Making the transition from waterfall to agile project management is a tough enough break for anyone. With the prospect of letting teams have more creative control over their direction and potentially drifting off course entirely, any project manager who is planning to implement agile will probably already be feeling somewhat nervous about how things will pan out. Fear not, because we have uncovered the seven biggest risks when implementing agile in your project team, so you’ll know what to look out for.
1. It seems simple
From the outside looking in, the agile methodology of project management seems too simple to be true. And it is. If it were really that easy, project managers wouldn’t need to be certified in PRINCE2 or PMP to effectively handle the process and surely wouldn’t everyone already be doing it? Be cautious if you think it will be a walk in the park, because it won’t.
2. It can often happen from the bottom up
With agile a big focus in the IT sector, it can often happen from the bottom up. Nobody really wants their IT department running the show, so ensure you stay in control of the deployment of agile and that you choose if and when everyone starts working in this way.
3. It can meet with resistance in overly structured companies
Agile doesn’t sit too well with heavily structured organisations and firms that have been built on corporate governance, so expect some resistance if your organisation is heavily managed from the top down. Agile is not anti-management, but it is nimble, and if your company is not also nimble then there may be some problems getting the two to mesh successfully.
4. People at the top of the tree won’t understand
As with any type of project management approach, if you don’t have complete buy in from senior stakeholders and managers, you are going to find making these changes very difficult. Make sure any education campaign you run with your team about the ‘new way’ of doing things is extended to cover the stakeholders too if you want to engender support in the long run.
5. Can teams really self-manage?
Agile is designed to let teams manage themselves and their deliverables in isolation, giving them more creative freedom to explore the brief in new ways. However, at the end of it all, the teams still need a worthy project manager to pull together all the different strands and ensure everything works in a cohesive manner.
6. Don’t let the tools drive the transition
The transition needs to be led by needs, processes and requirements, not by the tools themselves. It can be all too easy to find an ‘agile project management tool’ on the internet or in a textbook and then let this dictate the way the approach works for you, but in fact this is quashing all the creative freedom that agile intends to allow. Instead, work out your processes first and then find the right tools to support those actions.
