 people involved on a recent project), and the different disciplines involved in the delivery become more diverse, the principles of Agile, founded on use of small, cross-functional teams, may begin to break down. At this point IndigoBlue has the experience and resources required to introduce new process elements to ensure the benefits of Agile are not compromised and delivery of the project is successful.

Our approach is not simply to combine Agile with project and programme management controls from older methodologies. For the benefits of Agile to be realised, particularly in large projects, it is essential that the right balance is achieved between responsive and predictive management.

Small teams, organised in line with Agile principles, delivering visible progress to the end-user as complete releasable software and system components, in short regular iterations, are much closer to the customer. They get immediate feedback from their end-users and immediate response from the business customer, and it follows they can be responsive more easily than can a large project team or programme delivering over longer time periods. End users love this. They get the solution that they want delivered in prioritised increments in a way that starts to deliver immediate benefit. What matters to the customer with a longer term strategic view in mind is that this incremental and responsive approach matches in the longer term the strategic goals of the wider organisation. Our approach ensures individual teams and project delivery remains in line with overall programme direction and business priorities.

Older methodologies usually take a predictive, purely long term, approach to management, and sequential approach to delivery. It is very much more difficult for them to revisit and rework early stages of the programme to be responsive to emerging problems and changes in their later stages. They employ upfront work to fix the requirements and approach, and operate in a contractual framework to lock out change. Often a risk-averse business is persuaded by this approach that the programme is fixed in alignment with long term strategy. This assumption is reasonable when everything runs to plan and there is no change, but can run in to difficulty when business priorities or technological advance forces change or when the requirements get so complicated that the outcome of every decision made in design is impossible to predict and change becomes inevitable. Traditional methodologies lock in risks which often result in problems and delays later on.

Agile and Lean approaches are able to respond to customers’ needs and changes that emerge during delivery; whether a need to be responsive to changes in customer requirement or to respond to a necessary change in the approach. They deliver workable solutions in small increments so they carry less risk and can deliver earlier return on investment; even on the largest projects where long term predictive planning is also important.