The Contrary Project Manager

Agile development and generic project management both share the value of ceremony. It just looks different in each context.  Any project should have approval points for scope, budget, resources, schedule, work product. That's just smart CYA.  One thing Agile seems to hold up as a project management obstacle that has a great deal of truth behind it is a non-negotiable march to procedure, no matter what. This happens more often than it should when PMs are not properly trained or are inexperienced without a mentor.  These PMs show robot-like adherence to a list of best practices and templates by phase even when it makes no sense. These are the people who want everything boiled down to a checklist. To PMs' defense, I will say that I have worked under managers who mandated total, absolute, and literal compliance without question or thought because they themselves didn't understand project management and had never done the job in reality. They certainly were not open to hearing

I have to admit, Agile is a topic that makes me want to flip tables or have a Lewis Black style stroke simply because I am super passionate about good project management. Project management takes the rap for many ills in the organization that it ends up highlighting, possibly for the first time. First, an apology. I do apologize now for any bo-bo headed, clueless, mutant project managing wanker you may have worked with in the past. Maybe they were untrained and unskilled. Maybe they were a closet sadist. Maybe they had some point to prove. Who knows. That is not project management competence. It's not leadership. It's not productive. Nobody likes to be painted with that brush and the "PMs" who do behave that way embarrass the rest of us. They make our jobs harder because we have to climb over the mess they leave behind.  Having said that, here are the two biggest things I hear over and over from Agile authors and speakers that are just wrong and project managers shou