1/7/2024 0 Comments Amo back in focusAn AMO ensures that teams focus on the important things first-features that will drive working software that delivers business value. An AMO fosters collaboration between teams, ensuring that efforts are coordinated and aligned. An AMO tracks team productivity and product delivery by applying lean estimation techniques, emphasizing the delivery of working software. Because of this, an AMO, while performing an oversight function similar to a PMO, operates in a fundamentally different manner.įour key features distinguish an AMO from a traditional PMO: It measures success in terms identical to the Agile development teams’ goal: working software that meets users’ needs. An AMO is designed to operate as an effective way to monitor the progress of Agile projects. The switch from a PMO to an AMO is much more than a superficial name change. The question facing senior management is thus: How do we adapt the PMO to survive (and thrive) in an Agile development world? How can we maintain visibility into project delivery using metrics appropriate for Agile? How do we maintain a coherent set of processes while enabling innovation by the project teams? These are critical questions, because the ability to coordinate multiple workstreams running in parallel can often determine the success or failure of an IT effort. However, in order to satisfy the PMO’s demands, organizations often perform impressive contortions in an attempt to fit Agile development’s square peg into the PMO’s round hole. Instead, the final product emerges through a collaborative and iterative process in which business users provide continuous feedback to developers. An Agile project isn’t born with detailed specs or a comprehensive schedule for completion. The mismatch between traditional PMO techniques and an Agile project manifests itself from the very start. Indeed, too often, business customers are disappointed with the traditional approach’s results, where slow development times yield systems that technically meet spec but fail to deliver value for users. As a result, waterfall IT projects and their PMOs are often blindsided by problems that come to light very late in the project. Oftentimes, step-by-step plans don’t play out as originally designed yet the PMO continues to report against them. The risks and shortfalls of a traditional PMO in a waterfall setting are significant. In essence, the PMO was established to answer questions centered on process: “Did we meet spec?,” “Did we deliver on time?,” and “Did we meet budget?” Missing was any metric regarding working software that actually met the end user’s needs. The discipline of “project management for IT” matched up reasonably well with the waterfall approach to development, focusing on controlling a project’s project scope, cost, and schedule-all three of which were predetermined at a project’s start and served as the basis for performance reporting. Built on a command-and-control model, a traditional PMO emphasizes consistent process execution from the top down-and reams of documentation. The traditional PMO took on its contemporary form in the 1950s, and was established to centralize management of business projects. And Agile can provide all of this while also cultivating a culture of innovation and employee empowerment.Īn “Agile management office,” or AMO, represents a way to transform the traditional program management office (PMO) to better support programs executing (or experimenting with) Agile. If done well, however, Agile methodologies can provide greater visibility for management into how a project is progressing, more enforceable process controls for how the effort is conducted, and a stronger correlation between a customer’s needs and the work delivered. Indeed, if Agile is attempted without proper oversight, a project can decay into a chaotic and unproductive collection of activities with disappointing results. Given that projects launch without detailed specifications and comprehensive schedules, management may fear that an Agile project will be the IT equivalent of the Wild West.Īfter all, how can you manage a project in which the final output is not based on an initial design, but emerges over time through iterations? Without detailed specs and hard deliverables, how can you ensure the accountability of contractors? Senior leaders also tend to be reluctant to abandon the comfort of traditional project reporting due to concerns that a lack of control could result in a costly failure. Download the full report or create a custom PDFĪ common misconception is that adopting Agile means embracing chaos, where planning, well-defined processes, and project oversight are abandoned in favor of uncontrolled madness.
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