Methodology by the example or how Agile methodology can impact any industry.

Jeff Sutherland delivers with all his optimism, a book on how scrum improved drastically small and big industries. Even if now Agile and Scrum is largely used in IT projects, some other industries still permeable at this fast paced highly effective methodology. In fact, Scrum can be applied to any project of any size, even on your personal projects.

This methodology of course imply drastic change in mentality that companies and individuals are not always eager to challenge.

I’m personally a great supporter of the Agile methodology, using it on a daily basis.

On a more pessimistic approach, using Agile methodology doesn’t ensure your project will be successful. In my career I have been part of a failed Agile project, and it failed because the project was too much macro-micro-managed, the communication was not transparent and clear enough to spread effectively among teams… The management morphed into a macro-waterfall-agile thing that made everything slower, cash consuming, and disappointing for teams and ultimately the client. A great example of how not do!

Takeaways

• Long term planning is -almost- always proven unsuccessful, prefer shorter rolling-wave planning which are highly goal focused
• High quality examples on how Agile methodology just revolutionised project management, especially nowadays with more distributed environment than ever
• You can use this methodology on a personal level to stay highly focused