Debunking Agile Project Management Myths: Part 2

Agile methodologies promise to accelerate time to market, improve quality, enhance collaboration, drive business value, and more—but what if your organization has implemented Agile and isn’t yet seeing those benefits?

If you’re not realizing the rewards from adopting Agile frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, or Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe®), you could be doing Agile but not being Agile.

You might also want to upgrade your Agile practice to implement SAFe frameworks, which help adjust Agile best practices for large or multiple teams and teams with a broader focus. Doing so helps deliver large and complex products. Like with any Agile framework, SAFe methodologies aren’t just a series of processes and ceremonies but a comprehensive mindset. It doesn’t only apply to development teams; it’s an organization-wide effort.

In our client work leading digital transformations and projects across many Agile frameworks (including SAFe Practice Consultants (SPCs), Agile Coaches, Scrum masters, Product Managers and more), we've seen that organizations can achieve the efficiency, quality, clarity, and collaboration benefits of a truly Agile organization once they recognize common Agile myths.

Myth #1: Story sizing equates to hours or days

Estimating work in Agile project management is fundamentally different from traditional waterfall methods of estimation. In waterfall methods, all requirements and scope are defined in advance. That makes it relatively easy to estimate the hours or days needed for each task at the outset – though that can sometimes not line up with how long things actually take during development. But Agile’s focus on delivering value through iterative sprints produces progressive elaboration that allows teams to more quickly respond to change and produce results.

While the use of story points to estimate scope, level of effort, and potential risk allows teams to commit to a realistic amount of work and is required to help in planning releases and sprints, story points don’t easily equate to hours or days of work and are relative to the individual teams setting them.

Points are assigned to stories to provide a single number that represents a combination of the following qualities:

• Volume - How much is there to do?
• Complexity - How hard is it to do?
• Knowledge - What’s known about the work?
• Uncertainty - What’s unknown about the work?

With the right guidance, you can use story points to estimate appropriately by running relative-sizing workshops and educating your staff on how to estimate stories.

Myth #2: PI Planning isn't needed

Another common Agile methodology myth is that it’s not important to do Planning Interval (PI) Planning. The PI Planning process helps teams align on a shared mission and vision. Organizational leaders who believe they’re fully adopting Agile often have individual teams submit a high-level plan for client approval rather than having all teams involved collaborate on PI Planning. The problem is that doing so takes away a critical opportunity to identify dependencies across teams, understand what other teams are planning for their sprints, foster cross-team collaboration, obtain approval on work from clients, and align with business priorities, goals, vision, and context.

The PI Planning process also allows organizations to better identify and address risks using the ROAM (Resolved, Owned, Accepted, or Mitigated) methodology, so that teams across the organization know if another team’s efforts could potentially affect their work. Understanding and owning these risks and identifying dependencies is crucial because it reduces the need for rework, ensures work is better coordinated across the organization, and improves velocity. Managing and owning risks also enables teams to complete work on time and avoid or mitigate blockers.

Given these considerations, organizations with a virtual or hybrid workforce shouldn’t assume that PI Planning is out of reach. While it’s important that everyone is present, attendance can be either virtual or in person. Experienced Release Train Engineers and Scaled Agile Framework Practice Consultants can help you implement PI Planning and other Agile Release Train (ART) events such as ART Syncs and Inspect & Adapt ceremonies. They can also coach and train you to embrace SAFe culture and facilitate these ceremonies on your own.

Myth #3: HIP/IP and planning sprints should be scheduled only when needed

Some organizations only schedule Innovation and Planning (IP) sprints (also known as "HIP sprints" or "hardening sprints") when they notice that their teams are burning out or when technical debt becomes a significant enough challenge that it finally needs to be addressed.

Yet IP sprints or hardening sprints should be scheduled regularly in every PI rather than just “when needed.” This allows organizations to:

• Address technical debt
• Keep teams from burning out
• Work on infrastructure
• Innovate and explore

In our work, we advocate for these regularly scheduled sprints because we’ve seen how they offer critical time to plan, innovate, reduce technical debt, give teams a break from weeks of ambitious sprints, and increase measures of success.

Myth #4: ART Syncs aren't necessary if leadership meetings are already taking place

Another common myth some people tend to believe when implementing Agile is that ART Syncs aren’t necessary if teams are already providing updates at leadership meetings. However, these are very different kinds of meetings with very different goals.

Leadership meetings focus on high-level updates on a project’s progress, looking at such aspects as risks and issues, client feedback, and incoming work. By contrast, an ART Sync focuses on more granular elements that are often critical to the project’s success. Examples include, process improvements, team conflicts, dependencies, blockers and other details or things that don’t make sense to talk about in leadership meetings. In an ART Sync meeting, organizations can work through these critical issues surrounding project implementation and set teams up for success. Seasoned guidance can help leaders keep both types of meetings purposeful and productive while ensuring that team members feel that progress and needed changes are being made.

Ultimately, these myths all demonstrate that there aren’t any shortcuts to becoming a truly Agile organization. By following these in-depth recommendations with the help of experienced guides, organizations can attain greater velocity, quality improvements, and increased business value.