“Agile Project Management is an oxymoron: Agile is product management, not project management.” Agree or disagree, Agile Project Management is coming soon. This fall the Project Management Institute (PMI) will release the sixth edition of their Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK®). At the same time, they will unveil their Agile Practice Guide, a joint effort with the Agile Alliance.
The PMBOK® Guide has allowed for rolling-wave, iterative process management and progressive, incremental elaboration of product deliverables since the third edition (2004). This approach to project management was first called “Agile” (also “Adaptive”) in the fifth edition (2013) where it was recommended for managing complex work and mentioned 22 times. The PMBOK® Guide Sixth Edition includes 154 references and fully integrates Agile principles and practices into their Project Management Process and Knowledge Areas.
Per the current draft version of the sixth edition, each Project Management Knowledge Area contains a new, helpful section entitled “Considerations for Agile/Adaptive Environments” plus another relevant section entitled “Trends and Emerging Practices.” Tools and techniques include such Agile practices as Sprint Planning, Backlogs, Burndown Charts, and recurring Retrospectives. Finally, an appendix provides further instruction on Agile.
The PMI joined forces with the Agile Alliance to create their Agile Practice Guide. Though no draft is available for review, the authors have given us a preview at ProjectManagement.com:
The Agile Practice Guide should prove to be invaluable to Agile project managers. And it will likely serve as the baseline reference for PMI’s Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI- ACP®) credential going forward.
Stay tuned because the ensuing conversation between the Agile and Project Management communities should be both interesting and profitable—both communities have much to learn from the other.
Finally, if you do not yet have your Project Management Professional (PMP®) and Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP®) certifications, you have until the end of 2017 to get that done ahead of some big changes.
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