Monday, June 30, 2014

New Trends in Project Management 2014 - Part III: Shaking off the Legacy Mindset!

Although New Trends in Project Management 2014 conference is over I still have a lot of to share. Previous posts covered Jorgen Hesselberg's keynote speach on Agile enterprise transformation and Mike Rawlins' interactive presentation on coaching cultures. In this post Agile comes back with Alan Gladman's advice on how to shake off the old mindset and become more Agile. Alan is an Agile Coach at Intel,  recognized as an expert in the usage of agile methods in project management. 

"Agile is not a methodology. It is not something you do. It is something you become. That state comes after a mind shift. It requires that you let go of some of your current mindset."

Definition of mindset (wikipedia): 
"a mindset is a set of assumptions, methods, or notations held by one or more people or groups of people that is so established that it creates a powerful incentive within these people or groups to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviors, choices, or tools. This phenomenon is also sometimes described as mental inertia, "groupthink", or a "paradigm", and it is often difficult to counteract its effects upon analysis and decision making processes."

Let's start from the summary, a few take aways from Alan's speach and then enjoy the drawings!
  1. Let go of your baggage
  2. Learn & embrace the principles
  3. Think “up until now”
  4. Don’t “DO” Agile, BE agile.
  5. Use sprint timeboxes to experiment
  6. Build trust
  7. Recognise/reward the Agile mindset


The same old thinking means the same old results, so shake off the old,  legacy mindset and start the new way!

4 comments:

  1. Hi Gosia! Great topic and even better final message of the article.
    I am really enjoying your new doodle writing. Just one part that I am not sure how to interpret:

    "TEAM DISPERSION - There is a better way but you need to ask for it."

    I am curious what kind of advice is hidden behind that sentense?

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    1. Hi Ania, thanks a lot for your comment. Alan advised that we should not accept what we've been given, so if it's worth getting people together, even for just a week every 6 months or so we should put travel costs in the project budget. I remember people in the team I had joined saying : " here there's no money for travel" and I was thinking " because you do not ask!".

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    2. It's clear now. Wise piece of advice indeed. Thank you Gosia!

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  2. Thanks a lot for your comment Perry. I agree PMP is globally recognized and one of the most sought project management certifications.

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