What is Agile Project Management

Many people asking me, what is Agile Project Management? What is the different between Agile Project Manager vs. Traditional Project Manager? Aren't they all managing projects? Would PMI-ACP certification turn out to be another PMP certification which just massively certified unqualified project managers and contribute to Software project failure?

My typical answer to the certification related question is: - Yes. My opinion is, PMI-ACP certification could not perform miracle that other agile certification such as Certified Scrum Master (CSM) and etc. also failed to do. Certification exam should be treated as theory assessment for individual and not more than that.

For the question about differences in Traditional Project Management vs. Agile Project Management, I would say one is focus more on process and the later focus more on people. Traditional Project Management believes that once you follow the processes tightly, your project should be executed according to plan and the result should be as expected. After more than 40 years, I believe the software industry has come to conclusion that Dr Winston Royce is correct about his assessment regarding the water project management methodology. People have finally realized software development is more art than science and hence paying attention to human factor is extremely important.

I always started my Agile PM training by asking the project managers what is software project management. Typical answers I hear is: to deliver project in time, within budget and with good quality. I am afraid whoever set their focus on those targets is most likely not going to have a good project. My personal point of view is: I think software people management is managing people, both the team and the customer. After managing more than 100 successful software projects, I have come to conclusion that the only one element that contributes to all my successful software projects is people. No one in the project team (either customer or team) started a project and wishes it to fail. The only challenge for me is how to keep this level of moral throughout the project.

Many software project managers do not set the right expectation during the start of the project. i.e. Project Kick-off Meeting. They normally presented the project charter, project plan and project schedule. For me, I always focus on delivering the message that it is a software project, it is going to be challenging, we have a challenging timeline, limited budget, but we are not going to sacrifice on quality. I believe we have a great project team established to take up all these challenges. Expect more surprises throughout the project but we will defect them when we see them. This will set the entire project team ready for surprises, everyone is mentally prepared.