The Noise Problem in Agile Methodologies
This article is part of the series of essays on project management. PMdA aims to provide a systematic, and empirical analysis of modern project management methods.
As already discussed, the promise of newer project management methodologies such as agile, is that they allow for planning to be performed ‘on the fly’, a posteriori.
The a posteriori, ‘empirical’, approach is unfortunately about all the advantage these methodologies have on their side.
Empiricism, Treat With Caution
A project, by definition, is meant to create a series of events, not just react to them.
The great sin committed by agile methodologies (even in business) is that of promoting haphazard approaches in lieu of the hard and expensive task of thought before action.
Empiricism is never to be confused with romanticizing chaos. Projects/products need direction, purpose, meaning and clearly defined concepts and boundaries to drive them. As already shown via Parkinson’s Law, an abundance of resources, time and (we could add) ‘concepts’ will lead to reduced productivity and performance.
Agile methodologies, as a result, should not be treated as an easy panacea to the current challenges facing the project management discipline.
Noise, more Noise and The Signal
A posteriori planning, provides the advantage of adaptability and a quicker response to unplanned events that occur during a project. The challenge for the agile team is to assess which of these events are noise and which are signal. This is not easily resolved by appointing an official ‘agile manager’ who will be responsible for determining the signal from the noise. An agile team, once it has decided that it is ‘agile’, cannot be easily fooled…
PMdA Heuristic II: regardless of project methodology, always adopt a clear and a singular project/product goal, one that is bold, simple, and falsifiable. This goal should only be changed if any facts during project execution clearly falsify the need or goal of the project.
This heuristic, alongside providing a conceptual architecture to clarify the design goal, is the agile team’s guide to detecting noise from signal. Everything that either threatens the team’s original goal or verifies it, should be treated as signal and recorded as such. Only information (signals) of this kind are to be adapted to and addressed. All other information, from a team member, the market, and customers should be treated as white noise.
The proposed heuristic differs from the rampant confusion that pervades the agile management philosophy in that project iteration will not be entirely directionless. Customer collaboration, is the mantra of the lazy engineer who has no product vision, unless, of course, that is done as part of a marketing strategy.
