PM to Agile Coach: The artifact is not the end-all

LYSSA ADKINSJUNE 21, 2007

When you work in the traditional PM world, it’s easy to slip into the thinking that the artifact is the thing – the end in itself.Let’s look at a typical artifact, the risks and issues log.In this world, it’s OK to capture risks and issues one week, document them the next, then update them once a week after that.A PM would call this “managing risks and issues.”And it’s a job PMs get kudos for doing because it feels like a value-added service for someone to manage risks and issues, but what they’re really managing is the log.And neither of these are truly value-added, anyway.

How long do you think it takes an Agile team to realize that the goal is not to manage a list but to kill the things on the list before they become impediments?

Probably about a half a sprint.The glorious, built-in time pressure of the sprint causes a team to focus on knocking down risks and issues, not building them up on a list.What a wonderful world it is!

About the Author: lyssaadkins

I believe that Agile is a brilliant, emergent response to help us thrive in our ever-increasingly complex, changeable and interconnected world. My current focus is coaching Leadership Teams to take up the Agile transformation that is theirs to do -- on both a personal and group level. For many years I have been a passionate contributor to the discipline and profession of Agile Coaching and have trained many thousands of agilists in the knowledge, skills, and mindsets needed to coach teams and organizations to get full benefits of Agile. In 2010, I authored Coaching Agile Teams which has sold 75,000+ and been translated into 10 languages.